In Trump’s precarious world, NZ will need all the middle-sized friends it can get

When a local political commentator recently suggested (partly tongue-in-cheek) that New Zealand might respond to US President Donald Trump’s new world order by becoming the seventh state of Australia, it was dismissed by the prime minister and most political leaders.

But the fact their views were even sought shows how far the debate has moved since Trump began dismantling the old rules-based international order New Zealand has long considered the basis of its foreign policy.

At January’s World Economic Forum in Davos and more recently in his address to the Australian parliament, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney laid down a challenge for other “middle powers” to start finding practical solutions to the new global realities.

Carney’s clarion call matters also for smaller powers uneasy about the United States under Trump and rising great-power disorder. New Zealand, with its long-held preference for multiple alliances and foreign policy independence, is likely a keen ally in such a middle-power movement.

Yet the hard part remains: how can middle and smaller powers effectively work together when still mostly reliant on great powers for security, trade and technology?

The technological dimension, in particular, makes middle power cooperation harder today. Modern states are existentially dependent on semiconductors, AI systems, 5G infrastructure and cloud computing – technologies produced overwhelmingly by the two “technopoles” of the US and China.