By Tom Fowdy
Yesterday, New Zealand announced that it had suspended £8 million in aid to the Cook Islands in retaliation for its sovereign decision of signing a partnership with China. The decision came even as Wellington's Prime Minister, Christopher Luxon, is set to visit Beijing, demonstrating an unusual inconsistency in New Zealand seeking a robustly lucrative relationship with Beijing but denying smaller countries the small thing.
The Cook Islands, an archipelago of just 15,000 people, is a de-jure sovereign state that is described as "in free association with New Zealand." First a territory of the British empire, as its name might suggest, the Cook Islands became a part of New Zealand before they attained the status of self-governance by 1965. However, due to its tiny population size and geographical locality, as that tagline illustrates the Cook Islands became a de-facto dependency of New Zealand, reliant upon its financial support and defence relationship.
The relationship between New Zealand and the Cook Islands mirrors that of many island nations within the Polynesia and Micronesia regions of the Pacific, that being: former British empire territories who while having attained formal independence, are politically and economically weak and therefore reliant upon the "protecting power" of either New Zealand or Australia, who as the large successor states of the Empire thus have taken over the legacy "guardian" role Britain once held, with the Monarch still formally in place and a Union Jack still placed on their flags. We see this pattern in Fiji, the Cook Islands, and the Solomon Islands.
In the sociological and political sense, these island nations are subsequently expected to uphold the ideological and strategic orthodoxy of their lordship states and pay lip service to "the commonwealth." Naturally, this isn't too popular as for all intents and purposes, these island nations are post-colonial states led by indigenous peoples fond of their own culture and identity, and don't look upon the legacy of British Imperialism too favourably. As such, with the global geopolitical climate having shifted, many of these island nations (including the ones not under the commonwealth banner) have learnt that despite their tiny size, they can maximise their political space and options by forming relationships with China.
The logic of these states in forming ties with Beijing is not to "choose sides", Pacific Islanders are by nature extremely easy-going and spiritual people, rather it is about exerting their own independence and thus ending reliance on this commonwealth identity. This does not equate to hostility or hatred towards Australia and New Zealand, hence migration from these territories to there is often quite high. Rather, it is about geopolitical hedging. China offers opportunities in the form of trade, development, and assistance.
However, the decisions of countries such as the Cook Islands to form ties with Beijing is often viewed with open contempt and hostility in Canberra and Wellington, who see China as encroaching on "their backyard" and "their sphere of influence" accordingly, depicting the situation in highly condescending terms. When China made a deal with the Solomon Islands in 2021, it was met with explosive outrage in Australia, who pushes an assumption that these island countries, by virtue of their commonwealth identity, have to "choose" allegiance and therefore be subjugated to Australian, and thus US, political goals.
This is of course, hypocrisy. Why can Australia and New Zealand forge immensely lucrative economic relationships with China, but the Cook Islands, home to just 15,000 people, cannot? Did it not cross their minds that the problem is such nations do not like having terms unilaterally dictated to them, and that by "sitting on the fence" they deem it as the best pathway to true independence? Ironically, by cutting off and attempting to "punish" the Cook Islands in a paternalistic manner (if China did this it would be decried as coercion), New Zealand excludes itself from the game and makes it even more reliant on China, who of course has a lot more resources to offer, so it isn't truly a massive loss to them.
If Australia and New Zealand thus demand loyalty from the Pacific Island nations on their periphery, they will have to earn it through respect and by treating them as equals, than commonwealth vassals. China, for all its size, treats the Cook Islands and similar countries, despite having smaller populations a single neighbourhood in their country, as equal sovereign states, and if Wellington in particular cannot bring itself to do this, it will continue to lose ground in the Pacific.
Old British Empire legacies are admittedly wearing thin in the 21st century, the Cook Islands are named after a British sailor who visited them in 1777, and it's no wonder its population doesn't respect this idea as a premise for continuing subordination.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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