What Exactly Was Winston Peters’ Mission In Washington DC?

Lillian
Hanly, Political
reporter

Analysis: Winston Peters heads home
from Washington DC armed with fresh intel on what the new US
administration is thinking, and the impact it might have on
New Zealand and the wider Pacific.

His meeting with
Secretary of State Marco Rubio came at the end of a series
of high-level engagements, and after a range of decisions
made by the Trump administration including comments by
President Donald Trump himself, that were seen by some as a
seismic shift for US trade and foreign policy.

Peters
has been coy
about any specifics in his meetings over the past week,
insisting he would brief his Cabinet colleagues before
speaking publicly on the issues.

“We came here on a
mission, and I think the mission thus far has been seriously
accomplished,” he told RNZ.

But what exactly was the
mission?

New Zealanders remain none the wiser as to
whether they will be directly targeted by Trump’s trade war,
nor do they know whether there were any specific requests
made on, for example, defence spending.

Peters has
been careful to try manage those concerns, saying, “we came
away much more confident than when we originally came
here.”

And he was fairly confident to begin with,
having prepared significantly for this very meeting, and
securing a range of other high level meetings while in the
US, including with the National Security Advisor.

His
preparation started before the US President was even elected
– that’s because Peters said Trump was clear about his
proposed policies, and what’s happening now was “utterly
predictable”. However, it’s what will happen next that is of
most concern to New Zealand.

The New York Times
reported
this week the OECD had updated their projections for global
economic growth due to the uncertainty created by Trump’s
policies.

“A growing trade war and rapid policy shifts
are expected to drag down economic growth in the United
States and around the world.”

Gary Hufbauer is a
former US Treasury official, and senior fellow with the
Peterson Institute for International Economics – writing
extensively about the impact of Trump policies. He told RNZ
the US had departed from the rules of international
trade.

“The steps the Trump administration has taken
have repudiated most of the post war US
diplomacy.

“It’s a systemic shift of the sort we
really haven’t seen in living memory.”

Hufbauer said
it’s “disruptive”, and that Trump sees that disruption as
giving back to the American economy.

“He’s trying to
say it’s short term pain for long term gain. And many people
in my profession are quite skeptical on the long term
gain.”

On foreign affairs, too, there’s been a
departure from traditional US policies.

The Oval
Office incident which saw President Zelenskyy receive a
globally-watched telling off was shocking not only for the
radical change to accepted diplomacy, it implied an
expectation that Ukraine must accept what it is given. There
are now concerns a ceasefire agreement may occur on Russian
terms.

Ivo Daalder is the chief executive of the
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and a former US
representative to NATO under the Obama
administration.

He told RNZ the “President and this
administration have abandoned more than 80 years of American
foreign policy.” That is that the US encouraged and
instigated an “international order” through a series of
security alliances based on the idea that open economic
relations will be stabilising.

Daalder said the
biggest ramification of this change was that the US is
abandoning its main advantage, “its allies”.

“The
United States is throwing that away.”

He said the US
is treating its allies and friends as “no more and no
different than any other country,” and as a result, he
thinks the US will be weaker and less able to achieve what
it wants.

In response, he said, smaller powers have
one of two choices, either to align with a big power, or
stay out of the way.

That is the Washington DC in
which Winston Peters walked into this week. His mission
then?

“We came here to ask of the Americans as to what
they wanted of us and to tell the Americans what we wanted
of them.”

Helen Clark tweeted
this week criticising this approach and calling it “deeply
injurious” to New Zealand’s independent foreign
policy.

Peters said in response that international
relationships are a “two-way street”.

“That’s what
independent foreign policy looks like.

“Every
relationship that we’ve got internationally has the same
dual purpose. We’ve got expectations of those countries, and
they’ve got expectations of us.”

And that they do –
Peters confirmed the US did have expectations of New
Zealand, “I came here fully expecting that those would be
their expectations, and that’s the way it turned out.” But
he wouldn’t specify what they were.

When asked if an
indication had been given by the US in terms of the amount
of increased defence spending expected, Peters said “to the
extent that the increasing of our expenditure was
important.”

“You can’t surely expect the Pacific and
the rest of the world to be looked after by one country and
everybody else not pay anything at all.

“So at the
very least, we knew we had to increase our expenditure, and
I’ll tell my colleagues what that figure is.”

It comes
at a time when the Defence Capability Plan is due for
release in New Zealand any moment. It’s been delayed several
times.

Given the timing of the meeting with Secretary
Rubio, any crucial information from that meeting will likely
be considered as part of the DCP release. Budget Day is
coming up in a couple of months and it will be a balancing
act to meet those expectations – should the government
choose to do so – and act within their financial
constraints.

As for the impending threat of tariffs –
Peters said he made clear New Zealand’s position when it
comes to trade, reminding the US New Zealand got rid of
tariffs decades ago.

Whether that was enough to
protect New Zealand from Trump’s decision in the future,
Peters wouldn’t say, “as of right here right now we’ve done
as good as we possibly can.”

There was no guarantee
from the administration that New Zealand would be exempt –
but, given what happened to Australia, that wasn’t to be
expected.

On Russia and Ukraine, Peters said
discussions on the potential ceasefire came up, but New
Zealand’s role in a potential peacekeeping operation did
not.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon along with
Peters have made clear Russia is the aggressor in the war,
“everybody knows that,” Peters said. When asked if he
thought President Trump knew that, Peters bristled and said
“I’m not here to insult anybody. Of course, he
does.”

The Pacific has long been an area of focus for
Peters, having made a speech in 2018 in Washington DC
calling for more focus in the region from the US. There are
concerns cuts to the foreign assistance funding for the
Pacific through US aid will leave a vacuum China could
fill.

Peters met directly with Peter Marocco – the
Director of the Office of Foreign Assistance – who is
overseeing those cuts, signalling just how important it was
to understand these changes in more detail.

Peters
said “they get our point of view in terms of how essential
it is in the Pacific and what our collective role should be
in it.”

“We discussed with them what elements were
very, very critical about their present obligations in terms
of the aid program and tried to find out from them where it
was going forward.

“We know much more about what that
future might be, but we are bound to wait their final
decisions in April.”

With trade, and any support in
the Pacific then, New Zealand remains at the mercy of the
decisions the Trump administration
makes.

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