The 2026 general election arrives at a moment when conditions around the globe are described as unsettled and in flux. Armed conflict between Russia and Ukraine persists, hostilities across Gaza and the West Bank have left both territories under strain, naval and air activity by China across the Pacific has expanded, tensions between the United States and Iran have escalated into open confrontation, and the pace at which the global climate is shifting continues to accelerate.

Foreign Minister Winston Peters lately turned his attention to how his government had navigated the preceding three years, doing so against a backdrop of mounting strain on two pillars long central to New Zealand's approach abroad — commitment to a rules-based international order and the pursuit of multilateral engagement. In remarks delivered to the Institute of International Affairs, he described the external pressures facing the country as more adverse than at any point since 1945.

Among the pressures he identified were a resurgence of trade protectionism, a United Nations constrained by repeated vetoes within the Security Council, and what he described as unwelcome geopolitical manoeuvring across the Pacific. Peters described the prevailing geostrategic environment as one where established rules had given way to the exercise of raw power.

The National-led coalition kept its international footprint deliberately modest, anchoring its approach to foreign affairs in a reading of world conditions as they exist on the ground rather than as any particular vision of how they ought to be. Peters put forward the view that the approach had left the incoming government with a broader set of options and greater decision-making power, while also having served the country's national interests in a careful and considered manner.

Analysts have noted that the current period differs from the Cold War in the frequency of moments when nuclear exchange moved from theoretical to plausible. Three such episodes stand out from that earlier era: the 1962 confrontation over Soviet missiles positioned in Cuba, the superpower alert escalations that accompanied the Arab-Israeli conflict of 1973, and the alarm that spread through defence circles when NATO staged its Able Archer exercise in 1983.

Three of the five permanent UN Security Council members — the United States, Russia, and China — along with their respective allies, have driven a broader move away from rules-based conduct toward the exercise of raw power. Across the international system, nations that fall into the small-to-middle tier — which account for the bulk of all countries — tend to operate within, and broadly honour, the frameworks that govern cross-border exchange in trade, diplomacy, tourism, and scientific cooperation.

At the Institute of International Affairs address, Peters voiced unease over what he characterised as Russia's unlawful military action in Ukraine, flagged China's naval drills and missile testing across the Pacific, and indicated openness to a broader American presence in the region. Wellington has kept largely quiet about Washington's contested readings of international law, whether the flashpoints in question involve Gaza, Ukraine, Venezuela, or Iran.

Defence cooperation between New Zealand and the United States has grown closer even as analysts debate whether the two countries share enough common ground in values and strategic outlook to sustain the partnership. That orientation places limited value on a defining feature of this era — that a widening range of problems now requires cooperation across borders rather than action by any nation acting alone.

Coordinating responses to health outbreaks, climate shifts, supply chain vulnerabilities, and transnational organised crime requires multilateral frameworks that no single country can replicate by acting independently. Competitive tensions among the three permanent Security Council members holding veto power have grown at a moment when each nation's capacity to impose outcomes on its own has weakened.

The post-1945 international framework, long structured around the dominance of a select group of powerful states, is now facing a period of realignment. Norway's Foreign Minister Espen Barth Eide characterised the prevailing world order as one still straining to take shape, while noting that smaller nations like New Zealand retain meaningful room to act within that environment.

Analysts and advocates have long debated whether an incoming administration should maintain a foreign policy framework that applies international legal and ethical standards unevenly across powerful states, or whether it should instead redirect diplomatic energy toward building closer ties with other small and mid-sized nations that share a stake in upholding multilateral norms — a grouping in which New Zealand is often counted.