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Otago Daily Times
3 days ago
- Otago Daily Times
US needs to walk the talk
When new neighbours move in just down the street there is always a frisson of interest in what they are going to be like. Will they fit in well with the neighbourhood? How many people will be coming and going? Will they play loud music at all hours? Wellington, and New Zealand, have this week seen the arrival of someone different enough to get the net curtains twitching and set the tongues clacking. No less than the FBI, the United States' venerable law enforcement and criminal investigation agency, is in town. The first question which might spring to mind is, why would the US's domestic intelligence and security service want to have an office in New Zealand? That might quickly be followed by: what specifically are they going to be doing here? Do we need to be worried? The opening of the permanent legal attache FBI office at the US Embassy and the visit of FBI director Kash Patel were surrounded in secrecy, just as one might expect. Until now, New Zealand's links with the FBI through the Five Eyes intelligence partnership went through its office in Canberra. The new office in the capital has been established to investigate all threats to these countries and this geopolitical region, including cybercrime, terrorism, the narcotics trade and gun-running, child exploitation and money laundering. Mr Patel's visit was exposed when a sharp-eyed Newstalk ZB journalist recognised him in the basement of Parliament. There were other clues too for amateur sleuths — a US Department of Justice aircraft at Wellington Airport and a large group of American officials and New Zealand police gathering outside a downtown hotel. The US Embassy resorted to the old refusal to confirm or deny trick when asked. By the time Mr Patel put out a statement on Thursday afternoon explaining he was here to open the new office, he had already met with Police Minister Mark Mitchell, GCSB and NZSIS Minister Judith Collins, Foreign Minister Winston Peters and Police Commissioner Richard Chambers. As University of Otago professor of international relations Robert Patman has pointed out, the move to open an FBI branch in New Zealand has its ironies. It may be good news that the US wants to take a larger role in fighting crime around the Pacific, but he says the Trump administration has shown little willingness itself to adhere to the international rules-based order since coming to power and has actually undermined the rule of law with claims to take over Canada and Greenland. More broadly, Mr Patel's visit and announcement also puts New Zealand and its leaders in a potentially difficult position when it comes to relations with China. While they have been extremely cautious making any comment about China, the FBI director was less tight-lipped, saying it would help to counter China's influence across the Pacific and, in the words of an FBI spokesman, confront threats from "hostile nation-state actors like the Chinese Communist Party". Our government has pushed back at those suggestions. Ms Collins said the office was about countering transnational crime and New Zealand was not going to single out any one country, and it was up to Mr Patel to decide what he wanted to say. Mr Peters said China was not even raised during his meeting with the director. Unsurprisingly, China has bristled, despite Ms Collins saying she did not think it would comment. A Chinese Embassy spokesperson said it opposed "groundless assertions or vilifications" out of a "Cold War mentality" and that it had noted the US assertions and our ministers' remarks to the media. Certainly there are some weird things going on in a world which seems to get stranger by the minute. Granted, an FBI office in New Zealand is not going to be everyone's cup of tea, particularly for those who want the country to pull out of the Five Eyes alliance. But it is certainly a good move if such international crime-busting endeavours are going to make a difference to stopping the awful spread of drugs such as methamphetamine among the most vulnerable people in Pacific nations. We have seen recently how drug smuggling is making many thousands of people's lives there a misery. Far better for us to be on the side of good in the fight against such evils.
