Prime Minister Christopher Luxon Photo: RNZ / Marika Khabazi
Analysis - Christopher Luxon arrives in The Hague today at what Robert Patman, a professor of international relations at Otago University, called "a fork in the road moment" for the world, with multiple wars in the Middle East, war in Ukraine now in its fourth year, and concerns over the stability of international laws and institutions.
Luxon is in this Dutch city of cobblestones, canals and gothic buildings to join more than 30 world leaders, including US president Donald Trump, for what is expected to be one of the largest and most-expensive NATO summits in history.
Closer cooperation
New Zealand is not a NATO member, but is a 'partner'. That means Luxon will not be part of the main North Atlantic Council meeting where the main political decisions are made.
What is on the cards, however, is an intensive 48-hours of as many as a dozen bilateral meetings with prime ministers and presidents from across Europe and North America.
New Zealand and NATO have been inching closer together in recent years, with the North Atlantic states growing increasingly wary of China and North Korea. NATO-New Zealand cooperation was formalised in 2012 and a new partnership agreement signed last year.
The NATO secretary general, Mark Rutte, told an event at London's Chatham House earlier this month that "we cannot think that there is one theatre, which is the Euro-Atlantic theatre. We have to be conscious of the fact that this is all interconnected with what is happening in the Pacific."
With that in mind, NATO has cemented partnerships with New Zealand, Australia, Japan and South Korea - a group that's become known as the IP4. That group was meant to have a side event here in The Hague, and there had been speculation that President Trump had sought a meeting with them.
But overnight, Japanese media reported that prime minister Shigeru Ishiba had cancelled at the last minute because a meeting with Trump was unlikely. The leaders of both South Korea and Australia are also staying away, sending ministers instead, leaving Luxon the sole IP4 leader here.
A spokesperson refused to be drawn, saying "Prime Minister Luxon's schedule at NATO will be confirmed in due course."
For his part, Luxon sees it as important to be here. "There are things that happen in the Euro-Atlantic region that have some interest to us in the Indo-Pacific region, that's why to be party to some of those conversations will be important," he told Morning Report on Monday.
Pressure to spend
In the room will be the leaders of more than 30 countries but, really, the whole summit will centre around one man: President Trump, who has been a vocal critic of NATO, to the point of questioning its foundation of collective defence.
The alliance will try and present a united front, but it comes at a time when there are cracks between the United States and many European allies over trade and tariffs, relations with Russia and the war in Ukraine, conflicts in the Middle East, and relations with China.
The main discussions on Wednesday will last just three hours and the summit statement is being reduced to five paragraphs, reportedly because of the US president's demands.
Trump has long berated European countries for not spending enough on defence, and a commitment to change is likely to be one of the main outcomes from this week's summit.
Some nations are already boosting their defence spending to 5 percent of GDP. Most are the countries in close proximity to Russia - such as Poland, Estonia and Lithuania. But others, like Spain, have said they see the demand as unreasonable. Many other members haven't met a goal of 2 percent set more than a decade ago.
New Zealand, which this year announced it plans to lift defence spending to 2 percent by 2033, has stressed that being a NATO partner does not bind it to any of the obligations, such as targets for defence spending. But that doesn't mean there won't be strong hints or pressure in some of Luxon's meetings.
"For a country like New Zealand, which has just agreed to the two percent target, we are going to find that we are already behind our friends," said Alexander Gillespie, a law professor at Waikato University.
It's a tortured cliche that New Zealand walks a tightrope in foreign policy, but Luxon finds himself balancing at a particularly fraught moment.
He arrives straight from a trip to China, which NATO and the United States view with increased suspicion. New Zealand does, too, but not to the same degree. After his trip last week, Luxon said some of the NATO statements were a "difference of opinion".
But with the Middle East on a precipice, the war in Ukraine in its fourth year (President Zelensky is also likely to be in The Hague), and international institutions under strain, Robert Patman said he'd like to see New Zealand advocate vocally for the "rules-based" order.
Patman said it was vital the prime minister speaks out in defence of international law and multilateralism in this city, which is the seat of the International Criminal Court and seen as the home of international law.
"New Zealand does have a voice, and an expectation I think, to contribute to a debate that's beginning to unfold," he said. "We can seek to reinstate the idea that international relations should be based on laws, principles and procedures. Or we can passively accept the erosion of that architecture which is to the detriment of the majority of countries in the world."
"It may be geographically a long way from New Zealand, but there are implications for our security."
