Mr Geoffrey Miller1
1PhD candidate in Politics, University of Otago, Dunedin, Aotearoa / New Zealand
Biography:
Geoffrey Miller is a final-stage PhD candidate in Politics at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. Geoffrey has spent time living in the Middle East, where he learned Arabic. He has also lived in Germany, where he taught English at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz. Geoffrey also writes and comments regularly on international relations issues in the news media, particularly in terms of New Zealand’s role; his analysis has appeared on The Diplomat, The Australian, The Guardian, Reuters, the AFP news agency and many other outlets.
Abstract:
This paper presents first-of-its-kind PhD research on New Zealand's relations with the Gulf states in the 21st century. The research seeks to uncover the drivers and constraints of New Zealand's relations with all six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) and covers trade, diplomatic, people-to-people, security and other ties. The research covers the period from 2001 onwards and takes New Zealand's conclusion of negotiations of a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the UAE and a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with the GCC in 2024 as its endpoint.
The research draws on hundreds of pages of documents obtained under New Zealand's Official Information Act and nearly 50 elite interviews with senior officials on both Gulf and NZ sides, including former New Zealand foreign, trade and defence ministers, as well as senior Gulf representatives interviewed during the author's fieldwork trip across five countries in the GCC in late 2023 and early 2024. The paper groups findings into five categories: economics, defence/security, people-to-people links, closer connections and other factors.
The paper argues that New Zealand’s ties with the Gulf have been built on trade but have gradually developed into a stronger ‘web’ of ties that now feature regular ministerial visits, bilateral agreements and defence linkages. The research has identified nearly 50 bilateral agreements with GCC states since 2001, more than 60 visits by New Zealand ministers to the Gulf and over 30 visits by GCC country officials to NZ.