ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Anna Powles considers New Zealand’s identity and approach to security cooperation and calls for greater strategic clarity across its security assistance activities. Powles characterises New Zealand’s cooperation as being grounded in its self-identification as a Pacific state and discusses how that narrative is shaping its foreign policy. Powles argues that this policy played out through the priorities of climate change resilience, regenerating the region post-pandemic, and building on long-standing security cooperation relationships that New Zealand has with the Pacific states, particularly in Polynesia. However, Powles notes inconsistencies and a degree of incoherence across New Zealand’s security activities in the Pacific and a lack of strategic clarity about how security assistance activities contribute to New Zealand’s foreign policy values and interests.
