A Union Restored: New Zealand and the Cook Islands Repair Ties

On April 1, 2026, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters made a one-day visit to the Cook Islands to sign a defense and security declaration with Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown. This seemingly benign statement between the two already uniquely close nations masked a moment of reconciliation that holds much larger geopolitical significance.

Q1: What is the unique nature of the New Zealand–Cook Islands relationship?

A1: The Cook Islands is a self-governing state in free association with New Zealand, a status which is defined under New Zealand’s 1964 Cook Islands Constitution Act and gives the Cook Islands sovereignty over its own affairs, with some consultation for external affairs and defense, while New Zealand is required to respond to requests for assistance with respect to disasters and defense. While this status technically allows the Cook Islands to conduct its own external affairs, there has historically been close consultation between the Cook Islands and New Zealand on all external matters.

Q2: What caused the falling out between the Cook Islands and NZL over the past year?

A2: In February 2025, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown announced that the Cook Islands and China had signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) during his state visit to Beijing. The CSP established a five-year framework for cooperation between the two countries on several issues, including multiple security-adjacent sectors such as deep-sea mining, infrastructure development, and technology and innovation. New Zealand officials claimed to be “blindsided” by the deal and expressed concern over the perceived lack of consultation regarding the agreement.

As a result, the bilateral relationship continued to deteriorate through the end of 2025. While Cook Islands Prime Minister Brown emphasized the importance of this special bilateral relationship at the 60th anniversary of the establishment of Cook Islands free association with New Zealand last August, the prime minister has also repeatedly stressed the self-governing nature of the Cook Islands and the independence of his country to conduct its own external affairs, noting that the country is “not under anyone’s domination or control.” In mid-2025, New Zealand announced that it had suspended millions in core support funding to the Cook Islands due to “lack of trust” in the bilateral relationship. This funding pause, which amounted to almost NZ$30 million by late 2025 (or more than 10 percent of the Cook Islands’ total annual budget), forced an early budgetary overhaul in the Cook Islands to address a potential fiscal shortfall in essential services.

At its core, this falling out was a difference of opinions over the extent to which the Cook Islands’ agreements with Beijing were relevant to New Zealand’s own national security. Documents released under New Zealand’s Official Information Act show that for months prior to the final signing, Wellington attempted to get updates on the status and purpose behind the Cook Islands’ intent to sign a CSP with China. The Cook Islands—and also, predictably, China—insisted that the agreements did not explicitly include defense and security components. The lack of transparency raised concern within the New Zealand government that the Cook Islands were not abiding by an inherent expectation for consultation on issues of “mutual interest,” and that the growing relationship with China in sectors such as hydrography and deep-sea mining could have security implications for New Zealand.

Q3: How and why did New Zealand and the Cook Islands repair ties?

A3: Following months of bilateral tensions, both sides were eager to repair the relationship. As one of only two states in free association with New Zealand (the other being Niue), the Cook Islands is integral to New Zealand’s security settings across the Pacific. The China–Cook Islands deal was in many ways a wake-up call for New Zealand, and Wellington was anxious to mend this rift—but in a way that provided limits to China’s outreach to its near neighbors. In late 2025, Prime Minister Brown also noted that it was vital to “nurture” this special bond between New Zealand and the Cook Islands and cited the allocation of additional funding to “strengthen and support this partnership” as part of the 2026 budget.

It was in this context that New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters made a one-day trip to the Cook Islands on April 1, 2026, to meet with Prime Minister Brown and sign a Declaration on Defense and Security, with the aim of providing “clarity” on the contours and scope of this special relationship. For the Cook Islands, this rapprochement will result in the welcome resumption of New Zealand’s annual funding stream to the Cook Islands’ government. To ease Wellington’s security concerns, the declaration affirms that “New Zealand is its partner of choice regarding defense and security matters” and states that “the Partners will not enter into activities, agreements, or arrangements with third parties that would compromise” the principles of this agreement.

Q4: What does this mean for the future of Cook Islands–New Zealand relations, and for the broader competition for influence in the Pacific?

A4: Tempers between Rarotonga and Wellington have cooled, relations have improved, and, significantly, expectations for future dealings on sensitive issues involving outside players have been clarified. And yet questions remain, both in the context of Cook Islands–New Zealand relationship, and about how China is slowly resetting the goalposts on the extent of its security—or security-adjacent—relationships across the Pacific.

While both capitols are promoting messaging that tensions have passed and the two close “cousins” have returned to a usual state of things, there remains a potentially unstable misalignment of how the current Cook Islands government and Wellington view the contours of this relationship. While the New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters declared that the new declaration would put “massive limitations” on the Cook Islands’ agreements with China, Prime Minister Brown recently emphasized to his parliament that the Cook Islands “is a self-governing state. We govern our own affairs,” and that the relationship with New Zealand, while important, does not “define the limits of our engagement with the world.” While there is now a formalized consultative mechanism between the countries on matters of national security, the potential for diverging national interests, particularly on matters where one party might see economic benefit while the other sees security risks, will continue to exist. Nowhere is this clearer than in the drive to acquire resources, which has prompted major players like China and the United States to push for bilateral agreements with the Cook Islands.

For Wellington’s part, this “family” spat with the Cook Islands, in concert with other alarming moves from China such as the February 2025 live fire exercise in the Tasman Strait, has prompted New Zealand to consider a more security-centered approach to the Pacific, where it looks to more clearly articulate its own national security concerns in its dealings with Pacific neighbors, while acting to preclude greater Chinese involvement in areas that carry national security risks. Australia has already embraced a more security-oriented strategy in the Pacific, signing explicit security agreements with Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Tuvalu, and Fiji. This is also an approach that the United States has traditionally followed, particularly in Micronesia, with the Compacts of Free Association with Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia, to which the United States provides economic assistance and federal programs in exchange for unilateral defense access.

Finally, deep-sea mining is an issue likely to have consequential effects on the geopolitics and the geoeconomic relationships of the Pacific, as it has already begun to do in the Cook Islands. Both the United States and China have signed agreements with the Cook Islands on further exploration of the minerals in their Exclusive Economic Zones, and yet New Zealand, its closest strategic partner, has not yet developed a clear approach to deep-sea mining. With the explosive growth in the global demand for access to critical minerals, deep-sea mining is both a fast-developing and a highly contested sector—one where the technology, policy, diplomatic, legal, and environmental issues are rapidly evolving. While the international community does not yet have a consensus on how, when, where, and most importantly, if it should proceed with deep-sea mining, it is an issue that will continue roiling the waters of the Pacific, affecting the economic, political, and strategic calculations of Pacific states and the larger partners surrounding them.

Kathryn Paik is a deputy director and senior fellow with the Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Charles Edel is a senior adviser and the inaugural Australia Chair at CSIS.