{"id":12507,"date":"2014-02-27T06:00:37","date_gmt":"2014-02-26T19:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=12507"},"modified":"2014-02-28T12:11:51","modified_gmt":"2014-02-28T01:11:51","slug":"sweet-and-sour-goodies-for-fiji-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/sweet-and-sour-goodies-for-fiji-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Sweet and sour goodies for Fiji (part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Australia is setting out an array of goodies as it seeks to restore relations with Fiji, in anticipation of better days to follow September\u2019s election. Canberra wants to achieve a diplomatic ceasefire, and to shift beyond the battle between Australia as the status quo South Pacific superpower and a revisionist Fiji that wants to remake the regional rules.<\/p>\n

As my previous column<\/a> noted, Australia\u2019s interest is in preserving its central role in the South Pacific. Fiji, under Bainimarama, would prefer a region that treated Australia as an outsider, not an insider. Normalisation could damp the flames of that fight, even if the fire is far from extinguished.<\/p>\n

The goodies Australia is offering Fiji serve two aims that aren’t necessarily complimentary: immediate goals for the future of Fiji and its politics and longer-term arguments about the shape of the Pacific system. Helping Fiji in the run up to the election will open the way for the broader regional game that will follow. The goal is to slowly turn a diplomatic ceasefire into some form of peaceful relationship, with both bilateral and regional dimensions.<\/p>\n

The brawling between Australia and the military regime since the 2006 coup and the nature of the new government that’ll emerge from Fiji\u2019s vote make this a hesitant and conditional project. The shift from isolation and sanction to normalisation and engagement is more than just a matter of changing course and altering language; the shift is from mind games to an attempt to find some meeting of minds.<\/p>\n

Bainimarama assumes he’ll win the election handsomely. Canberra is merely resigned to such a win, while hoping that Fiji\u2019s voters and the new electoral system will deliver surprises. The Supremo is used to giving orders, not taking them from the voters nor negotiating, as a civilian, with other civilian politicians. The machinery of Bainimarama\u2019s New Order is about to have a crucial road test. If things turn out as Bainimarama anticipates, his hand at home and in the region will be strengthened and his options widened.<\/p>\n

The election result and the government that emerges will decide the tempo and the temper of the Australian goodies. Looking at the inducements Australia is offering prompts the thought that this is an assortment of sweet-and-sour lollies. Each of the goodies has its attractions, but they all carry reminders of much sourness between two countries that have spent years kicking each other. To bed down a diplomatic ceasefire and start the march towards a peaceful relationship is going to mean moving beyond a lot of sour history. Not least of the questions is whether a mercurial Supremo emerges from a bout of electoral politics as a different sort of civilian Prime Minister; or whether a Bainimarama with a democratic mandate is empowered to push even harder for his New Order vision for Fiji and his new order for the South Pacific.<\/p>\n

With all that in mind, consider, initially, these diplomatic goodies, and see the sour that goes with the sweet. Australia is offering to:<\/p>\n