Category: Foreign Affairs
The Trans‐Pacific Partnership has again been in the news, this time because initially President Obama was unable to get Congress to give him authority to fast track negotiations because of revolt within his own party but now because he appears to have overcome that difficulty in the House of Representatives although there is still doubt as to whether the Senate will approve the measure.
New Zealand’s Director of the Security Intelligence Service, Rebecca Kitteridge, agrees that the use of social media by the Islamic State to reach out to disaffected people in the West, not just to travel to Syria and Iraq to fight, but also to carry out attacks in their own countries, is a major concern.
Islamic State and al Qa’ida have been competing violently on the battlefields of Iraq and Syria over the last couple of years. However a much more insidious aspect of their enmity involves the competing outreach programmes they have both carefully constructed.
Instead of solely raising awareness of prisoners’ rights in dictatorial regimes, Amnesty International now campaigns on such populist issues as globalisation, capitalism, poverty, and gay rights.
On Monday Cabinet authorised a New Zealand deployment to Iraq to assist in the fight against the Islamic State. Around 140 personnel are being sent at the request of the Iraqi Government and will take on a training role with their army.
Has the war on Islamic extremism got anything to do with us? Specifically, should we contribute to any military action against the so-called Islamic State and its outliers? This, of course, is a multi-faceted question.
New Zealand has been a trading nation from the earliest of times. During the Australian gold rush in the 1850s, a thriving export trade in foodstuffs was created and a fledgling wool industry established.
Russia had the chance at the end of the Cold War to build a modern, diversified economy, with the enthusiastic help of the West. That chance has been squandered.
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