Geopolitical Free Association

In late December 2024, the government of the Cook Islands, an autonomous Polynesian polity in “free association” with New Zealand, announced plans to introduce its own national passports and citizenship. Currently, Cook Islanders are citizens of New Zealand while being considered “nationals” of the Cook Islands. The government of New Zealand has resisted the plan, although it has also stated that it is open to the complete independence of the Cook Islands if the Cook Islanders pass a referendum to that effect.

Some sources, however, already regard the Cook Islands as a fully sovereign and independent country. According to a Wikipedia article, “the Cook Islands and Niue [another Polynesian polity associated with New Zealand] behave as sovereign states in international law…”  [emphasis added]. Crucial to this status is the Cook Islands’ full treaty-making power, which it has enjoyed for several decades. As explored in a previous GeoCurrents post, the United Nations has therefore mapped the Cook Islands, along with Niue, as the only “Non-Member States of the United Nations,” which implies full sovereignty. But as the same post also noted, other United Nations maps at the time depicted the Cook Islands as a dependency of New Zealand. (I was oddly denied access to these maps on the United Nations website while I was writing this article; as a result, I cannot state the current position of the U.N.)

The position of the United States is, to the contrary, unambiguous. On September 25, 2023, President Joe Biden signed a statement announcing that “the United States recognizes the Cook Islands as a sovereign and independent state and will establish diplomatic relations between our two nations.” According to the Wikipedia article on the political status of the Cook Islands, the United States is the only sovereign state that recognizes its full independence, although other U.N. members have established diplomatic relations with it. Oddly, however, the official U.S. CIA political map still depicts the Cook Islands as a dependency of New Zealand (see the map below).

The United States recognized the independence and full sovereignty of the Cook Islands in part to bolster its position in the Pacific, which it sees a vulnerable, due mainly to Chinese initiatives in the region.  Official recognition may also reflect concern in Washington about the sometime fraught relationships of the U.S. with the three Pacific countries that are in “free association” with the United States: Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands. Although recognized as fully independent members states of the U.N., all three still have some characteristics of dependencies.

All told, the dividing line between independent sovereign states and other kinds of polities is not as clear-cut as it is conventionally imagined to be.