The Discipline of Consequential Foreign Policy

The Long Read

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters did something unusual at the UN General Assembly last week: he chose discipline over gesture.

While Australia, the UK, and Canada announced recognition of Palestinian statehood with the solemnity of nations doing Important Things, Peters told the General Assembly that New Zealand would not follow. Not because we oppose a Palestinian state – we explicitly support it – but because recognition now “would serve as little more than an existential act of defiance against an unalterable state of affairs.”

That phrase deserves attention. It’s a rare admission that much of what passes for foreign policy in modern democracies is theatre: gestures designed to signal virtue to domestic audiences rather than achieve outcomes in the world.

Peters’ speech is worth studying not for its position on Palestine, but as a case study in resisting the gravitational pull of performative politics.

The Psychology of Symbolic Gestures

New York University professor Jonathan Haidt’s research on moral psychology helps explain why symbolic foreign policy feels so compelling. When we witness distant suffering – whether in Gaza, Ukraine, or Sudan – our emotional mind (Haidt’s “elephant”) demands we do something. The rational mind (the “rider”) then constructs justifications for whatever action makes the elephant feel better.

Recognising Palestinian statehood checks every box for satisfying the elephant: it’s unambiguous, it signals which side we’re on, it costs us nothing materially, and it allows us to feel we’ve acted on our values. The fact that Palestine doesn’t control its territory, that Hamas remains in power and still holds hostages, that recognition might actually entrench the conflict – these are rider-level objections that bounce off the elephant’s hide.

Peters made the rider’s case: recognition now is “open to political manipulation by both Hamas and Israel,” could prove “counterproductive,” and comes at a moment with “no obvious link between more of the international community recognising the State of Palestine and the claimed objective of protecting the two-state solution.”

But he also spoke to the elephant, invoking the “harrowing images of famine in Gaza” and Israel’s “grossly disproportionate response.” He didn’t deny the moral intuition; he channelled it toward a different conclusion: that New Zealand’s recognition matters most when it can actually advance peace, not when it simply makes us feel better about ourselves.

The Social Media Amplification

Twenty years ago, foreign policy operated in relative obscurity. Diplomats negotiated, ministers announced positions, and most citizens remained blissfully unaware unless their own country was directly involved.

Social media changed the game entirely. Now every conflict arrives in our feeds with curated images designed to trigger maximum emotional response. The Gaza war plays out through Instagram infographics, the Ukraine conflict through TikTok videos, and Sudan’s catastrophe through carefully cropped photographs.

Each platform rewards tribal certainty over nuance. You’re either #StandingWithIsrael or #FreePalestine, with no room for the complexity that actual diplomacy requires. Politicians feel this pressure acutely. Complex realities get flattened into binary choices: pick a side or be condemned for your silence.

The result is foreign policy by referendum of the perpetually online. And the perpetually online are the worst possible cohort to design foreign policy, because their elephant is constantly triggered, their rider is drowning in partisan talking points, and their only measure of success is how the gesture feels, not whether it works.

The Pattern Across Conflicts

This isn’t unique to Palestine. Consider the Western response to Ukraine: overwhelming initial solidarity, fierce rhetoric about defending democracy, then gradual fatigue as the actual costs became clear. The elephant was fully engaged in February 2022; by 2024 it wanted to think about something else.

Or Myanmar, where 3.5 million people are displaced and 22 million need humanitarian aid – the worst crisis in Southeast Asia – yet barely registers in Western consciousness because it doesn’t slot neatly into existing tribal categories. No elephant engagement, no policy response.

Or Sudan, where 30 million people need urgent aid, 13 million are displaced, and sexual violence is endemic. Peters mentioned it in his speech. When did you last see a social media campaign about Sudan? The elephant doesn’t even know it exists.

The Peters Test for performative foreign policy is simple: If the action would make exactly the same sense whether or not it changes anything on the ground, it’s probably performance.

What Non-Performative Foreign Policy Looks Like

Peters’ speech offers an alternative model: acknowledge the moral weight of the situation, resist the pressure for premature gestures, preserve your leverage for when it might actually matter, and focus resources where they can do immediate good (hence the additional Gaza humanitarian funding).

This is harder than it sounds. It requires politicians to tell the public that feeling good about our foreign policy isn’t the same as doing good through our foreign policy. It means disappointing the activists who want their government to “do something” – anything – now.

But for a small country like New Zealand, whose security depends on a functioning rules-based international order, performative gestures are a luxury we can’t afford. Every time we devalue the currency of diplomatic recognition by using it as a mere signal, we weaken the tools we might need when our own interests are at stake.

Peters is right that New Zealand will likely recognise Palestinian statehood eventually. But he’s also right that we should do so when it might actually help create the conditions for peace, not when it merely makes us feel we’ve sided with the angels.

That’s not cowardice. It’s strategy. And in a world where foreign policy has increasingly become performance art, strategy is what we most desperately need.