The debate in New Zealand over whether to join “pillar two” of the AUKUS security partnership threatens to overshadow a more important foreign policy challenge: how the country’s allies in the Indo-Pacific region are responding to the war in Ukraine.
AUKUS seems to be based on the assumption it will deter or counter China’s assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. But it is unclear whether this arrangement would advance the core national interests of New Zealand.
While New Zealand’s “stability, security and prosperity” depend critically, in the words of a recent government document, on an international rules-based order, it is also plain that China is not the sole or even most serious threat to this arrangement.
