Speeches and Articles
Forum will bolster links with US
Stephen Jacobi
The Press, 22 December 2010
If the latest revelations from Wikileaks reveal anything at all about US/NZ affairs it is surely this: by 2005 the relationship was floundering under the weight of past differences and new division about the conflict in Iraq. By April 2006, at the inaugural US NZ Partnership Forum, held in Washington DC, the two governments were trying to do better. Five years on, in the light of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit, we are thankfully in quite a different space.
Secretary Clinton’s visit was less the occasion for the great melting of the ice as some saw it than the high point of a process of relationship improvement that has been underway for some time. In Wellington the Secretary signed the Wellington Declaration, providing a new framework within which the relationship can be further developed. In Christchurch the Secretary praised the community’s resolve in the aftermath of the earthquake, saying, “Americans admire your willingness to step up and do whatever is needed and do it with resilience."
Prior to the Secretary’s visit the relationship had been boosted by a significant re-assessment undertaken by the Obama Administration. Military to military ties, long hampered by the ANZUS fall out, had been gradually strengthening under the Bush Administration but took a new direction in the light of the change of strategy in Afghanistan, New Zealand’s continuing strong contribution in Bamyan province and through the SAS deployment. We now know that full intelligence co-operation was restored in August 2009. In April 2010 President Obama invited Prime Minister John Key to attend the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, a welcome sign that old wounds were beginning to heal.
On the economic front negotiations towards an expanded Trans Pacific Partnership which were started under President Bush in October 2008 were at first put on hold by President Obama and then confirmed in November 2009. This was an important step as New Zealand and the United States were at last sitting down to negotiate – something the NZUS Council had been working towards for the last decade. An FTA with the United States is not a pot of gold at the end of rainbow. We need it not just to reduce trade barriers for dairy and beef but to put us on a even footing with competitors, like Australia and Chile, who already have FTAs and to provide additional cover against protectionist reflexes in the United States.
TPP is an existing FTA linking Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore. The negotiations now comprise nine partners – the existing four plus Australia, Malaysia, Peru, the United States and Viet Nam. Four rounds of negotiations have now been held, the most recent being held in Auckland at the beginning of this month. We are still at the beginning of complex and possibly lengthy negotiations but steady progress is being made to build a viable pathway towards an even bigger goal – the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific (FTAAP).
These positive developments are brought together in the Wellington Declaration which confirms New Zealand as a “strategic partner” of the United States in political, security, economic and sustainable development terms. New Zealand and the United States may no longer be allies in the strict treaty sense but on many issues we are more closely aligned than many of the United States’ actual allies.
An opportunity to fill in the detail of what the Declaration might mean in practice will arise in Christchurch next in February. The fourth US NZ Partnership Forum is strongly supported by the Mayor and City, by the University and by Canterbury business. The Forum will bring together over a hundred high level government, business and community leaders. The Forum will discuss a study produced by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington which maps out how the two countries can work together even more closely in the future. The Forum will also be informed by the views of twenty future American and New Zealand leaders who will be meeting in a parallel session.
At important stages in the last five years the Partnership Forum has served to provide both direction and a platform for the process of relationship improvement. Now that the two countries are strategic partners once more, and with progress being made with TPP, there is a unique chance in Christchurch next February to take stock of what has been achieved and what more needs to be done. What better place to do this than in the city of Christchurch which is already the focus of US/NZ co-operation in Antarctica and whose spirit of resilience so impressed the Secretary of State ?
