INTRODUCTION

Earlier in the year the Minister of Defence was invited to prepare for Cabinet consideration a formal statement of the government's defence policy for use as a basis for reviewing and prioritising defence purchase options.

As part of the same process Cabinet requested a paper from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade on related foreign policy issues.

The analysis that follows looks at New Zealand's external interests under a number of broad headings. In each case the paper highlights implications for New Zealand's security policy and defence priorities.

There are many points on which the report echoes the conclusions of the Report of the Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Committee, Inquiry into Defence Beyond 2000, among them:

• the absence of direct military threat to New Zealand

• the fact that security involves more than defence, and has both international and domestic dimensions

• the importance for New Zealand's international interests of the work we do on sustainable development, emergency relief and disaster assistance, international trade, support for the rules-based multilateral system and international law, human rights, disarmament and arms control

• the central place of the United Nations Charter - and the need for UN members, including New Zealand, to continue to share the burdens and fulfil the obligations they have undertaken under the Charter

• the importance of maintaining our capacity to participate militarily in appropriate UN and other coalition activities

• the contribution made by the NZDF, working in partnership with foreign policy, in pursuit of New Zealand's wider national interests.

The conclusion to be drawn from this analysis is that for a country committed to upholding human rights and fundamental freedoms, and to playing a role as a good international citizen in a troubled world, military force remains (with all the obvious caveats) an important foreign policy instrument and crisis management tool.

Phil Goff
Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade

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