Dialogue: PM must tread warily in Washington

Helen Clark will need to demonstrate an adroit touch during talks at the White House later this month, writes TERENCE O'BRIEN*.

For New Zealand, the forthcoming visit by Helen Clark to Washington is an overdue revival of high-level political dialogue with the United States. The broad context in which the visit occurs suggests that it will, however, require a deft touch on the New Zealand side.

The issue of international terrorism grips Washington. New Zealand has lined up in the coalition committed to armed retaliation against the terrorists and their supporters responsible for September 11. But what happens next - the direction and scope of further retaliation - will decide how far New Zealand support, including diplomatic support, extends.

President George W. Bush has identified Iraq, Iran and North Korea as parts of an "evil axis" which supports international terrorism.

But an assault on Iraq with the aim of overthrowing Saddam Hussein would be an enterprise with doubtful political, legal and moral foundation.

Moreover, unlike the US itself, New Zealand retains diplomatic ties with Iran (for some 25 years) and with North Korea, based on considered judgment of its own national interest. New Zealand must always apply that yardstick, of course, in pursuit of foreign policy.

Armed retaliation will never be sufficient alone to prevail over terrorism. The political, social and economic causes must also be confronted.

The explanation for the gross savagery of September 11 is not to be found simply in irrational Muslim fundamentalism determined to annihilate Western values.

It lies in the existing order of things in the Middle East itself: the vengeful Israeli-Palestine conflict; the behaviour of autocratic and corrupt governments dependent on outside support; the illogical isolation of governments in other important regional countries such as Iran; and the presence and activities of foreign military forces.

This order is, at the bottom line, the order created or sustained by the US, whose unapologetic support for Israel damages any reputation for even-handedness in Arab and other eyes. It will require much courage and statesmanship to resolve those issues, which are crucial to the ultimate success over terrorism.

The display of formidable American military muscle in Afghanistan, the increases in the high levels of defence spending to provide new missile capacity (for offensive as much as defensive reasons) and for new highly destructive smart weapons, the deployment of American forces into Central Asia for undetermined duration, as well as the Philippines, plus a reluctance to support policies (such as on the Korean Peninsula) that would reduce the need for American deployments are all evidence of an absolute determination to strengthen the United States' reach in the world.

The irony here is that all this may indeed render the US less secure against terrorism and entrench instability in those host countries wherever forward deployments are resented.

There was apprehension when President Bush took office lest he lead the US down a more isolationist pathway. The formidable American response to September 11 has dispelled this anxiety. But the US remains determinedly unilateralist. It resists endorsement of international treaties (which are supported by New Zealand) about climate change, human rights, criminal jurisdiction and arms control in several dimensions.

To refuse, as the US does, endorsement of a weapons control treaty because it objects to international inspection of its own capabilities undermines the justifiable call for others to submit to such inspections. Such unilateralism, it seems, could grow to become the new version of isolationism in our interdependent world.

New Zealand understandably wants a successful renewal of a high-level political relationship with Washington. The Prime Minister will need a judicious approach that accentuates the positive and portrays New Zealand as a small, serious, internationalist democracy whose external role derives from the values of its people as a nation, not from any kind of power or as a small, distant copy of Europe.

New Zealand's originality is grounded in 1840 foundation principles that embrace partnership but respect diversity and, in operational application, include reconciliation in the full sense of that term. Those are robust guiding principles also for a foreign policy conducted in conformity with international law.

The very preparation itself for Washington might provoke some deeper reflection here about New Zealand in the world. Helen Clark has, in the past, described the country as a bridge between the developed and developing worlds, sharing some experiences of both.

This is hardly an original thought and it finds no reflection in any foreign policy blueprint. Improvisation, often in haste, remains a New Zealand habit in foreign policy.

In Washington there will be the opportunity to explain New Zealand's commitment to co-operation with others in the dangerous task of peace support in several parts of the world where ethnic and other internal conflict pose more of a danger to stability than international terrorism as such.

As to specific issues, any discussion in Washington of nuclear policy seems possible only on a basis of mutual respect for genuinely held differences between the superpower and the South Pacific bantam.

On trade, the US seems ambivalent about a free trade agreement which New Zealand so publicly desires. The planned $73 billion support package for American farmers suggests that a deal acceptable to New Zealand and compatible with World Trade Organisation rules will be difficult. The priority anyway is surely to launch world (not regional) negotiations on trade liberalisation.

That being said, in the absence of a declared New Zealand objective for equivalent free trade or other economic arrangements with any of the major North-east Asian economies (Japan, Korea or China), there is now a decidedly lop-sided quality to our policy in the Asia-Pacific region.

* Terence O'Brien is a teaching fellow in international relations at Victoria University.