Over the past year, I’ve struggled to follow the economic and security implications of rapidly changing relationships between the major powers — the United States, Europe, Russia and China.
Tariff escalation, trade disruption and increasingly blunt geopolitical signalling have made it harder to judge what increasing instability now means for a small, isolated, trade-dependent country such as New Zealand.
Most unsettling for me is not the analysis — much of it has been available for some time — but the change in tone.
At recent international gatherings, including the World Economic Forum in Davos, senior leaders have begun openly acknowledging the rules-based order which underpinned post-war prosperity is no longer functioning as it once did.
That admission matters. It signals not a temporary shock, but a structural shift. In such an environment, economic security, defence capability and diplomatic alignment can no longer be treated as separate policy domains.
Trade now carries strategic risk; supply chains have political weight; and security guarantees increasingly come with explicit conditions. For smaller states, the margin for neutrality narrows quickly when larger powers begin to prioritise leverage over co-operation.
Canada offers a useful, if uncomfortable, illustration. Long accustomed to assuming that proximity, shared values and institutional alignment with the US would guarantee economic and security continuity, Ottawa has recently been forced to reassess that assumption.
Trade pressure, defence procurement constraints and shifting US priorities have combined to expose the costs of dependence — even for a country deeply embedded in Western alliances.
Canada’s recalibration has not been ideological or theatrical. It has been pragmatic, cautious and driven by necessity. The lesson is not that alliances no longer matter, but that reliance without resilience leaves even close partners vulnerable when strategic priorities diverge. That is a lesson New Zealand should not ignore.
Closer to home, Pacific nations are not passive observers of these changes. They are actively weighing their options in a more competitive environment, balancing development needs, infrastructure offers, security arrangements and diplomatic relationships.
China, among others, has moved quickly to expand its presence and influence across the region, offering alternatives that do not always align with Western norms or expectations.
For New Zealand and Australia, the issue is not whether leadership or engagement will always be welcomed in the abstract, but whether absence leaves a strategic vacuum that others are ready to fill.
Non-engagement is itself a choice, but one that carries long-term consequences for regional stability, influence and trust.
That shift is already becoming visible. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s proposed visit to Australia reflects a growing recognition among middle powers that regional responsibility can no longer be deferred to distant allies.
It would be entirely appropriate — indeed necessary — for New Zealand’s prime minister to seek inclusion in such discussions.
Silence or absence at this stage would be read not as caution, but as reluctance to accept responsibility.
In this narrowing world, New Zealand and Australia together now have little choice but to assume greater joint responsibility for the future security, prosperity and stability of the Pacific region.
Geography, shared interests and long-standing relationships make this less an ambition than an obligation — one that cannot be deferred indefinitely to partners whose priorities are increasingly elsewhere. Strategic independence is not free. It requires investment, co-ordination and a willingness to accept responsibility beyond narrow national boundaries.
But the alternative — quiet dependence and delayed decisions — carries its own costs.
In a region where influence is being actively contested, hesitation risks surrendering agency over outcomes that will shape our security and prosperity for decades to come.
- Graye Shattky is a former soldier living in Central Otago.
