Neil Sands
The world order set up after World War II is disintegrating under Donald Trump’s presidency and New Zealand must now look beyond its traditional “Western club” allies amid the chaos, former Prime Minister Helen Clark said on Tuesday.
As global stock markets tumble in response to Trump’s tariffs and nations boost defence spending after he trashed security guarantees, Clark said the United States had become too unstable to be relied upon.
“These times of incredible disruption, in my view, are probably the greatest since the Second World War,” she told a TLANZ breakfast function in Auckland.
“I say that advisedly, because while the fall of the Berlin Wall set off a lot of change, it was generally positive. A lot of countries moved from being authoritarian regimes to being democracies.”
Clark said Trump’s impact had been markedly different, from “the horror show” with tariffs to Vice-President JD Vance’s “quite preposterous” speech in Munich in February where he berated European leaders for rejecting far right positions on migration and free speech.
“So what does New Zealand do, this little set of islands in the south of the South Pacific?” Clark asked.
“I think it shows, on the economic side, how absolutely critical it is that we keep a broad base of trading partners. You can never be dependent on one partner, you have to be able to flex up and down and around, depending on where the markets are moving.”
‘Strange journey’
Clark, who led New Zealand as prime minister from 1999 to 2008, said if the US insisted on hiding behind a tariff wall, the rest of the world’s nations had to reorientate global trade among themselves, leaving the Americans in their silo.
“While the US is a large economy, they’re only something like 13% to 15% of world trade,” she said.
Helen Clark with TLANZ chief executive Clayton Kimpton and president Tony Herring
“There’s is an argument which I’ve seen floated in international financial media that says, ‘Look, let them get on with making their own cars and vacuum cleaners and toasters and find how expensive it is, but you know the rest of the world’s got to get on with trading’. So, I think we need to be quite pragmatic.”
Similarly, she said the global community had to cooperate to preserve international law in the face of the Trump administration’s moves to undermine institutions such as the International Court of Justice and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
While many have called for preservation of “the rules-based order” in the Trump era, Clark said the current state of flux represented a chance to update rules written by colonial powers after WWII so they better reflect the modern world.
She said this should also be reflected in New Zealand’s foreign policy.
“You should join forces with other countries across regions who want to be coalitions for action around these issues, not just little Western clubs,” said Clark, who was the third-highest ranking official at the United Nations for eight years and knows international governance architecture intimately.
“These days, when you look at putting together coalitions that are broad-based, yes, you want European friends, Japan, Canada and Australia, but you [also] want Brazil, you want Indonesia, you want South Africa.
“You want the big emerging countries. You also want the small and active countries.
“Look at how to build broad-based coalitions, which can forge ahead with the international agreements we have and try to improve them on the basis that one day the US will come off this strange journey that it’s on and come back in.”
‘Don’t be complacent’
Asked whether New Zealand’s best option was to try to keep a low profile and hope Trump doesn’t notice us, Clark said the country must decide when to dispute Washington’s actions, carefully coordinating with allies where possible.
“[It’s] not hiding under the table but the truth is if you reacted to every bizarre thing that’s coming out of Washington DC, you’d do nothing else. You’d just be commenting on an hourly basis, so that wouldn’t be productive,” she said.
“You need to pick the issues that you comment on and also look at who else is holding hands on this… What’s Norway saying? What are the Irish saying? What are the Swiss saying? What are the Swedes saying? Look at other little liberal democracies like ours. Where are they putting their stake in the ground?
“I’m not saying to just mimic [them] but look at where the company is for speaking up on particular issues.”
While hopeful the United States will eventually rejoin the international fold, Clark was gloomy about the short-term impact of the trade and security challenges thrown up by Trump.
TLANZ President Tony Herring and Marie Dyhrberg KC at the Helen Clark function
“Because the message to Europe has been ’you’re on your own’, they are all radically increasing their defence expenditure at the expense of social expenditure,” she said.
“International solidarity and the form of overseas development assistance is down the drain.
“So right now, we’re looking at the prospect of a world where many more people are going to die of preventable diseases, HIV, AIDS, malaria, TB, the viruses with pandemic potential that crop up. So, it’s not a good outlook at the moment.”
Clark also warned that New Zealand is not immune to the populism that swept Trump to power for a second term, citing a study from her think-tank The Helen Clark Foundation which shows almost a third of Kiwis would be open to some type of authoritarian rule.
“I remember when British went down this road with Brexit, which was pure populism, simplistic ‘solutions’ to non- problems. I remember a peer in the House of Lords saying to me, ‘Helen, if this can happen to anyone’.
“So, let’s not be complacent.”
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