Description
Although Aotearoa New Zealand is a long way from Ukraine, it has been impacted indirectly by the war and has also responded by, for the first time, imposing sanctions on a state outside a UN framework, and by providing military training for Ukrainian soldiers. This paper examines New Zealand’s response to Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the current state of New Zealand-Russia relations in the context of its wider implications for New Zealand, particularly in its neighbourhood of the South Pacific and Antarctica. It focuses on how the war enters into domestic debates about New Zealand’s interests, identity, and values: for example, the rhetoric about the implications for small states of the breakdown of a ‘rules-based international order’, or the position of New Zealand geographically in the South but not of the Global South. And it shows how discussion over the implications for New Zealand is often filtered through the question of China, where relations are closer and there is far higher economic dependence than with Russia, but there are concerns over China’s great power assertion including in the South Pacific.
