‘Utu’ as foreign policy: how a Maori worldview can make sense of a shifting world order

There is a growing feeling in New Zealand that the regional geopolitical situation is becoming less stable and more conflicted. China has ramped up its Pacific engagement, most recently with the Cook Islands, and the United States under Donald Trump is abandoning the old multilateral world order.

As a result, we’re beginning to see New Zealand shift away from a two-decades-long preference for engaging with multiple partners towards a more conventional balancing strategy.

Essentially, this attempts to counter the perceived threat from a strong country – namely China – with a combination of external alliances and internal policies.

Externally, New Zealand has sought re-align itself within the US-led security sphere. Participation in pillar two of the AUKUS security pact has been seriously discussed, and New Zealand has actively engaged with NATO as a member of the “Indo-Pacific Four” (along with Australia, Japan and the Republic of Korea).

Internally, a NZ$12 billion “defence plan” was announced in early April. This will see New Zealand increase defence spending from just over 1% of GDP to more than 2% over the next eight years.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has made no secret of these changing priorities. He has said he is simply taking “the world as it is”, adding:

this realism is a shift from our predecessors’ vaguer notions of an indigenous foreign policy that no-one else understood, let alone shared.

This was a direct repudiation of the previous Labour government’s foreign minister, Nanaia Mahuta. Her tenure had offered a glimpse of what a foreign policy guided by te ao Maori – the Maori worldview – might look like.

Four tikanga Maori principles underpinned the policy: manaakitanga (hospitality), whanaungatanga (connectedness), mahi tahi and kotahitanga (unity through collaboration), and kaitiakitanga (intergenerational guardianship).

Beyond Western-centric thinking

Clearly, te ao Maori offers a very different way of looking at international relations. At its core it adopts a “relational” understanding of the world that views reality as a series of entanglements: “human with human, human with nonhuman, nonhuman with human, human and nonhuman with transcendent”.

It is also a non-anthropocentric view: humans are not the masters of the world but rather stewards or custodians of a complex web of relations.

But as we argue in a recent Global Policy article, despite good intentions, Mahuta’s four tikanga Maori were mostly used rhetorically. They did not fundamentally alter New Zealand’s foreign policy, which remained firmly Western-centric.

We suggest those four tikanga principles would be enhanced by adding the concept of “utu” as a kind of overarching framework.

Largely thanks to the famous 1983 film of the same name, utu is often thought to simply mean violent revenge. In fact, it is a much deeper concept that refers to the “process of restoring physical and spiritual relationships to an equal or harmonious state”.

Utu as a foreign policy framework

A foreign policy underpinned by utu, therefore, would seek to build relationships that are harmonious and reciprocal.

Harmony, in this sense, goes beyond notions of an international order characterised by global peace, greater connectedness, increased cooperation and interdependence.

While these are important, an utu-informed view of harmony would also take into account the relationship between humans and the natural world, and between present, past and future generations.

Similarly, in the Western-centric view, reciprocity is typically “invoked as an appropriate standard of behaviour which can produce cooperation among sovereign states”.

But utu involves a reciprocity built through hospitality (manaakitanga), something which has to be given even if serious discord exists in a relationship. Reciprocity is also important in interactions between humans and the natural world.

Consequently, an utu foreign policy doctrine would offer a radically different lens than New Zealand is currently using.

A genuinely independent foreign policy

Firstly, it would require New Zealand to reject the Western geopolitical construct of the “Indo-Pacific”, which vastly oversimplifies the complex realities of the region.

And it would mean viewing China not as an existential threat, but rather as a crucial relationship that is subject to the principles of manaakitanga, despite growing discord and diplomatic challenges.

Secondly, it would see New Zealand recognise climate change as the primary existential threat to the status quo. This would align closely with the country’s Pacific neighbours whose Blue Pacific initiative offers an alternative to the Indo-Pacific focus.

Lastly, it would help New Zealand more consistently and coherently pursue a genuinely independent foreign policy. This should have bipartisan appeal, as it would give New Zealand a unique perspective on the world.

Ultimately, as New Zealand faces a more complex regional environment and a range of national security challenges, utu in its true sense offers a more constructive framework.

Perhaps adopting a more complex – and more humble – understanding of the world, as provided by te ao Maori, would give policymakers an alternative pathway to simply taking “the world as it is”.

The author acknowledges the contribution of independent researcher Bonnie Holster, co-author of the Global Policy paper on which this article is based.

Nicholas Ross Smith does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.