{"id":4024,"date":"2023-04-12T02:32:52","date_gmt":"2023-04-11T14:32:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4024"},"modified":"2023-04-12T02:32:52","modified_gmt":"2023-04-11T14:32:52","slug":"new-zealand-creeping-ever-closer-to-nato","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/?p=4024","title":{"rendered":"New Zealand creeping ever closer to NATO"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has New Zealand firmly in its sights.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, New Zealand&#8217;s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/cps\/en\/natohq\/news_213453.htm?selectedLocale=en\">attended<\/a>\u00a0the annual NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting in Brussels &#8211; alongside her counterparts from Australia, Japan and South Korea.<\/p>\n<p>Mahuta&#8217;s participation came after New Zealand&#8217;s then prime minister Jacinda Ardern\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/democracyproject.nz\/2022\/06\/20\/geoffrey-miller-tale-of-two-summits-why-jacinda-ardern-said-no-to-the-commonwealth-but-yes-to-nato\/\">joined<\/a>\u00a0last June&#8217;s NATO leaders&#8217; summit in Madrid. Mahuta was also a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.mfat.govt.nz\/en\/media-and-resources\/readout-of-minister-mahutas-meeting-with-nato-foreign-ministers\/\">guest<\/a>\u00a0at the NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting in April 2022, albeit only in virtual form.<\/p>\n<p>At a more granular level, a NATO military\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nato.int\/cps\/en\/natohq\/news_213299.htm?selectedLocale=en\">delegation<\/a>\u00a0visited New Zealand last month for meetings with officials in Wellington. The head of the delegation said NATO was &#8220;determined&#8221; to &#8220;deepen and strengthen our cooperation with our Indo-Pacific partners&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>And this week, top NATO official Benedetta Berti is visiting Wellington. As part of her visit, Berti &#8211; who heads NATO&#8217;s Policy Planning Unit in the Secretary General&#8217;s office &#8211; will\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nziia.org.nz\/events\/the-implications-of-the-war-in-ukraine-on-regional-security-in-the-asia-pacific\/\">speak<\/a>\u00a0to the New Zealand Institute of International Affairs (NZIIA) on the impact of the war in Ukraine on the Indo-Pacific. Berti will also explain why NATO is seeking to expand its ties with countries in the region such as New Zealand, according to advance NZIIA publicity material for the event.<\/p>\n<p>The grouping of four Indo-Pacific countries is sometimes referred to as the AP4, or Asia Pacific Four, particularly by the more hawkish Australia and Japan.<\/p>\n<p>So far, New Zealand has tended to avoid using the AP4 acronym, perhaps to play down the implication that Wellington has joined yet another new bloc.<\/p>\n<p>The website of New Zealand&#8217;s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) contains only a single mention of the AP4 &#8211; after Mahuta&#8217;s attendance at the NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting last year. There is no mention of AP4 at all on the Ministry of Defence or Beehive ministerial websites, according to a Google search.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>SOURCE RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has New Zealand firmly in its sights. Last week, New Zealand&#8217;s foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta\u00a0attended\u00a0the annual NATO foreign ministers&#8217; meeting in Brussels &#8211; alongside her counterparts from Australia, Japan and South Korea. Mahuta&#8217;s participation came after New Zealand&#8217;s then prime minister Jacinda Ardern\u00a0joined\u00a0last June&#8217;s NATO leaders&#8217; summit in Madrid. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[222,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-latest-news","category-nz-news"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4024"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4026,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4024\/revisions\/4026"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebuzz.apnanetwork.co.nz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}