Geoffrey Miller looks at New Zealand’s growing relationship with the Middle East and North Africa – and contemplates its future Amidst New Zealand’s level 4 coronavirus lockdown in March, all but a handful of the country’s troops stationed in Iraq returned home, three months earlier than scheduled. The New Zealand personnel had been deployed to Camp Taji since 2015 to train Iraqi soldiers, as part of the Global Coalition to Defeat Daesh/ISIS. The end to the deployment was officially unrelated to Covid-19, but it was heavily overshadowed by it. Yet the overall lack of fanfare was perhaps also symbolic of...
Over the past 30 years, ministerial responsibility for New Zealand’s foreign affairs has changed hands remarkably rarely. Since 1990, just four individuals have dominated the portfolio – Don McKinnon (1990-1999), Phil Goff (1999-2005), Winston Peters (2005-8 and again from 2017 to 2020) and Murray McCully (2008-2017). Only two others have held the role, and then only very briefly – Gerry Brownlee (for five months after McCully retired in 2017) and Helen Clark herself (in 2008, after she stood down Winston Peters from the position). By contrast, over the same 30-year period, New Zealand has had no fewer than 12 different...
