Chinese warships firing in the Tasman Sea, security-troubling agreements between Beijing and the Cook Islands, US President Trump backing Russia’s Putin while bullying allies and loosely talking of territorial expansion - how will New Zealand make its way in this new world order? Thomas Manch reports.
Some 5000 metres beneath the Cook Island’s ocean and lying across 750,000 square kilometres of sea bed is an estimated 6.7 billion tonnes of potato-shaped rocks that are rich in critical minerals, vital for the batteries that will power the world’s electrified future.
These rocks - benign as they might be on the deep sea floor - are proving to be geopolitically explosive. Cobalt, nickel, manganese and titanium have major currency in this increasingly contested world, as great powers including China and the United States compete for economic, technological, and military supremacy.
“Not just for civilian development, but for military development. A lot of the minerals that they are looking for, such as nickel, for example, that's called the war mineral.”
These nation-building riches lying in the deep sea have not been overlooked by the Cook Islands, and decades of work to extract them have been gathering momentum. Three licences to explore extraction of these nodules have been issued, for a Texas-based firm, a US-Dutch consortium, and a Belgium company.
But Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown’s bid for a billion-dollar industry for his island nation took another step forward this month, and opened the door for Chinese involvement.
Among agreements signed by Brown in Beijing that New Zealand has raised concerns with was an ocean economy co-operation agreement that has both countries committing to develop industries including deep-sea minerals, as well as support the development of deep-sea fishing bases.
READ MORE
- In siding with Russia, Trump is not putting America first. He is hastening its decline
- On Why Our China Panic Is About To Get Expensive
- 'Tough watch': PM Luxon says of Trump-Zelensky argument
- New Zealand needs to 'step up' on defence spending, Winston Peters says
Brown says the Cook Islands is seeking economic sovereignty, and New Zealand wants to reassert “control”. New Zealand disagrees not with deep-sea mining in Cook Islands sovereign territory, but with Brown signing agreements without proper consultation of his country’s primary benefactor and security partner: New Zealand.
Prime Minister Christopher Luxon, in Vietnam this week, says the Government needs time to study the Cook Islands-China agreements to “understand what the security and defence risks may be”.
Underneath the ambiguous references to security risk from New Zealand is an apparent concern: China may be gaining a foothold in a New Zealand realm nation.
Just why this could be a concern was further demonstrated when, last weekend, three Chinese warships off the coast of Australia, within striking range of New Zealand, conducted live fire drills in the paths of trans-Tasman flights.
It was the furtherest south such ships had travelled, and a demonstration that China’s navy could sustain operations so far - with or without access to Pacific bases.
“The point is to show to Australia and New Zealand that China could cut our air and sea links without any warning,” Brady says, of the live fire exercises.
The drills also revealed a concern about both the Australian and New Zealand defence forces’ ability to manage China’s assertion of power. Australian senators this week probed Australian top brass about how long it took for New Zealand’s HMNZS Te Kaha to notify Australian partners about the live fire exercise - some 50 minutes after a Virgin pilot heard a broadcast and alerted civil aviation.
Defence Minister Judith Collins - who dismissed concern about the adequacy of Defence’s response - told the Star-Times it would be “irresponsible” for her to suggest that was China’s intention.
“China has signalled very clearly that it is moving more into an area position of quite substantial influence in the Indo-Pacific region, and ... New Zealand can no longer think that nobody is going to worry about us,” she says.
Such military activity can be expected, Collins says, particularly due to the competition for critical earth minerals.
The race for critical minerals is not just a problem for the region - but directly for New Zealand. Collins says New Zealand’s large seabed will need to be defended.
This means more defence spending on hardware and personnel, and not just drones, Collins says, but the naval fleet.
“It's really important to understand that we do actually have quite a lot to defend ... We have enormous wealth, that on the seabed, as well as on land ... other countries know that.
“You can see it playing out in what's being talked about in Ukraine. You can see that there's been a lot of that exploitation of these minerals has already gone on in parts of Africa, but you can see that countries are looking at other ways in which to access them.”
This week, US President Donald Trump’s shock-treatment of Europe, diminishing of the Nato alliance, and belittling of Ukraine appeared to succeed in producing a prize he was after: a stake in Ukraine’s critical mineral wealth.
In exchange, the US does not appear to be offering any specific security guarantee or promise of further funds for fighting - which Ukraine has said is needed to ward off future Russian aggression.
But this deal spectacularly blew up when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the White House on Saturday morning, NZ Time, and mention of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s past transgressions of cease-fires aggravated Trump and Vice President JD Vance.
“You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III,” Trump said to Zelensky, in front of the White House press pack.
The crack in three years of unified Western support of Ukraine means Putin now appears primed to be rewarded for his invasion by walking away with territory seized at the cost of so many Ukrainian and Russian lives.
Trump has also begun talking loosely about empire building: property development in Gaza appears in his sights, as does obtaining mineral-rich Greenland. Alongside this he continues bullying allies with tariff threats, and has aligned himself with Putin in the United Nations over the Ukraine war.
“From 2008, China has been saying the West is weak and divided ... and Putin and Xi Jinping have been saying more recently, similarly, that now is their moment and they reject the rules-based international order,” says Brady.
“This is a big, big problem for a small country like New Zealand, we rely on the big powers; all powers protecting and respecting the rules-based order.
“That order is crumbling before our eyes, and alliances are also crumbling, like the Nato alliance, or the unity in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. So it’s a very tough time for New Zealand. We’re looking very, very isolated right now.”
New Zealand has been described as walking a tightrope between the great powers as this new era of competition emerged. China was New Zealand’s primary trading partner, the United States its security partner of choice.
Does the strategy need to change? Dr Nicholas Ross Smith, an international relations expert at the University of Canterbury, says it already has.
New Zealand maintained an “asymmetrical hedge” from the mid-2000s until about 2017, seeking fruitful relations with both US and China, a strategy he considered “really sound” until the US deemed China an explicit threat.
Now, Smith says, Wellington has accepted the China “gravy train” has ended and its rise was an existential threat to the rules-based order.
“We don't have any capabilities at all to protect that [order]. We're completely reliant on external partners to do that, chiefly the United States.
“That explains to me why we are pursuing things like Aukus, why we are ostensibly moving closer to the US position ... why we’ve signed free trade agreements with the UK, the EU.”
He says this means New Zealand is no longer hedging, but “balancing”, or aligning with the status-quo power, the US, instead of “bandwagoning” with the threatening power, China, to profit from its rise.
“If you believe that China is this real threat, which is the soundest policy, for sure.”
The Government has been drawing closer to the United States in recent years, deepening defence and space ties, and expressing an interest in joining pillar two of Aukus, an agreement primarily aimed at providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.
But it has also been working to unify the Defence Force with its Australian counterparts, and the Government has signed military agreements with Japan and Philippines, building on existing defence ties with Singapore, Malaysia, and South Korea.
Collins says there was a “significant pathway for interoperability with Australia”, and she and Australian Defence Minister Richard Marles have talked about wanting “essentially an ANZAC force”.
This in effect draws New Zealand closer to the US, a formal defence ally of Australia.
Collins says there are also lots of reasons for this for forging better military relations in Asia.
“We have similar views around democracy, rule of law, but also it's very important for our Defence Force to have deployments so that they actually are ready for anything that they need.”
Brady says New Zealand should be looking for the support from medium powers, “as we're seeing with Europe and with Canada, as countries respond to the challenges of Putin, Xi and Trump”.
“We need to think about our alliances, because at the moment, we only have one ally, Australia. And look how weak New Zealand and Australia looked in the last couple of days,” she says, referring to the response to the Chinese warships.
Collins says it is “a little early, right at the moment” to be talking about further formal defence alliances, beyond that with Australia.
“What we need to be doing is rebuilding our own Defence Force, so we've got more to add into our alliance.”
The Government has leaned into questions and commentary about lifting defence spending, prompted this week. A long-awaited “defence capability plan” is be revealed by the end of March.
Luxon this week said a year’s work had gone into the plan so that “we're tipping good money into a good strategy that will actually build out our defence forces for what we need into the future”. He wants to lay out a pathway to spending 2% of GDP on defence. This week UK prime minister Keir Starmer announced plans to increase defence spending to 2.5% by 2027, by cutting foreign aid.
Collins says it will have to be “more than a sugar hit in one year”.
“It’s got to be something that’s planned, is funded, and it goes out for several years,” she says.
