{"id":12463,"date":"2014-02-25T06:00:40","date_gmt":"2014-02-24T19:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=12463"},"modified":"2014-02-26T10:19:25","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T23:19:25","slug":"status-quo-australia-versus-revisionist-fiji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/status-quo-australia-versus-revisionist-fiji\/","title":{"rendered":"Status quo Australia versus revisionist Fiji"},"content":{"rendered":"
Australia likes the existing South Pacific system, while Fiji wants to change it. Even if Fiji returns to democracy, the prospect is for continuing competition between Suva and Canberra over competing visions of the regional future: who\u2019s in, who\u2019s out, and who decides.<\/p>\n As the South Pacific superpower, Australia is committed to playing the central role in the maintenance of the regional status quo. Not the least element in the Australian vision of the established order is its assumed entitlement to the full membership rights of a South Pacific insider. Australia always wants to be a power perceived as being in the South Pacific as well as being the South Pacific power. The gap in that distinction has been probed, teased and tested by Fiji\u2019s Supremo.<\/p>\n Under Frank Bainimarama, Fiji has shifted a long way from its role as the conservative centre of the region and champion of the gradualist, consensual \u2018Pacific Way\u2019. Fiji has become the revisionist power that wants changes to the regional system to realign power, fix injustices and better serve its interests. Not the least of that revision would be to strip Australia of its status as an insider. A big bit of Fiji\u2019s revisionist agenda would be to redefine regionalism so that Australia isn\u2019t part of the South Pacific. In this revision, New Zealand would also be expelled\u2014Canberra and Wellington would become powerful outsiders, not natural insiders.<\/p>\n Much is to be played for as Canberra and Suva try to hit the reset button in their fractious and fractured relationship. The focal issue is Fiji\u2019s democracy; but over long years of battle, the contest has broadened to become a fight about the South Pacific system.<\/p>\n The bonhomie of the meeting between Fiji\u2019s Supremo and Australia\u2019s Foreign Minister was based on the elections Bainimarama has promised by September and Julie Bishop\u2019s determination to normalise relations. The Suva meeting was the first time a senior Australian government minister has met Bainimarama since 2008.<\/p>\n The picture from the talks had a football flavour, with Bishop presenting Bainimarama with a West Coast Eagles AFL jersey signed by Nic Naitanui, a towering Fijian who plays Australian rules footy. No jokes please about Bainimarama being asked to play by Aussie rules again, although that reflects how Canberra would like to see normalisation work. On the other side of the elections, Australia wants Fiji to come back into the Forum and to come to some fresh acceptance of the old regional status quo.<\/p>\n Fiji\u2019s clear interest is to win back what it has lost\u2014international status as a democracy, membership of the Forum, full recognition of the prerogatives of the Suva elite that serve the Supremo and a comfortable economic relationship with Australia\u2014 while pushing on with revisions to the way the Pacific operates. This is the long game in the new dance between Suva and Canberra. The aim of the reset expressed in Bishop\u2019s meeting with Bainimarama is to see what levels of accommodation can be achieved.<\/p>\n The effort will be to shift beyond anger and argy bargy. Lots of baggage from recent history has to be rearranged, stored for later or politely forgotten. Since Bainimarama imposed his second successful coup in 2006, Australia and Fiji have been bristling at each other. The differences go beyond the principle of democracy versus military dictatorship; the struggle has turned into this contest\u2014 status quo power versus revisionist state\u2014 over how the South Pacific should work. Fiji\u2019s elections won\u2019t see an end to that contest.<\/p>\n Richard Herr went to those systemic issues in his musings on the guns-and-roses symbolism<\/a> of the Valentine\u2019s Day meeting between Bishop and the Supremo:<\/p>\n Fiji\u2019s relationship with the Pacific Islands Forum won\u2019t necessarily be repaired by the bilateral re-engagement, nor will Australia\u2019s role in the regional body return to pre-sanction levels. Prime Minister Bainimarama is currently building a headquarters for a new regional body that excludes Australia and is intended to parallel the PIF. The regional roles for Fiji and Australia have been forced apart by Fiji\u2019s suspension from the PIF orchestrated by Canberra. Reconvergence is not impossible but it\u2019s unlikely to be fully achieved any time soon. Regional affairs will remain a separate and significant issue for Australia.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Significant, indeed. There\u2019s a lot to play for. On a stylistic point, I\u2019ll have to stop calling Bainimarama the Supremo when he renounces his job as head of the military<\/a> and settles for merely being Prime Minister. Following the New Order script<\/a>, the civilian leader can then announce the creation of his Golkar-style<\/a> political party\u2014a new form of movement not tainted by old party politics.<\/p>\n It’s in Australia\u2019s interest to embrace whatever level of democracy Fiji is allowed to have. And to achieve a normalisation of relations that restores as much of the regional status quo as is achievable. My next columns will consider the sweet and sour aspects of the goodies Australia is offering Fiji in trying to reset the relationship.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n