Nicholas
Ross Smith, University
of Canterbury and Anna
Christoforou, University
of Canterbury
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.
Advertisement – scroll to continue reading
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.
The world order has
“ruptured”, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has
warned – so it’s time for countries like Australia and
New Zealand to forge a new, less US-reliant future. In this
new
series, we’ve asked top experts to explain what that
future could look like – and the challenges that lie
ahead.
Finding a
‘workaround’
In a forthcoming collection
of essays about how middle powers might cooperate on
vital technology in this turbulent world, the concept of
“workarounding”
describes how countries can pursue strategic objectives
collectively, without routing everything through Washington
or Beijing.
For New Zealand, technology is already
an area of real foreign
policy concern. Military interoperability with Australia
– a key driver behind potentially joining AUKUS Pillar Two
– is a sticking point. More broadly, New Zealand risks
being left behind in the AI
revolution.
The Indo-Pacific region, however,
offers promising workaround partners. Beyond Australia –
New Zealand’s oldest friend and only formal ally – there
is a growing cluster of tech middle powers with which
Wellington has positive relationships: India, South Korea
and several key ASEAN
states.
India produces the world’s highest
number of IT graduates, runs ambitious semiconductor
and quantum
computing programs, and maintains multiple
alliances that allow it to resist being absorbed into
either great power orbit.
New
Zealand’s relationship with India is burgeoning with the
announcement at the end of 2025 of a free
trade agreement.
New Zealand also has a trade
agreement with South Korea, and both countries are part of
the Indo-Pacific
Four group (with Australia and Japan). Home to Samsung,
Hyundai and LG, South Korea is often heralded as the most
successful tech middle power and occupies an important
position in critical
international tech supply chains.
The ASEAN
bloc – driven
by key member states – also has a deep institutional
instinct for hedging between great powers, and contains
five major tech economies: Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand and Vietnam. New Zealand has strong relationships
with ASEAN, including a trade agreement and a Comprehensive
Strategic Partnership.
The problem is that
Australia, India, South Korea and ASEAN all face their own
tech dependency constraints, and the group lacks a
technologically capable anchor outside the US-China
duopoly.
Europe as a way forward
A third
party may be able to fill that anchor role – the European
Union (EU). While it remains an imperfect
geopolitical actor, long derided for being a hobbled
giant or a geopolitical
sleepwalker, the EU is still a potential ally to middle
powers.
That’s because it is not a conventional
state and does not have the military capabilities of great
powers. This forces it to take a multilateral
and multi-stakeholder approach to
geopolitics.
Importantly, the EU has significant
and growing technological weight, most clearly expressed in
its regulatory frameworks. Its General Data Privacy
Regulation has established a global
data governance template that neither Washington nor
Beijing can match. Such rules shape how data flows, how AI
is governed and how digital markets are structured
globally.
The EU is also moving decisively into
hardware to complement its regulatory power. The 2023 European
Chips Act mobilises over €43 billion (A$70 billion) to
double Europe’s share of global semiconductor production,
spurred by the building of a semiconductor
plant in Dresden.
Dutch multinational ASML’s near-monopoly on
crucial semiconductor manufacturing machines gives Europe
genuine structural leverage over global chip supply
chains.
Furthermore, during the second Trump
presidency, the EU has moved quickly to improve its strategic
autonomy, as well as
deepen its Indo-Pacific presence. It is building trade
relationships and positioning European tech companies as
alternatives to US and Chinese providers.
New
Zealand’s relationship with the EU is at an all-time
high since a free trade agreement came into force in
2024. And there is significant
convergence on how both view the Indo-Pacific.
The NZ-EU trade agreement includes a dedicated
digital trade chapter, and the inaugural trade
committee meeting in October 2025 flagged cooperation on
digital technologies and critical minerals as
priorities.
Carney was right about the old
“fiction” being over. The task now for smaller powers
such as New Zealand is not to mourn it, but to help
construct something more durable in its place. This is a
networked middle-power order built on shared standards,
supply chain resilience and strategic diversification.
Nicholas
Ross Smith, Senior Research Fellow, National Centre for
Research on Europe, University
of Canterbury and Anna
Christoforou, PhD Candidate, National Centre for
Research on Europe, University
of Canterbury
This article is
republished from The
Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the
original
article.
