Pushing Elephants: The Small Power Character of New Zealand Diplomacy in Indonesia

Abstract

New Zealand’s bilateral ties with Indonesia have been described as “undercooked” by many familiar with the country’s foreign affairs, yet reasons for weakness in the relationship have not been explored in any depth. This causal gap is indicative of a more general vacuity in International Relations scholarship regarding New Zealand’s diplomatic relations with Indonesia, a neighbouring state of nearly 250 million people. Diplomacy itself has been similarly neglected by scholars of the International Relations canon, falling victim to the more structurally analytical yet occasionally chimerical Foreign Policy.

Though many commentators acknowledge that the New Zealand-Indonesia relationship is not as strong as it might be, a large number point to an upbeat foreign policy discourse on Indonesia as evidence that New Zealand governments are trying hard to engage. It is at this little-explored juncture between foreign policy and diplomacy that the reasons underlying New Zealand’s perceptible wariness of Indonesia can be better understood. The following thesis asks how a distinctly diplomatic framework of understanding can help to explain the state of New Zealand-Indonesia relations. It contends that New Zealand demonstrates a small power diplomatic character in contrast to the discrete optimism of its foreign policy rhetoric. It presents four key characteristics of New Zealand’s “small power diplomacy” and offers evidence of this from the Indonesian relationship.

Given the dearth of existing literature regarding New Zealand’s diplomatic ties with Indonesia, the thesis draws largely from original research in the form of oral histories offered by current and former diplomats and government officials and by other individuals with interests in the bilateral relationship. Part diplomatic history, part geopolitical analysis, the following thesis aims to shed light on one of New Zealand’s little-explored foreign relationships and the nature of its diplomacy more generally.