NATO has been actively seeking deeper cooperation with New Zealand and other Asia-Pacific nations. Last week, New Zealand’s foreign minister attended the annual NATO foreign ministers’ meeting in Brussels with her counterparts from Australia, Japan, and South Korea. Earlier this month, a top NATO official visited Wellington to discuss the impact of the war in Ukraine on the Indo-Pacific. The grouping of four Indo-Pacific countries is sometimes referred to as the AP4, or Asia Pacific Four. The alliance’s interest in China has driven much of the AP4’s involvement with NATO. NATO’s recent deepening of partnerships with Indo-Pacific countries such as New Zealand could exacerbate the militarisation of the Pacific, and could mean that New Zealand will be forced to meet NATO’s military spending target of 2% of GDP.
New Zealand is unlikely to formally join NATO due to the alliance’s geographic focus, but aligning itself with NATO as part of the AP4 could be seen as “NATO plus.” This could have significant implications for the country, which could be as significant as its potential involvement with the AUKUS pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. New Zealand’s involvement with NATO and AUKUS may be seen as a shift to a more hardline foreign policy under Prime Minister Chris Hipkins’ leadership. It would also drive a wedge between New Zealand and China, which has expressed its opposition to New Zealand’s involvement with NATO in the past.
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