Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s acceptance of an invitation to speak at this week’s NATO leaders’ summit in Madrid has fuelled a narrative that New Zealand’s independent foreign policy is falling victim to a new Cold War.

According to this view, Ardern’s participation is a reward for recently aligning New Zealand’s foreign policy more closely with the US and its allies against Russia and, to a lesser extent, China.

This narrative claims this shift has been exemplified by sanctions against Putin’s Russia, humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine and public questioning of China’s growing involvement in the Pacific.

These developments purportedly show American power has forced New Zealand to abandon its preferred strategy of hedging between the two superpowers and instead follow Washington at the expense of its own national interests and the country’s crucial relationship with China.

But this reading of the current international situation and its impact on New Zealand foreign policy is wide of the mark.

There is no new Cold War
The post-Cold War era is fundamentally different from the period between 1947 and 1989 and its rival global economic systems and competing but comparable alliance systems. Those features simply do not exist in the globalising world of the 21st century.

Read more: https://theconversation.com/some-see-nzs-invite-to-the-nato-summit-as-a-reward-for-a-shift-in-foreign-policy-but-thats-far-from-accurate-185591