Cold War Endings to Brexit and Free Trade Agreements, 1985–2023

Abstract

This chapter charts the evolution of New Zealand’s relationship with Britain and the European Union in the closing years of the Twentieth century and opening decades of the Twenty-First. Thanks to a momentary post-Cold War American preponderance in world affairs and an embrace of trade liberalism, New Zealand was finally able to cement access in the Common Market made over the previous decades. All the while its trade with China and other Asian markets proposed. However, continuities remained. The enlarged European Union, as the world’s largest trading bloc, exerted regulatory and political pressure on trade policy globally, requiring constant New Zealand engagement, especially given the importance of trade access to New Zealand’s external policy settings.

Despite Britain playing a sometimes constructive and sometimes obstructive role in the EU, the New Zealand’s Government, business and publics continued to engage with it, including encouraging it to act as an advocate for freer trade within the EU (and therefore in New Zealand’s interests). Intelligence remained an important area of Anglo-New Zealand collaboration. The prominence of Brexit in New Zealand public discourse, and conversely, British perceptions of New Zealand and other anglosphere countries, continued to echo old historical patterns dating back to the 1960s and earlier. These included a sustained focus on agricultural trade access as the fundamental issue to be resolved and endeavouring to reverse the ‘shock and betrayal’ of British accession.