The Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ 2023 strategic foreign policy assessment, “Navigating a shifting world”, accurately foresaw a more uncertain and complex time ahead for New Zealand. But already it feels out of date.
The Trump administration’s extreme disruption of the international order (which New Zealand helped construct) is going further and faster than foreseen in the assessment. Were another nation responsible, the government would have been quick to condemn it.
But New Zealand has so far been largely mute while Trump has quit the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord, attacked foreign assistance programs and withdrawn funding from key United Nations organisations.
