This seems like a moderately big deal? I’ve got a vague impression of NZ as a pretty staunch US ally proud of its military history and current collaborative peacekeeping operations, could be wrong though.
NZ is more aligned with the Commonwealth than the US. If the UK invited NZ to something and we turned it down that would be a big deal.
We have a fairly small standing military, so we need at least one strong ally, and geographically speaking it’s gonna be either the US or China. I’d label NZ as a ‘begrudging’ US ally in that sense. NZ has previously verbally sparred with the US after we barred all nuclear-powered ships in our waters, so this wouldn’t be the first time there’s been some political tension between the two.
Australia has a much stronger relationship with the US, hosting their military bases, nuclear weapons, and such. It’ll be interesting to see what their response is.
This seems like a moderately big deal? I’ve got a vague impression of NZ as a pretty staunch US ally proud of its military history and current collaborative peacekeeping operations, could be wrong though.
NZ is more aligned with the Commonwealth than the US. If the UK invited NZ to something and we turned it down that would be a big deal.
We have a fairly small standing military, so we need at least one strong ally, and geographically speaking it’s gonna be either the US or China. I’d label NZ as a ‘begrudging’ US ally in that sense. NZ has previously verbally sparred with the US after we barred all nuclear-powered ships in our waters, so this wouldn’t be the first time there’s been some political tension between the two.
Australia has a much stronger relationship with the US, hosting their military bases, nuclear weapons, and such. It’ll be interesting to see what their response is.
Thank you for the clarification! I stand corrected. 🙂
There has been previous friction over nz’s strong anti nuclear stance that for a while meant US officials would avoid the term “ally”.