NZ and NATO

Geoffrey Miller writes:

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has New Zealand firmly in its sights.

Last week, New Zealand’s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta attended the annual NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels – alongside her counterparts from Australia, Japan and South Korea.

Mahuta’s participation came after New Zealand’s then Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern joined last June’s NATO leaders’ summit in Madrid. Mahuta was also a guest at the NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in April 2022, albeit only in virtual form. …

Second, it shows how New Zealand is continuing to forge a more hardline foreign policy stance under Hipkins’ leadership.

After all, the involvement of the AP4 in NATO is being driven chiefly by the alliance’s interest in China. …

Indeed, the NATO Secretary General openly linked the alliance’s recent deepening of partnerships with Indo-Pacific countries such as New Zealand with NATO’s China strategy – which he called a ‘huge effort’.

Of course, unlike Finland – which became NATO’s 31st member last week – New Zealand cannot formally join NATO, given the alliance’s geographic focus.

It is correct that NZ can’t join NATO. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that only territories north of the Tropic of Cancer are covered. This means that an attack on Hawaii would not actually trigger a NATO response, while an attack on the other 49 states would.

For one, it means that New Zealand will almost certainly strive to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2 per cent of GDP – a figure which Stoltenberg described last week as a ‘floor not a ceiling’.

I’ll be delighted if we commit to increase our defence spending to 2% of GDP.