Who, or What, is Driving Global Trends?

Not China...

New Zealand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) just issued a “strategic assessment.” It’s a mashup of a report on global trends and a bureaucratic statement of New Zealand’s foreign policy direction.

Some of the conclusions it reaches are wrong. It begs a lot of questions about why certain trends are happening. It has a big fat blind spot when it comes to America-First foreign policy (whether Trump or Biden). And I don’t think it sizes up China correctly.

But I expected to be very disappointed by this thing and it’s not bad at all. It does a lot well.

In fact, there are only two issues that stand out to me as worth critiquing. But they’re big, and highly problematic…