By Nicholas Ross Smith of
Photo: Supplied / Christopher Luxon via X
Analysis: In the wake of the US military intervention in Venezuela and Donald Trump's repeated threats towards Greenland, a wave of pessimism has swept the western world.
For countries wedded to a rules-based international order arbitrated by a mostly benevolent America, the emergence of what Trump has branded a "Donroe Doctrine" represents an existential crisis.
This is certainly true in New Zealand, which for 75 years has looked to the US as a security guarantor. What has been heralded as a new epoch of naked great-power politics will require what political theorists call a "realist" approach to a world of competing, self-interested powers.
When Winston Peters became foreign minister in 2024, he largely foreshadowed this, saying he would take "the world as it is" - a fa
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