{"id":57820,"date":"2020-07-27T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2020-07-26T20:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=57820"},"modified":"2020-07-26T16:03:37","modified_gmt":"2020-07-26T06:03:37","slug":"four-south-pacific-futures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/four-south-pacific-futures\/","title":{"rendered":"Four South Pacific futures"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Geostrategic competition, climate change and Covid-19 push at the South Pacific, heightening the internal challenges of state security and human security.<\/p>\n

The South Pacific has weak states and strong societies. As a journalistic recycler, I\u2019ve been using variations of that line about struggling states, vigorous villages and wonderful wontoks<\/a><\/em> since the 1970s. It cycles through my ranking of the hierarchy of threats, risks and challenges for the South Pacific<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Over the 50 years or so since decolonisation, island societies have stretched and strained while their governments haven\u2019t got much stronger. The problems are as well known as they are pressing. That familiarity plays to the habits of our species when peering into the future: tomorrow will be much like today, only more so.<\/p>\n

The continuity comfort is an element of Australia\u2019s Pacific \u2018step-up\u2019. We\u2019re going to build on our already substantial role to do a lot more of what we\u2019re doing, only better.<\/p>\n

The pandemic shakes what\u2019s familiar and our sense of what will come next. The virus is a disruptive twin for the gyrating geopolitics of a shaking global balance and multilateral malaise<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The South Pacific has shut down and so far shut out Covid. But the geopolitical shakes will arrive as inevitably as the next cyclone season. Perhaps the South Pacific\u2019s future is going to look different because the international context is changing so much, even if the local problems are unchanged.<\/p>\n

The spark for such thinking is Peter Layton<\/a>, a grand strategist<\/a> who has written the book on grand strategy<\/a>. He offers four scenarios for the future of the South Pacific, three of them marked by regional disruption and disintegration, in his work on Pacific island futures, Australia\u2019s new regional context<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Sustaining the islands as a coherent region working together is going to demand a lot of effort, Layton argues:<\/p>\n

The Pacific Island region as it is today may be an historical anomaly contingent on a particular international system, globalisation, favourable international laws of the sea and digital information technology that makes distance at times immaterial. The alternative futures combined with the impact of global warming may have highlighted that this sweet spot may not last.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Layton\u2019s four scenarios use the Australian Defence Department\u2019s crystal-ball effort from 2016 on the military\u2019s future operating environment out to 2035<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I was struck by how much of Defence\u2019s musing about what the islands face could have been written at any time over the past 50 years. The list goes like this:<\/p>\n