Foreign Minister Winston Peters is keeping his cool in the US, and particularly ahead of the main event - a meeting with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Peters is in Washington DC meeting others, including the national security advisor ahead of the meeting with Rubio on Wednesday morning (NZ time).
However, he was keeping his powder dry - saying he would get the best out of the meetings possible.
"What needs to happen right now, we'll keep our nerve, wait till the dust settles before we rush in and make any preliminary decisions," he said.
"When Trump was campaigning he was making certain statements. We all make statements on the campaign and we're expected to fulfill them - and he is. So it's not a question of what we think about it, it's how it affects us and our future, and in our future we talk about the Blue Pacific of which we are a huge part of the world - about 31 percent is the blue continent."
Peters said the US was a Pacific nation, so it was impossible for the country to withdraw from the region - the point of the matter was ensuring balance in a difficult strategic environment.
Australia has recently come under pressure to step up defence spending, but Peters stayed the course on that too - saying that when New Zealand First was last in government between 2017 and 2020 they had stepped up spending "big time".
"We renewed much of our air force utilities and in other areas as well. So we're not coming at it for the first time, and we've said for a long time that this country's got to start pulling its weight - not claiming to punch above its weight, we're not doing that, no - we've got to pull our weight."
Rubio played a key role in brokering a potential ceasefire between Ukraine and Russia last week.
Winston Peters and Marco Rubio. Photo: RNZ / Samuel Rillstone / AFP
Peters said the question of New Zealand's possible involvement in peacekeeping - perhaps as part of Europe's 'coalition of the willing' - may be a point of discussion.
New Zealand has not at this point been invited to take part.
"I think it might come up. Appreciate Secretary Rubio telling us his views - most certainly we'd be interested in that," Peters said. "But as far as that goes, that's not what this trip is about."
He told RNZ arrangements for the meeting with Rubio had been started well before the US election last November because they "believed that there's a high possibility, some of us called it certainty, of change".
"That would mean change policies, so it was important for us to keep the best of information we could and contacts ready to go when the government changed.
"This is certainly one important meeting, but also with the defence people ... the security advisor and also other members of the Trump team, so to speak, or those very very close to it.
"It's extraordinarily important... because of the economic circumstances that the world is in right now. Post-Covid recovery - or lack of it, in many of the economies - and also because of the government's policies here in America that have dramatically changed the scene."
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