{"id":52712,"date":"2019-12-23T06:00:47","date_gmt":"2019-12-22T19:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=52712"},"modified":"2019-12-22T18:30:35","modified_gmt":"2019-12-22T07:30:35","slug":"framing-the-islands-strategic-denial-and-integration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/framing-the-islands-strategic-denial-and-integration\/","title":{"rendered":"Framing the islands: strategic denial and integration"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

\u2018The stability and economic progress of Papua New Guinea, other Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste is of fundamental importance to Australia.<\/em>\u2019
\nAustralian foreign policy white paper<\/a><\/em>, 2017<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s deepest, oldest instinct in the South Pacific is strategic denial, striving to exclude other major powers from the region.<\/p>\n

As Australia can never achieve complete dominance in the South Pacific, the instinct is beset by a faint, constant ache. Throughout the 20th century, that ache was directed variously at France, Germany and Russia. The ache became a fevered nightmare during the war with Japan.<\/p>\n

Today, Australia sees its interests and influence in the South Pacific directly challenged by China<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The challenge rouses the same strategic denial impulse that fostered federation and was expressed in the Commonwealth of Australia\u2019s founding document. Our constitution has one clause stating the parliament\u2019s power over external affairs, while the next clause specifically expresses the denial impulse, identifying authority over the \u2018relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

As Greg Fry observes in his new book on power and diplomacy in Pacific regionalism, Framing the islands<\/em><\/a>, the Oz hegemonic agenda has a long history. He quotes a 19th-century observation from Otto von Bismarck about the \u2018Australasian Monroe doctrine<\/a>\u2019.<\/p>\n

The same sphere-of-influence intent prevails today, Fry writes, as Canberra asserts its leadership and management role: \u2018Australia\u2019s preferred regional order is one in which it is the leading external security partner to Pacific island states and the undue influence of other metropolitan powers, particularly China, has been denied.\u2019<\/p>\n

Australia and New Zealand, he notes, have had \u2018enormous influence on Pacific regionalism\u2014on its finances, agenda, policy directions and institutional development\u2019.<\/p>\n

Yet, Australia is the frustrated, edgy hegemon; the problem for Oz leadership is generating enough island followership. As Fry puts it, \u2018Power as capacity has not easily translated into power as legitimate influence.\u2019 So Australia\u2019s influence in the islands is at times limited<\/a>, and may be declining.<\/p>\n

Australia\u2019s habits and interests bump up against \u2018the \u201cnew\u201d Pacific diplomacy\u2019<\/a>, Fry says, as island leaders project an assertive regional identity and seek to act as \u2018a diplomatic bloc promoting a Pacific voice in global arenas\u2019.<\/p>\n

Climate change has given Pacific diplomacy a heightened urgency and unity, raising doubts about Australia\u2019s regional membership, much less leadership:<\/p>\n

In many ways, climate change has become the Pacific\u2019s nuclear testing issue of the twenty-first century; it has brought an urgency and emotional commitment to regional collaboration. Where the Pacific states might in the past have tolerated some frustration with the domination of the regional agenda by Canberra and Wellington to pursue the war on terror or to promote a regional neoliberal economic order, this tolerance reached its limit in relation to the climate change issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The islands have acted to\u00a0\u2018securitise the climate emergency\u2019<\/a> by expanding the concept of security, declaring climate change<\/a> \u2018the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific\u2019.<\/p>\n

Fry says the islands have resisted what he calls \u2018coercive\u2019 European-style integration. Since the end of the Cold War, he writes, Australia has been the chief exponent of coercive integration, using the Pacific Islands Forum to push for regional norms to govern island development and governance.<\/p>\n

A notable element of Australia\u2019s 2017 foreign policy white paper<\/a> was its embrace of integration as a key objective: \u2018This new approach recognises that more ambitious engagement by Australia, including helping to integrate Pacific countries into the Australian and New\u00a0Zealand economies and our security institutions, is essential to the long-term stability and economic prospects of the Pacific.\u2019<\/p>\n

Integration is a fine example of the problem of winning followership. Indeed, integration has become the i-word\u2014the Oz policy that can\u2019t be named<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The i-word got an embrace from the secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum, Dame Meg Taylor, when she launched<\/a> Fry\u2019s book:<\/p>\n

[C]ontrary to Greg, I don\u2019t think we should be dismissive of opportunities for regional integration in the Pacific, whether they be economic, political or based on something else. I would argue that the Rarotonga Treaty<\/a> can be considered as an example of regional integration through which national sovereignty has been transcended [by] delineating a shared ocean space that is subjected to regulatory actions. Therefore, to dismiss \u2018coercive integration\u2019 from the beginning as irrelevant to the region would seem to go against the dynamic and contingent approach to regionalism that is the strength of Greg\u2019s conceptual framework.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Canberra shouldn\u2019t read too much into Taylor\u2019s endorsement of the possibilities of integration. In my short conversation with her after the launch, she was emphatic that her words implied no embrace of Australia\u2019s integration agenda.<\/p>\n

In her Griffith lecture in Brisbane<\/a> last month, Taylor offered three examples of the \u2018political strength of the collective\u2019, to show what regional resolve and solidarity look like:<\/p>\n