This year’s annual international conference is subtitled "New Zealand foreign policy in a post-Covid era", the pandemic showing how connected the world was, co-director Robert Patman said.
"Although the pandemic has been a major challenge, it also presents a major opportunity for a smaller country like New Zealand," Prof Patman, an Otago political science lecturer, said.
"With both the pandemic and the terrorist atrocity in Christchurch, New Zealand can have a little bit more say in trying to guide the world towards more international solutions for problems which don’t recognise borders ... and we have an even more dangerous threat on the horizon, climate change."
The two-day conference starts tonight with a speech by Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta.
Local and overseas speakers present tomorrow at sessions on values and interests, climate change, trade, and smaller state leadership.
"This conference is useful because it allows us, as a minor power if you like, to outline our independent foreign policy, and it will be interesting to see what the foreign minister has to say," Prof Patman said.
"The big powers can’t sort these problems out, if they could they would, but they haven’t and they haven’t quite got their heads around that yet.
"It is up to the middle powers and smaller states, like New Zealand, to start making the case that the world has to get real, and if we are confronted with problems, be they terrorism, be they trade-related, be they health-related like Covid-19, that we need to start tailoring global solutions that are appropriate to the problem."
