Why Manila's Week of Diplomacy Still Matters for New Zealand

For four days last week, Manila became the meeting room for half the world's foreign ministries. The Philippines hosted the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting and its Post-Ministerial Conferences, drawing in the bloc's eleven members alongside dialogue partners from Washington and Beijing to Wellington, Canberra and Brussels. Roughly 120 bilateral meetings were packed in alongside the East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meeting and the ASEAN Regional Forum, all under the Philippines' 2026 Chairship theme, "Navigating Our Future, Together."

Foreign Affairs Secretary Ma. Theresa Lazaro, who chaired it all, put it simply: the gathering brought ASEAN's members and their external partners together "to discuss issues that matter most to our region."

New Zealand's Foreign Minister, Rt Hon Winston Peters, was a little more direct about why that mattered this year. "People all around the world are doing it tough, and our region is facing major security and economic impacts from the currently turbulent global environment," he said while in Manila, adding that working closely with regional partners "is more important than ever."

A handful of things came out of it: a Joint Communiqué setting out ASEAN's shared positions, new guidelines opening the door for more partners to formalise ties under the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), a statement urging calm over the Middle East, and a warmer welcome for newcomers, Türkiye as ASEAN's 12th Dialogue Partner, with Germany and Qatar picking up Sectoral Dialogue Partner status.

A Platform for Uncertain Times

It is worth asking why any of this matters beyond the region's own diplomatic circles.

ASEAN's real trick, since it was founded in 1967, has been building rooms where rival and friendly powers can sit at the same table without anyone having to give up ground.

The East Asia Summit (EAS), now on its 16th Foreign Ministers' Meeting, is one of those rooms, ASEAN's eleven members alongside Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia, and the United States. This year's session pushed for more practical cooperation on geopolitical tensions and emerging technologies, and doubled as a warm-up for the leaders'-level summit the Philippines hosts in November.

The 16th East Asia Summit (EAS) Foreign Ministers’ Meeting convened in Manila under the Philippine Chairship of ASEAN brought together the Foreign Ministers of the 19 EAS participating countries to discuss strategic, political, and economic developments affecting the Indo-Pacific.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), now in its 33rd year and Asia's oldest security dialogue of its kind, adopted a Manila Plan of Action running to 2036 and welcomed the United Kingdom as its 28th participant.

Ministers also found time for the ASEAN Plus Three Foreign Ministers' Meeting with China, Japan and South Korea, and trilateral sessions with Türkiye, Norway, Switzerland, and Brazil, a small but telling sign, Manila suggested, that outside partners want more formal footing with the bloc. None of these forums hand down binding decisions the way a treaty body might. Their value is quieter than that: they keep the lines open between countries that would otherwise only speak to each other through statements written for the people back home.

This year, when trouble in the Middle East has already snarled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, that quiet function starts to look less like diplomatic furniture and more like infrastructure.

Diplomats have a shorthand for it, "ASEAN centrality", the idea that Southeast Asia's own bloc, not any single great power, should sit at the middle of the region's architecture.

Member states guard that idea closely, because it is what gives eleven small and middle powers a kind of leverage none of them would have on their own.

Lazaro clearly enjoyed the role, telling reporters Manila had become "a venue for the powers to meet and to talk to each other," and pointing to meetings involving US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as proof of it. "Actually, me alone, I had about 38 bilateral meetings," she said, with something close to pride. "That shows also the respect for the Philippines from many of these ministers."

Myanmar was represented at the 59th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting in July 2026 by U Hau Khan Sum, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Three other threads ran quietly underneath. On Myanmar, ministers held what Lazaro called "candid and focused discussions," building on informal talks in Bangkok the week before, including whether ASEAN might appoint a multi-year Special Envoy, though the Five-Point Consensus remains its main reference point.

On the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the week closed with a 50th-anniversary commemoration, with Sweden, Poland, Romania, and Lithuania signing on as new High Contracting Parties, alongside the first High-Level Conference of its kind since the treaty was signed back in 1976.

And on the South China Sea, the week began under a bit of a cloud: a clash between Philippine and Chinese vessels at Second Thomas Shoal on July 20, the day before talks opened, drew condemnation from several outside partners while ASEAN's own members stayed quiet on it. Lazaro still struck an upbeat note, saying ASEAN and China were making "good progress" toward a Code of Conduct "within the year," a timeline Malaysia's foreign minister linked to the November summit. The communiqué's actual wording told a more cautious story, near-identical to last year's, missing the "acceleration" language that had appeared before, and still silent on the 2016 arbitral ruling against China's claims.

A reminder that it is consensus among members, not the chair's own ambitions, that decides how far ASEAN's language can go.

Where New Zealand Fits In

This is the part where Manila stops being background noise for Wellington. New Zealand's relationship with ASEAN now runs more than two decades deep at ministerial level.

Peters was there for the very first East Asia Summit Foreign Ministers' Meeting back in December 2005, and this was his eleventh since, something ASEAN counterparts themselves noted during the week. In a region where trust is built one meeting at a time rather than through grand gestures, that kind of staying power counts for something. This week, it paid out in something more tangible than goodwill.

The formal outcome was a joint statement on strengthening regional resilience, issued on July 22.

In the statement, they also flagged worries about disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and other international straits, echoing the bloc's own Middle East statement, given what that means for energy, food security and supply chains on both sides of the region. For a trading nation tucked at the bottom of the Pacific, a chokepoint thousands of kilometres away is not some far-off abstraction. It shows up in fuel prices, freight costs, and whether the ships carrying our exports get where they're going on time.

During his visit to Manila, New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters held 38 bilateral meetings with counterparts from other countries.

Underneath all of it sits the ASEAN-New Zealand Comprehensive Strategic Partnership, elevated in 2025.

A fresh Plan of Action for 2026 to 2036 covers renewable energy and the ASEAN Power Grid, climate-smart agriculture, sustainable fisheries and the blue economy, and maritime security cooperation under the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific.

A newly established ASEAN-New Zealand Vision Fund is meant to help pay for it, aimed, in the ministers' own words, at building "a permanent legacy of regional sustainable resilience." Peters framed it plainly: "At a time of growing uncertainty, New Zealand's Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with ASEAN is more important than ever in supporting regional stability, safeguarding global supply chains, and advancing the prosperity and security of our people." It is not an overstatement, a good share of New Zealand's trade moves through the very sea lanes this week's statements on the Middle East and the Strait of Hormuz were written to protect.

Peters kept himself busy on the sidelines too.

Alongside a new Comprehensive Partnership with the Philippines, he squeezed in at least ten bilateral meetings, with counterparts from Brunei, the EU, India, Indonesia, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, South Korea and Vietnam, a pace that, on a smaller scale, echoed Lazaro's own marathon of 38.

It is a useful reminder of what these gatherings actually offer a country New Zealand's size: a dozen conversations in four days that would otherwise take a dozen separate trips, spread across a year, at far greater cost in time and airfare. That is what ASEAN-centred diplomacy is actually for, and why New Zealand keeps turning up for it.

None of this is starting from nothing.

The ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Area, in force since 2010 and upgraded in 2025, has already stripped tariffs off most New Zealand exports to Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam.

Manaaki New Zealand Scholarships and the ASEAN Scholar Awards have long brought students and officials here to study, while the ASEAN Public Sector Leadership Programme has trained senior ASEAN and Timor-Leste officials since 2016. New Zealand runs development programmes across seven ASEAN and Timor-Leste markets, and backed Timor-Leste's accession to the bloc in 2025.

As one of eight "Plus" partners in the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting-Plus, it also chips in on maritime security, disaster relief and counter-terrorism work. The new Plan of Action and Vision Fund build on ground that was already fairly solid, which is probably New Zealand's best case for why ASEAN keeps taking it seriously.

On the sidelines in Manila, the Philippines and New Zealand signed cooperation agreements on education and energy. Photo: Carla Teng-Westergaard/AMC

What Comes Next

The real test, as always, will be whether any of this gets built rather than just announced. A plan of action and a vision fund only matter once the projects behind them actually get funded, and ASEAN has no shortage of well-meaning frameworks that never quite got there.

New Zealand officials know that pattern well, having watched it play out before. Even so, the direction from Manila is reasonably clear, and clearest for New Zealand: it is betting that its long-term value in Southeast Asia lies not in matching bigger partners dollar for dollar, but in staying a steady, technically capable hand on the practical stuff, energy, agriculture, maritime cooperation, education, that sits underneath the bigger headlines. That bet gets tested again in November, when the Philippines hosts the full ASEAN Summit and the East Asia Summit steps up to leaders' level.

Whether Washington, Beijing, and Moscow send their actual heads of state or leave it to ministers again is anyone's guess. New Zealand's seat at the table, at least, is not in question.

The meetings in Manila did not produce a breakthrough on the geopolitical tensions affecting global markets and shipping lanes. However, they reinforced the importance of keeping diplomatic channels open and sustaining dialogue among regional partners. For New Zealand, which has participated in ASEAN-led forums for more than two decades, continued engagement reflects its long-standing commitment to regional cooperation and multilateral diplomacy.

-Asia Media Centre