New Zealand’s attempts to “coerce” the Cook Islands
over its relationship with China will not work, Prime
Minister Mark Brown said in an interview aired on Cook
Islands Television last week. He said the Pacific island
country still wants New Zealand support but the two
countries need to work together as “partners” with the
Cooks maintaining its sovereignty.
Earlier in
November, it was revealed that New Zealand’s National
Party-led government had suspended two aid payments
amounting to $NZ29.8 million since February to the Cook
Islands. The aid boosts the Cook Islands budget for core
sectors including education, tourism and health. Following
the withdrawal of the first aid payment in June, Brown said
the punitive decision would “harm the country’s most
vulnerable citizens.”
New Zealand Foreign Minister
Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing populist NZ First
party in the ruling coalition, blocked the payments after
Brown signed strategic deals with China in February without
“consulting” Wellington. Peters claimed prior approval
was required under the terms of the Cook Islands’
constitutional position as one of New Zealand’s
semi-dependent “Realm” countries.
Peters told
Brown in a letter in October that “the gravity of the Cook
Islands’ breach of trust” raised concerns about its
“approach to the constitutional realities which impose
clear limits on your freedom to act on foreign affairs,
defence and security matters without reference to New
Zealand’s interest or those of the Realm.” Brown,
however, insists that Wellington was advised the China deal
would not include security matters and that there was “no
need for New Zealand to sit in the room” while it was
drawn up.
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Peters’ diplomatic bullying is part of
increasingly belligerent attempts by Wellington to maintain
its neo-colonial domination over the impoverished Cook
Islands. New Zealand’s ruling establishment responded with
outrage over the agreement with Beijing which covered
economic development, including fisheries, infrastructure
and undersea minerals, as well as strengthening diplomatic
relations. The documents contained no military
clauses.
In his television interview Brown declared:
“The withholding and the pausing of financial assistance,
development assistance, we don’t feel that that is a
useful tool to try and coerce, if you like, a country into
changing its policies—it certainly is not going to work
with us.” By using its cash reserves the government had,
Brown said, ensured the funding cut would not affect the
delivery of public services, while GDP growth rate meant it
was “well placed” for the coming years.
The
dispute is an expression of the sharp geopolitical tensions
created by the advanced US-led preparations for war against
China. New Zealand and Australia—both imperialist allies
of the US—are seeking to block China’s growing economic
and diplomatic influence in the Pacific and are presenting
Beijing in increasingly hysterical terms as a military
threat. While using aid to pressure Pacific states, they are
militarising the region and forcing them to cut economic and
diplomatic ties with Beijing.
In 2001, New Zealand and
the Cook Islands signed a Joint Centenary Declaration which
broadly states that the two governments must “consult
regularly on defence and security issues.” However, the
declaration explicitly affirms the Cook Islands’ right to
enter independently into “treaties and other international
agreements” with any government or international
organisations.
The Cooks—a tiny state with fewer
than 20,000 people—is heavily dependent on outside aid. It
has been diplomatic partners with China for almost 30 years,
signing agreements to develop local infrastructure, and has
diplomatic relationships with 70 different
countries.
According to Brown, the Cook Islands
government fulfilled its obligations to consult with New
Zealand regarding the content of any diplomatic and economic
deals and has followed “established protocol” in its
talks with China. “I would not expect any of the countries
that we discuss our bilateral relations with… to have them
share those documents with a third country, and the
reciprocal arrangement would also exist,” he
said.
Brown assured the Cook Islands parliament his
government is taking steps to mend the rift. Officials and
ministers had “engaged consistently with New Zealand
across every formal channel that is available to us,” he
declared.
Brown however emphasised that the Cook
Islands remain self-governing and independent in external
affairs and that restoring the relationship must not come at
the expense of their growing independence. “While we are
fully committed to our relationship with New Zealand, we
have learned a valuable lesson in that we’ve seen the
risks that arise from over reliance on any single partner
for our development needs,” he said.
Brown indicated
a willingness to exclude countries other than NZ from
involvement in security and defence issues, but this is
evidently not enough to satisfy Wellington.
New
Zealand, along with Australia, regards the southwest Pacific
as its “backyard.” Prime Minister Christopher Luxon
declared recently that New Zealand’s funding would remain
“paused” until the Cook Islands government took
unspecified steps to restore “trust.” The opposition
Labour Party has joined in the denunciations of the Brown
government, expressing only mild concern that Peters’
hard-nosed approach could be counter-productive.
New
Zealand’s universally anti-China media plays a grimy role
demonising the Cook Islands over its purported
“treachery.” On November 24, the New Zealand Herald
published an inflammatory “special investigation”
alleging that the Cook Islands flag has been flown by over
100 oil tankers “accused of illicitly trading Russian and
Iranian oil.” It claims the operation is run by a private
shipping registry owned by Maritime Cook Islands (MCI) which
was set up in 2000 by “government insiders” and delivers
“modest fees” to the Cooks’
government.
According to the Herald, the flagged
“shadow fleet” enables “pariah countries” Russia and
Iran to generate “huge revenues.” It also gives end
users, notably China and India, a secure flow of energy at
cheap rates while evading unilateral sanctions imposed by
the US and Europe. Allegedly, nearly half of the flagged
tanker fleet of 150 vessels has been formally sanctioned by
the US, United Kingdom or the European Union.
Brown
has refused to comment on the Herald story. Peters declared
that New Zealand’s support for Ukraine in the war with
Russia was being deliberately undercut by the Cook Islands:
“This is a completely unacceptable and untenable foreign
policy divergence,” he fumed. The flag registry is just
one of “a range of actions and statements” by the Cook
Islands, Peters said, that have “damaged its free
association relationship with New Zealand and the trust that
underpins it.”
In other words, any alleged activity
that can be sheeted home to the Cook Islands government and
construed as inimical to Wellington’s pro-US agenda for
escalating war is deemed illegitimate. The Cook Islands and
other Pacific countries must accept their subservient
neo-colonial status.
Whatever truth is in the Herald
article, the flag operation is likely similar to those run,
among others, by Vanuatu and the Marshall Islands, the sale
of “passports of convenience” by Tonga, Nauru and
Vanuatu, or the tax havens and offshore financial centres in
Fiji, Niue and Samoa, all desperate attempts to attract
foreign capital.
Ultimate responsibility for the
proliferation of such ventures—many blacklisted by
capitalist overseers and financial institutions such as the
EU and OECD—lies with the imperialist powers. For the past
century they have kept the fragile Pacific micro-states in
conditions of poverty, economic backwardness and oppression,
while exploiting them for cheap labour and now, for
geo-strategic ends in the escalating US-led confrontation
with China.
By John Braddock, Socialist
Equality Group
29 November 2025
Original url:
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/28/qbic-n28.html
