{"id":63744,"date":"2021-04-12T06:00:20","date_gmt":"2021-04-11T20:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=63744"},"modified":"2021-04-11T20:04:56","modified_gmt":"2021-04-11T10:04:56","slug":"the-gulliver-dilemma-australia-and-south-pacific-security","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-gulliver-dilemma-australia-and-south-pacific-security\/","title":{"rendered":"The Gulliver dilemma: Australia and South Pacific security"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

\u2018As one of many Pacific Island nations, Australia is historically and indelibly linked to its neighbours in the region. Our shared history of endurance and mutual assistance during times of major international conflict, natural disaster, climate change and pandemic has forged strong links between Pacific Island neighbours which go beyond statehood and diplomacy.\u2019<\/p>\n

Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, Inquiry into Australia’s defence relationships with Pacific island nations<\/em><\/a>, March 2021<\/p>\n

\u2018With limited government reach and resources, but strong subsistence and traditional communities, cultural integrity and traditional ways remain key to the Pacific security agenda.\u2019<\/p>\n

Meg Keen, \u2018Security through a Pacific lens\u2019, <\/span>Development Bulletin<\/em>, no. 82: \u2018<\/span>Perspectives on Pacific security: future currents<\/a>\u2019, February 2021<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Australia tiptoes around the South Pacific, just as Gulliver<\/a> stepped carefully around the fictional South Seas land of Lilliput.<\/p>\n

When Jonathan Swift\u2019s giant washed ashore, the six-inch-tall islanders couldn\u2019t bind Gulliver, and their hundred arrows merely pricked his hand.<\/p>\n

Here was a security predicament defined by differences in size, perspective and power.<\/p>\n

The tiny Lilliputians couldn\u2019t think of a way to kill Gulliver, so they made him useful. Likewise, Australia is too big for the South Pacific to ignore\u2014and sometimes the giant gets it right, despite those big feet.<\/p>\n

The government\u2019s four-year-old<\/a> Pacific \u2018step-up\u2019 means the Gulliver effect is getting lots of fresh thought.<\/p>\n

Two meditations on Australia\u2019s role in island security have just arrived, from federal parliament and the Australian National University.<\/p>\n

Parliament\u2019s Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade, has released its report on defence relations with Pacific island nations<\/a>. Three other committee reports will soon follow on strengthening relationships with the region<\/a>, trade and investment<\/a> with the islands, and the human rights of women and girls<\/a> in the Pacific. These efforts build on a December 2020 report on the impact of the pandemic<\/a> on foreign policy and April 2019 report on aid to the Indo-Pacific<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Across the lake from parliament, at the ANU, a special issue of the Development Bulletin<\/em>, titled \u2018Perspectives on Pacific security: future currents<\/a>\u2019, produced by the Development Studies Network in collaboration the Australian Pacific Security College, marks the first year of the college\u2019s existence (another product of the step-up).<\/p>\n

Both embrace a broad definition of security, working from the Pacific Islands Forum\u2019s Boe declaration on regional security<\/em><\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The joint committee\u2019s traditional statement about Australia\u2019s role\u2014in and of region\u2014is followed by an equally traditional list of \u2018existential challenges, including domestic security instability, climate change and geopolitical rivalries\u2019.<\/p>\n

The parliamentary report is grounded in Canberra\u2019s conception of the responsibilities it wants to shoulder and the regional leadership it seeks. As ever, Australia\u2019s offer to lead bumps into how much buy-in or followership the islands will give (the need for \u2018partnership\u2019 gets 90 mentions in the report\u2019s 75 pages).<\/p>\n

The independence of the island states and the Gulliver factor cause some hesitancy. The report\u2019s second paragraph modestly describes Australia as a \u2018regional middle power\u2019 while offering to perform lots of roles:<\/p>\n

From fisheries management, protection and surveillance, to humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, intelligence collection and sharing, climate change and the global pandemic, Australia\u2019s defence organisation stands ready to play its part in the Pacific Step-up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The bureaucratic semantics of the step-up mean Canberra concedes no past failure or need for change<\/a>; instead, we\u2019re going to do much more of what we\u2019re already doing. Embracing this more-of-the-same-but-better approach, the parliamentary committee\u2019s language is about the need to \u2018improve\u2019, \u2018increase\u2019, \u2018respond\u2019 and \u2018integrate\u2019. Recommendations include \u2018an increase in frequency and intensity of existing surveillance operations\u2019 and increased intelligence sharing.<\/p>\n

The one new thought offered as a \u2018could\u2019 recommendation is a Pacific islands regiment for the \u2018increased and enhanced integration of Australian, Pacific Island and other military forces\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Pacific regiment, using equipment, training and facilities supplied by Australia and New Zealand, could do UN work as well as \u2018security and stabilisation operations within the island states at the behest of the Pacific Islands Forum\u2019. An earlier version of the regiment idea<\/a> was offered by ASPI\u2019s Anthony Bergin in 2019 and backed by Fiji\u2019s defence minister<\/a>. Bergin argued that recruiting islanders into the Australian Defence Force would require only a change of policy<\/a>, not law.<\/p>\n

The ANU\u2019s varied and vigorous perspectives on the Pacific islands\u2019 \u2018unique and urgent security needs\u2019 cover geopolitics, governance, food and livelihood, human health and gender, cities, cyber and media (the word \u2018security\u2019 occurs 1,532 times in 173 pages).<\/p>\n

Meg Keen explains the evolution and expansion of island thinking on security. There\u2019s vintage Steven Ratuva on what Covid-19 means for social solidarity in island communities. New Zealand\u2019s \u2018Pacific reset\u2019 gets a fine Anna Powles treatment, a sharper version than the New Zealand government\u2019s submission<\/a> to the parliamentary inquiry.<\/p>\n

Denghua Zhang writes that China\u2019s security focus in the South Pacific is \u2018limited in scope and depth\u2019 (none of the People\u2019s Liberation Army\u2019s 130 military attach\u00e9 offices overseas are in the Pacific). But China\u2019s great-power ambition and \u2018the rapid escalation of the US\u2013China rivalry\u2019 are \u2018likely to stimulate [the] PLA to develop more substantial security cooperation with Pacific islands\u2019.<\/p>\n

One of Oz diplomacy\u2019s finest Pacific hands, James Batley, does nuanced duty on the Gulliver effect and the changed \u2018tone\u2019 of the step-up. Canberra isn\u2019t just responding to China, Batley writes, but acting on \u2018long-standing\u2019 Oz anxieties about the South Pacific. We were fussing and fretting long before China arrived.<\/p>\n

Many island countries, though, \u2018do not share Australia\u2019s geostrategic outlook or anxieties\u2019. Noisy headlines about disagreements and tensions are a staple, Batley says, and aren\u2019t definitive indicators of Australia\u2019s declining influence. The Boe declaration provides a \u2018common language and vocabulary\u2019 that Australia now routinely uses in its extensive dealings in the region. Canberra has convening power and brings cash and people.<\/p>\n

Batley\u2019s conclusion gives a fine summary of the view from both sides of Canberra\u2019s lake:<\/p>\n

In the contemporary clich\u00e9, the Pacific region is clearly more crowded and contested. It can\u2019t be denied that significant gaps exist between Australian and Pacific Islands\u2019 understandings of and approaches to security in the region. Differences on climate change in particular remain serious … Australia has shown repeatedly that it is able to draw on its assets in the region to protect and to prosecute its security interests, and that those assets are being enhanced through new initiatives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Scott Morrison\u2019s vision of Australia belonging to the \u2018Pacific family\u2019<\/a> worries wonks (is it true<\/a>?) and bureaucrats (what more must we do for the family?).<\/p>\n

\u2018Family\u2019, I submit, is goddam Gulliver genius<\/a>: Australia may be big and clumsy, but it belongs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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Our shared history of endurance and mutual assistance during times of major international conflict, natural disaster, …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":79,"featured_media":63750,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[17,2160,142,99],"class_list":["post-63744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-australia","tag-pacific-islands","tag-regional-security","tag-south-pacific"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Gulliver dilemma: Australia and South Pacific security | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/the-gulliver-dilemma-australia-and-south-pacific-security\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Gulliver dilemma: Australia and South Pacific security | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"\u2018As one of many Pacific Island nations, Australia is historically and indelibly linked to its neighbours in the region. 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