The foreign minister is set to sit down with his US counterpart as Ukraine talks and a reported bust-up with Elon Musk linger in the air.
Fresh from vanquishing the woke, Winston Peters heads to the US today for a burst of whistlestop diplomacy, beginning at the UN in New York and culminating next week in a meeting with Marco Rubio, the secretary of state, in Washington DC.
Below, a primer on that meeting, what might be discussed, and a quick survey of Rubio’s background and his hectic last few days.
How important is the Rubio meeting?
“Seriously important”, were the words Winston Peters chose yesterday on the parliamentary tiles, in response to questions alighting on the Trump administration decision to deny Australia a critical tariff exemption.
And there’s plenty more on the agenda. Peters had earlier described the bilateral chinwag as building on “a long history of close and broad cooperation in pursuit of shared interests” along with a “wide range of international issues”. He’d said, in an unusually chatty press statement: “Whether Ukraine, Gaza, the Indo-Pacific or security cooperation, there’s a lot to discuss.”
It will be the pair’s first encounter in the flesh but they spoke on the phone just a few days after Rubio’s confirmation as secretary of state and it was all “strategic partnership”, “shared values” and warm fuzzies.
What is at stake?
What was already a volatile and uncertain time in geopolitical history was delivered fresh tremors by the early weeks of Donald Trump’s second presidency. A flurry of tariffs have been imposed (and in some cases unimposed and imposed again) by the US. A ceasefire in Gaza was instituted, while Trump spoke of “owning” Gaza. The president has spoken of his appetite for annexing Canada, Greenland and the Panama canal. And a gobsmacking, am-dram flagellation of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was exacted in the Oval Office.
The backdrop therefore could hardly be more frenetic as Peters arrives to speak to Rubio, but his overriding, Seriously Important ambition will be making the most persuasive case to limit New Zealand’s exposure to Trump’s tariff binge. Reopening the possibility of an exemption on steel and aluminium seems a pipe dream, given Australia is losing theirs, so it’s very much limitation territory.
Gaza will be discussed. So will Ukraine (more on that in a moment). And it’s likely that the Aukus partnership, for which New Zealand membership of a second level “pillar two” status is in play, will come up, even if Trump seems kind of cool on it.
What might be asked of New Zealand?
Apart from the ongoing mood music around the Indo-Pacific, there is the unfolding situation in Ukraine. Rubio returned yesterday from talks in Saudi Arabia where Kyiv agreed to a US proposal for a 30-day ceasefire with Russia. Should Moscow also sign up, it could mean an international peacekeeping force is required in the region, and it is possible that Rubio will sound out Peters on New Zealand’s willingness to contribute.
And Phil Goff?
He won’t be there. But he might get a mention.
Will Peters be expected to prostrate himself submissively before his American host in the White House?
No, he is meeting Marco Rubio, not Donald Trump. Rubio is a veteran politician, having first been elected to the Florida house in 2000. He was a senator for Florida from 2011 until his recent appointment as secretary of state. He ran unsuccessfully for the Republican presidential nomination ahead of the 2016 election.
Was that when Trump mocked him as “Little Marco”?
Correct. Rubio clashed then with Trump personally as well as philosophically, but in recent times has undertaken what can be diplomatically called an “evolution”, in divesting himself of many of the more traditional Republican positions in foreign policy and jumping aboard Trump’s America First wagon. This has been most pronounced in his support for Trump’s stance on Ukraine and sympathy with Vladimir Putin, but many were also surprised to see him leading the decimation of the US Agency for International Development. Rubio this week said USAid – loathed by Trump – had completed its purge, with 83% of programmes scrapped over six weeks.
What does Peters’ visit mean for that China/US “tightrope”?
With the US and China engaged in recent years in a tussle for influence in the region that is increasingly described as “the Indo-Pacific”, New Zealand has under the Luxon government inclined perceptibly towards Washington. Importantly, however, Peters was in the last fortnight in Beijing, where he drew on his longstanding relationship with China’s foreign minister where the men reaffirmed what Wang Yi called “sound and steady” relations.
What was that about Rubio and Musk?
According to a report in the New York Times, Elon Musk and Marco Rubio had a flaming row in the cabinet room at the White House over whether the state department had made sufficient budget cuts, while Trump watched as if at a tennis match. It was characterised as a major conflagration in the struggle for power between the richest man in the world, who has huge influence over Trump despite no formal role, and the actual secretary of state.
Could Peters run a session for Elon and Rubio to help them get along?
Without breaking a sweat.