Is New Zealand risking ‘reputational damage’ by joining anti-Houthi coalition in Red Sea?

New Zealand is sending a small defence team to the Middle East to join an international alliance against Houthi militants targeting civilian ships in the Red Sea

The move could hurt its ties with its Pacific neighbours, Asean and China, analysts say, as it suggests New Zealand has ‘retreated’ from its independent foreign policy to align closer to the US

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A British Royal Air Force aircraft prepares to take off from Cyprus to conduct further strikes against Houthi targets on February 3. Photo: MoD Crown/EPA-EFE

Published: 6:30pm, 6 Feb 2024Updated: 11:42pm, 6 Feb 2024

New Zealand’s sudden decision to send a defence force team to the Middle East exposes it to “real reputational damage” and risks straining its ties with Pacific nations, Southeast Asia and even China, but it is premature to conclude Wellington has retreated “wholesale” into the Anglosphere, experts have said.

On January 23, New Zealand announced it would deploy a six-member defence team to the Middle East as part of an international alliance to uphold maritime security in the Red Sea.

The United States and Britain have been carrying out air strikes against the Iran-backed Houthi militant group in Yemen, which has for weeks targeted civilian ships in the Red Sea as a form of protest against Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon. Photo: Bloomberg

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said the Houthis’ attacks against commercial and naval shipping were “illegal, unacceptable and profoundly destabilising”, arguing that the defence deployment was a continuation of his country’s “long history of defending freedom of navigation both in the Middle East and closer to home”.

Describing the dispatch of the defence force as an apparent “U-turn”, Robert Patman, professor of international relations at the University of Otago, said the move strengthened the impression among the international community that New Zealand had “retreated from an independent, principled foreign policy to one that is in closer alignment with the US”.

“[This] risks real reputational damage in diplomatic terms,” Patman said, adding that the deployment “does not sit comfortably” with Wellington’s previous diplomacy towards the Gaza conflict, when it twice backed United Nations General Assembly resolutions in calling for an immediate humanitarian truce and ceasefire.

Any further tilt to the US could complicate New Zealand’s relations with its biggest export market, namely, China

Robert Patman, University of Otago

Patman said a closer alignment with Washington could strain Wellington’s relations with countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific region, which “do not see themselves as pawns” in a strategic game between China and the US.