Navigating Security in the Pacific
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Date
2020-03
Open Access Location
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Macmillan Brown Centre for Pacific Studies, University of Canterbury
Rights
Abstract
This article examines how New Zealand has framed recent security dynamics in the region and asks how
this framing aligns with the priorities of Pacific partners. There are some indications of increasing
alignment with ‘like-minded’ partners such as the US and Australia, prompted in part by increased
concerns about Chinese engagement in the region. However, New Zealand has also been circumspect in
seeking out opportunities to continue to engage with China and, perhaps most importantly for its Pacific
partners, has increasingly responded to regional concerns about understanding climate change as an
existential security threat. Recent uptake of Pacific imagery and narrative in the Ministry of Defence's
Advancing Pacific Partnerships policy document is particularly evocative in suggesting a more genuine
recentring of Pacific priorities, although enduring engagement is needed to support rhetorical
commitments (New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade, 2018). Here relationships with
diasporic populations, youth and women, in particular, should be more strongly pursued as New Zealand
navigates its way in and through the Pacific and its politics into the future.
Description
Keywords
women, diaspora, youth, Pacific politics, recentring, framing, Regional geopolitics
Citation
Pacific Dynamics, 2020, March 2020, 4 (1), pp. 30 - 40