Venu Menon
Wellington, August 20,2024
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon is toying with the idea of participating in Pillar Two of AUKUS, the security partnership forged between the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia.
Luxon’s keynote foreign policy address to Sydney-based think tank Lowy Institute last week was distinctly hawkish on Wellington’s enhanced partnership with Australia in ensuring the security of the Indo-Pacific region.
The PM said “we welcome AUKUS as an initiative to enhance regional security and stability.”
Wellington was “exploring with the AUKUS partners how we could potentially participate in Pillar Two,” he added.
The speech effectively settles Wellington’s skittish engagement on the AUKUS trilateral pact, which aims to bolster the “international rules-based order.” But the core focus from its inception in September 2021 is clearly the containment of China.
Luxon’s recent Australia visit underscores the importance of defence in the bilateral relationship, though trade is an overarching factor.
Australia is New Zealand’s third-largest export market, behind China and the US. Two-way trade between the two countries in the year to March 2024 stood at $31 billion.
But Luxon’s refrain that “we can’t achieve prosperity without security” links trade to geopolitics. It allows the coalition government to make significant foreign policy shifts, even if that means a departure from New Zealand’s trademark foreign policy autonomy and its nuclear-free positioning.
New Zealand has successfully shaped a trade-based approach to bilateral relations that has allowed it to stay above the fray of big power rivalry, notably between the US and China, in the Indo-Pacific.
All that appears to be changing now. In Sydney, Luxon said “there’s 195 countries in the world with eight billion people in it, and each of those 195 countries also has an independent foreign policy.”
Clearly, PM Luxon and his foreign minister, Winston Peters, are leading the change in foreign policy vision, with New Zealand already involved in joint airstrikes, alongside the US and UK, against rebel Houthi targets in Yemen.
But joining AUKUS Pillar Two has also seen a bipartisan approach by Labour and National in the past, with both parties reluctant to rush in.
While the US has left the door ajar for New Zealand’s future participation in Pillar Two, Luxon appears open to putting one foot in the door. It is a calculation aimed at counterbalancing China’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific.
But whether part-membership of AUKUS via Pillar Two achieves the goal of China’s containment without inviting a trade backlash is a question rooted in speculation.
But the signal it puts out is clear: New Zealand is linking trade with geopolitics, and is open to aligning with Western interests to the detriment of China.
It also means Wellington is gravitating towards New Delhi.
In Sydney, Luxon was unequivocal in his support of firming up ties with India, saying his government “is determined to broaden and deepen our relationship with New Delhi.”
“The Foreign Minister has visited India once, my Trade Minister twice, and he’s there again this week wearing his Agriculture hat. And just last week we welcomed India’s President. Prime Minister Modi and I have connected, and I look forward to meeting him in person before the year is done,” Luxon updated his Australian hosts.
The message to Beijing is loud and clear: Wellington is ready to redraw its foreign policy and join the broader phalanx of international interests to ensure a stable Indo-Pacific, and to “champion the architecture, existing and evolving, that scaffolds the region’s prosperity and its security.”
Venu Menon is an Indian Newslink reporter based in Wellington
