A former senior US diplomat has publicly questioned the value New Zealand brings to its relationship with Washington, asking bluntly what policy contributions the country has made to justify American investment in the partnership.

David Stilwell, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs from 2019 to 2021, made the remarks at an official event in 2024, according to RNZ. His framing — "What have you done for me lately?" — was directed at New Zealand's policy contributions to the bilateral relationship.

Stilwell is not a fringe voice. A retired Air Force Brigadier General who graduated from the US Air Force Academy in 1987, he was the principal diplomatic officer for US relations across the Indo-Pacific during the first Trump administration. He is also a member of the East-West Center Board of Governors, an institution Congress funds specifically to strengthen US ties in the Asia-Pacific. His public challenge to Wellington carries that institutional weight.

The line of questioning cuts to a tension that has been building in the New Zealand-US relationship for some years. Wellington has long emphasised the depth of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing arrangement and a record of deploying personnel alongside US forces — from Afghanistan to more recent multilateral operations — as proof of commitment. The Americans, or at least this cohort of them, appear to be scoring the relationship on a different metric: what New Zealand does in its own region, and whether it is willing to take positions that cost it something.

Stilwell delivered remarks at the Heritage Foundation in August 2020, while still in office, in which he outlined the State Department's strategic framework for the Indo-Pacific. His public commentary since leaving government has tracked closely with that framework — the expectation that allies and partners do more, and that presence in the region is not enough without policy alignment.

For Wellington, the timing matters. The current government has been navigating a difficult channel: deepening economic ties with China while maintaining security relationships with the US, the UK and Australia. New Zealand's refusal to join the original AUKUS trilateral was noted in Washington; subsequent discussions about a potential Pillar Two association have not resolved questions about the country's appetite for the harder edges of the arrangement. Stilwell's remarks land in that context.

The critique implicit in "what have you done for me lately?" is not simply about defence spending, where New Zealand's numbers remain well below NATO benchmarks and where the government has committed to increases that are modest by regional standards. It is also about diplomatic posture — whether New Zealand will say things publicly that cause friction with Beijing, and whether it will do so in concert with partners rather than after them.

Wellington's consistent position has been that it can do more through quiet diplomacy than through public statements, and that its independent foreign policy tradition gives it access and credibility that aligned states sometimes lack. That argument has a genuine record behind it. But it is an argument that requires the other side to accept the premise, and Stilwell's remarks suggest at least some in Washington are no longer inclined to.

How much weight to attach to comments from a retired official is a fair question. Stilwell left the State Department in January 2021 and does not speak for the current administration. But former senior officials in the US system do not typically freelance; their public commentary tends to reflect currents in the policy community they remain part of. His remarks are worth treating as a signal rather than a stray observation.

New Zealand's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade has not publicly responded to the remarks. Whether officials engage privately is not known.