Cook Islands rumble risks becoming major Pacific rupture

Thursday, 13 February 2025

In a video posted to Facebook on Sunday, February 9, 2025, Cook Island Prime Minister Mark Brown spoke of consulation with New Zealand about an agreement with Cook Islands was seeking with China.

ANALYSIS: What started as a low rumble between the Cook Islands and New Zealand risks becoming a historic rupture in the Pacific, with China poised to drive a wedge between Wellington and one of its realm nations.

As Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown enjoys Beijing’s hospitality this week, it is hard to overstate the difficult position New Zealand is in.

Brown, it is feared, may sign agreements that open the door for China’s ultimate strategic interest in the Pacific: further fracturing the Western alliance’s hold on the region, making political in-roads in another small country seeking economic fortune, building infrastructure that could serve a military purpose in years to come.

If this were a fully sovereign Pacific Island nation such as the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, or Kiribati, so be it. It would simply be another arena of contest for influence between China, the United States, and fellow travellers Australia and New Zealand.

But the Cook Islands is not a fully sovereign nation. Instead, its people decided in 1964 to be self-governing but in free association with New Zealand, a decision reaffirmed in 2001. Decisions of consequence, such as agreements with China, are explicitly Wellington’s business.

The stakes could hardly be higher.

Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown during a 2021 meeting with then-Foreign Affairs Minister Nanaia Mahuta.

It is not totally alarmist to suggest the current trajectory could push the New Zealand-Cook Islands relationship to the point Wellington decides the free association relationship has been broken.

Cleaving the Cook Islands from New Zealand would be a major coup for Beijing, second only to more unlikely achievements such as separating the likes of Tahiti from France, or Palau from the United States.

The timing is also terrible. With US President Donald Trump now pursuing an aggressive foreign policy, New Zealand officials will be sweating at the thought of this problem reaching the White House, and how it might be viewed.

It will fuel any concern held in Washington and Canberra that New Zealand has a loose grip on China’s strategic challenge. Foreign Minister Winston Peters spoke with Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong on Wednesday; when asked amid a media scrum if Canberra was concerned about the Cook Islands issue, he chose not to respond.

There’s also the straight forward security threat to New Zealand’s interests. The comprehensive strategic partnership Brown has promised to sign with China potentially involves maritime infrastructure and deep-sea mining for critical minerals - though it can’t be known for certain, as neither Cook Islanders or New Zealand have been shown the agreement.

At face value this could be good for Cook Islanders. New Zealand welcomed the United States establishing fully diplomatic relations with the Cook Islands in 2023, allowing for greater co-operation between the two.

Cleaving the Cook Islands from New Zealand would be a major coup for Beijing.

But such industry and infrastructure projects with China come with apparent security risks. The Ministry of Defence in 2021 warned the “most threatening” development in the Pacific could include the construction of military or dual-use facilities, and military-supported resource exploitation.

The prospective agreement is also part of a broader, concerning picture.

Brown has in recent months been pursuing proposals that trample over red lines for New Zealand in the free association relationship.

He has pushed the idea of a Cook Islands passport, but reportedly abandoned that after New Zealand “bared its teeth”. He took apparent steps towards having the Cook Islands join the United Nations, but that was also abandoned.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters has remained silent on the pending Cook Islands-China agreement since publicly airing his grievance with Cook Islands PM Mark Brown at the weekend.

There has also been unease at the Cook Islands providing registration for Russian shadow fleet vessels, after Finland detained the oil tanker Eagle S, flagged to the Cook Islands, for allegedly cutting a power cable and internet lines running beneath the Baltic Sea.

And now it appears Brown is in Beijing to pursue a foreign policy that is contrary to New Zealand’s interests. Without, according to Peters, the needed consultation and transparency about what he is doing. Brown contends that New Zealand did not need to be consulted to such an extent.

Brown may be trying to establish greater independence for his country, an idea that draws sympathy from some political quarters, including former foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta. But Brown has not explicitly pursued independence from New Zealand.

As Prime Minister Helen Clark said in 2001, when signing a declaration that further defined the parameters of the relationship, the Cook Islands “is free to opt for full independence at any time”.

Full independence would mean forgoing a relationship that has provided Cook Islanders with New Zealand passports, nearly $200 million in development funding in the past three years, some 18% of their annual budget paid by Wellington, and foreign policy and defence assistance as requested.

It would also relieve the Cook Islands of obligations to co-operate with New Zealand in common foreign policy objectives, and advise on proposed initiatives that “may affect the rights, obligations and interests” of New Zealand.

But in Wellington there is a belief the Cook Islands people prefer the realm relationship, and that for any change Brown should go to his people with a referendum.

The comments from Peters have demonstrated this belief. On Tuesday, asked about the relationship, he said “our relationship with the Cook Islands people has been fantastic all these years”.

Pacific leader during the 2023 meeting of the Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga.

But not the relationship with Brown. So why has the Cook Islands prime minister been willing to put the relationship with New Zealand at risk?

Associate Professor Anna Powles, an expert in Pacific security, says Brown is motivated by “resource nationalism”, seeing the Cook Islands’ economic independence as a vehicle for independence.

This might not be the only motivating factor. Brown is clearly an ambitious Pacific leader, at a time when strategic competition has brought a wave of international attention, and funding, crashing into the Pacific.

He has been chairperson of the Pacific Islands Forum, which has been elevated to the authoritative regional body, and a member of the forum’s “troika” of leaders, that have inserted themselves into regional issues. He has been to the White House to meet with President Joe Biden, when the US recognised Cook Islands.

Not being the leader of a fully sovereign country could, in a way, limit such ambition.

Officials in New Zealand will also be alert to the risk of “elite capture”, the idea that China effectively purchases support from political leaders in the Pacific who are open to inducement. Such allegations swirled around Solomon Islands former prime minister, Manasseh Sogavare, as he forged agreements with Beijing that so-concerned Canberra and Wellington.

Pacific leaders are not naive actors either, and are capable of trading-off the attention from Washington and Beijing.

China continues to withhold details of the agreement, and has made clear it has no problem with challenging New Zealand’s realm relationship.

“I would also like to emphasise that China's development of relations and cooperation with the Cook Islands and other Pacific island countries is not directed against any third party, nor should it be interfered with or restricted by any third party,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun on Tuesday.

That “third party” is, of course, New Zealand.

The coming days and weeks may prove critical to how this saga plays out, and how damaging it might be for New Zealand.

Brown may sign an agreement that contravenes New Zealand’s interest, and in such a case the Government will have to respond. Quite how, Peters and Prime Minister Christopher Luxon have been unwilling to say.

There has been some criticism from the Labour Party and experts like Powles about the Government engaging in “megaphone diplomacy” on the issue, deemed unhelpful given how Pacific diplomacy is conducted.

There is another way to look at it. If it is true Cook Islanders do not want to risk their relationship with New Zealand, shedding light on this grievance may change the political calculus for Brown.

His Cabinet has signed off on it, according to the Cook Island News, but that does not mean there is broad political consensus. 1News has reported a protest is planned.

As with the citizens of any nation, Cook Islanders deserve integrity, transparency, and accountability from their political leaders.

New Zealand may try force the issue by further expressing its unhappiness.