Independence and Foreign Policy: New Zealand in the World Since 1935.

TWO RELATED OBJECTIVES underlie this book. One is to provide the first comprehensive account of New Zealand's foreign policy; obviously for a New Zealand audience, but beyond as well. The book's 1935 starting point is sensible because that year ushered in the first Labour government, which began a process of a serious, New Zealand-defined engage merit in world affairs. Wisely, McKinnon melds diplomacy, defense and economics. His extensive discussion of external economic policy does not by any self-profession nor by inference mark him as an economic determinist. But, as New Zealand political leaders have themselves variously averred, economic considerations concentrate the mind of a small and isolated nation that must trade successfully to preserve not only its prosperity, but much of the distinctive quality of life embraced by its citizenry.

As McKinnon further explains, the New Zealand way of conducting foreign policy has, apart from noticeable principled intonations, been generally regulated not by inward-turning but by broadly sketched constructions of where to look, what to seek and whom to attract. Hence New Zealand's firm support for and involvement in the work of the League of Nations and later the United Nations, and energies devoted to improving international economic, arms control and environmental regimes. For some time there was faith in the benefits of the Commonwealth. There was close association with Britain and then with the United States; not so much because they were regarded as New Zealand's direct protectors, but as logical choices as agents available to organize or at least influence international order. A disorderly world is one about which a small nation such as New Zealand can do little by itself. In McKinnon's view, New Zealand has not for the most part been naively oblivious to the power quotient in international affairs, but has followed policy orientations designed to mediate its dislocative potential.

On these and other matters McKinnon's informed, carefully researched writing is calm and measured. He for instance warns against temptation to construe outwardly "pro-British" or "pro-American" New Zealand policies as mindless or sycophantic, the country's Western and especially British affinities notwithstanding. Whether they were somehow right or wrong for the times, they were not conceptually adolescent. McKinnon properly points to the tugs and stresses that New Zealand experienced when it elected to work in tandem with Britain, the U.S. or indeed Australia, particularly in security matters. Its interests, its resources, and indeed its domestic/political temperament have usually counseled judiciousness, as for instance in its response to the conflict in Vietnam. In this sense, associating with and even being reliant on the more powerful has not, even in the pursuit of desirable causes, deterred New Zealand from questioning excess.

McKinnon's second aim in this book is to appraise the New Zealand foreign policy experience within a framework of analysis, or of systems and of patterns, to which the concept of independence is central. He works with two dimensions of independence. One is dissent, by which he means "a progressive critique of an existing pattern, which did not, however, challenge its underlying structure". The other is interest, or "independence" of mind and action animated by perceived calculations of gain. Both, he feels, have become absorbed into New Zealand's foreign policy tradition. He also takes the tack that nationalism functions alongside manifestations of independence but is too broad and otherwise deficient as a construct to serve unrefined as an explanatory tool. New Zealand's highly publicized and controversial move toward becoming nuclear free is where in particular McKinnon finds nationalist impulses lending themselves to expressions of independence. His summary is that "the ANZUS crisis elicited, was not caused by, a nationalist response from the New Zealand public. And this is what one would expect. Nationalism is partly about power and February 1985 (the breach with the United States) was a moment when power was felt. The nationalism and the older elements in the pattern of independence in foreign policy now coexist, just as those older elements and loyalism once coexisted".

A brief review such as this cannot explore the many nuances in McKinnon's lines of interpretation. All told, however, his analytical handling of the nuclear issue, together with insights about New Zealand's earlier dilemmas over the interfacings of sport, race and the Commonwealth connection, and with his reflections on New Zealand's focused engagement in the South Pacific, stand out as his most useful contributions to an understanding of the subject at large.

While not picture-perfect and likely to provoke some debate, McKinnon's independence leitmotif is on balance helpful. It does help the reader to organize trends and to place them in evolutionary perspective. It also allows for a firmer grasp on why and how there is considerable continuity in New Zealand's foreign policy, and clues as to how such an outwardly continental shift as the adoption of and perseverance with the antinuclear position has been less a deviation from norms than one might otherwise surmise.

HENRY S. ALBINSKI The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, U.S.A.