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Tag Archive for: South Pacific
Tag Archive for: South Pacific
Should Australia worry about Chinese expansion in the South Pacific?
A major international conference on the Pacific Islands was held recently by the Centre for Pacific Island Countries Studies in Guangzhou, the capital city of China’s Guangdong province. The conference, devoted solely to a discussion of the Pacific Islands, was the first of its kind in China. The Centre was authorised by the highest level of the central leadership in Beijing and supported by the Guangdong provincial government. That China has appointed a special envoy for the Pacific Islands, and that the envoy, Ambassador Du Qiwen, attended a full-day conference—a true rarity for Chinese officials—only attests to the growing attention China is paying to the Pacific Islands region.
China has significantly expanded its involvement in the Pacific Islands in recent years. According to Ambassador Du, in 2013 China offered a US$2 billion concessional loan and a $US2 billion special loan for infrastructure development to regional governments. In 2015, despite sluggish growth in global trade, total trade between China and the Pacific Island countries reached US$8.1 billion, a 60% increase from the previous year. China’s also trained over 4,000 personnel from the region in managerial and technical expertise, and has offered more scholarship and training opportunities for such capacity building.
Some Australian strategists have been wondering whether China’s political and economic expansion in the South Pacific comes at Australia’s expense as the region’s main power. Canberra likes to see itself as having a special responsibility for the South Pacific. More generally, Australia is said to have a strategic imperative to prevent a hostile power from establishing a foothold in the region, to threaten the Australian mainland or the access to sea routes through the region’s maritime commons. As a result, some are concerned that China’s expansion is undermining a key geopolitical objective of Australian foreign policy.
But that worry is premature. China’s policy toward the Pacific isn’t driven by a presumed strategic competition with Australia or the US. Its growing involvement is best seen as part of the much larger ‘Going Out’ strategy to expand China’s outreach to the developing world. Since 2013, Beijing has reframed its regional approach under the ‘One Belt, One Road’ initiative. The South Pacific, like Australia, is included in the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road that Beijing has proposed to build in concert with other countries.
Within that broad policy framework, China has several specific interests in the South Pacific. The first is purely economic. China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) have invested in energy resources, raw materials and increasingly in infrastructure. It is, however, a mistake to view the search for natural resources as the main driver of China’s involvement. As Ambassador Du points out, if resources were the only objective, China would be well advised to abandon the South Pacific and focus simply on Australia. With the exception of Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific holds little significance for China in terms of resources.
China’s official position is that Beijing is trying to achieve ‘win-win’ cooperation with Pacific Islanders in economic development, as it befits China’s identity as a rising developing country to assist development in the Global South. Whether ‘win-win’ cooperation is being achieved is an empirical question. But it seems clear that China’s economic relationship with the South Pacific isn’t an exploitative relationship. In most cases, regional governments and citizens welcome Chinese involvement, because they see this as providing an important alternative to Western-style development aid. Tony Browne, a former New Zealand ambassador to China, has observed that China is making a major contribution by investing in infrastructure projects in which no other power has any interest.
China also has a stake in limiting Taiwan’s political reach in the region. Six Pacific Island states still recognise Taiwan today. With a new pro-independence government in Taipei since May this year, competition with Taiwan for political allegiance may assume more prominence than in previous years.
But whether it’s economic interest, competition with Taiwan, or political influence, China’s goals don’t clash with Australia’s interest in having a stable and prosperous region free from the control of a hostile external power.
In fact, it’ll be in Australia’s interest to seek a creative and productive partnership with China to bolster regional stability and development. For all the inroads and contributions China has made to the South Pacific, there are still issues and problems to be managed and resolved. In terms of SOEs as agents of Chinese expansion, those include unbridled self-interest, lack of attention to the environment, poor labour practice and corruption. On the level of government policy, Beijing needs to evaluate aid projects on the basis of its practical contribution to local societies rather than its political symbolism.
Both China and Australia have a lot to learn from each other in delivering better development aid to the Pacific Islands, and neither (nor, for that matter, any other external power) should be complacent about its current approach. The Pacific Islanders are gaining a new confidence partly as a result of the new opportunities China’s involvement is bringing. They’re thinking not only about the need to ‘feed and tame the dragon’, but also the need to ‘train the dragon to tame the kiwi, the kangaroo and the bald eagle’.
Everything but net: US withdraws from Pacific tuna treaty
The decision by the United States last month to withdraw from the 30-year tuna treaty with Pacific Island countries will take effect in January next year.
The treaty is one of the most important aid and political arrangements the US has had with the South Pacific.
The 17 Pacific parties to the US tuna treaty are Australia, Cook Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, New Zealand, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, United States and Vanuatu.
Washington had agreed last year to pay $128 million for its fishing days this year, but has now reneged on the deal, offering the reason that its fleet can’t afford to pay.
In a letter to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the US State Department said that under current conditions the treaty wasn’t viable (PDF): ‘rather than serving as a means of facilitating opportunities for the US fleet to fish in the region, the treaty itself prevents the fleet from doing so’.
The ABC’s Pacific economic reporter observed that for some of the smaller Pacific states, such as Tokelau, the impact of the US reneging on payments for its 2016 fishing days is ‘frightening’; almost half of Tokelau’s budget is provided by fishing fees, with three quarters of its fishing days allocated to the US. Tuvalu derives around 50% of its budget from fisheries access revenue and for Kiribati it’s about 60%.
The deputy director of the FFA, Wez Norris, has pointed out that the impact of the US withdrawal will be different among individual island states. Some have viable alternative markets that could absorb their fishing days with relatively little impact. But others are reliant on the treaty to sell their fishing days and would ‘struggle to achieve revenues similar to those currently enjoyed.’
Why has the US torn up the treaty? The reality is that tuna prices have dropped substantially and the US tuna industry won’t pay.
In hindsight, it’d appear that the US got their negotiating strategy wrong when they met in Brisbane in August last year.
The US got the deal they wanted last year, which was 155 days per boat in the waters of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA). The PNA controls the world’s largest tuna purse seine fishery. They include the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. (The PNA has successfully introduced a vessel-day scheme that creates a limited number of fishing days within the entire PNA region with a standardised minimum fee per day.)
The revised US proposal is about 100 days per boat. But the US, it would appear, made a mistake in requesting more fishing days. It’s now in an untidy situation: although the US government is the signatory, most of the financial liability rests with the US tuna industry association.
That hasn’t previously been a major problem. There’s always been a high degree of trust and an assumption that the US government, as a responsible fisheries partner, would guarantee the payment.
Even if island states can find a way to try and put a band-aid on what they perceive to be a breach of trust by the US, there’s little doubt it’ll impact the degree of confidence that the island countries will have in future fisheries diplomacy with the US.
Arguably there’s not a lot in it for the US government to subsidise the US fleet, including an aid component of $21 million: it’s really chump change in terms of economic assistance—the official US government designation of this money.
In the recent past, the FFA have decreased the proportion of money that contributes to access fees and forced industry to pay a greater proportion.
But the argument from the islands has always been that there’s a legitimate role for the US to pay a premium for vessels to get valuable multilateral, rather than bilateral, fisheries access, like all the other fleets.
The benefits that the US derives from the tuna treaty, and therefore the incentive to keep putting that money in, have been largely political influence, (although it’s also been driven by the strength of the US tuna fishing lobby).
The treaty has allowed US vessels (now numbering 37) to maintain the largest purse seine fleet in the region, even though it’s sometimes hard to tell how many are genuine US boats, as many new vessels have some Asian links.
The treaty arrangement has given the Western Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC) quality fisheries data that they otherwise wouldn’t have, and the US a greater footprint in terms of their monitoring, control and surveillance engagement in the Pacific.
The US fleet has substantially increased its high seas effort. But it’s limited by the WCPFC and they reached that limit last year.
The US couldn’t afford to fish solely outside EEZs, and this year it can’t fish in the high seas: the main areas are included in the so-called tuna ‘treaty area’, and they can’t fish there without a ‘treaty license’.
In the end, it’s likely the US pulled out of the treaty because they felt they couldn’t afford the costs: they wish to be independent, and to enter the market and buy what they need—the same as everyone else—and not be burdened with a block of fishing days they don’t want.
Many of the US vessels based in Pago Pago, for example, are tied to processing and trading interests and may therefore be able to use that as leverage if they were allowed to negotiate directly.
Pacific islands states have been struggling to introduce the kind of flexibility into the tuna treaty that would allow direct negotiations to occur between parties, where the treaty would still be in place but wouldn’t rely on a single transaction (x days for y dollars).
In that scenario, the treaty would set the rules of the game, create a government-to-government relationship and perhaps include a small pool of multilateral access. It would empower vessel operators to engage in direct commercial relationships with the countries that they want to do business with.
According to FFA’s deputy director the regional fisheries body will focus on redesigning the treaty so that it can ‘still play its vital government to government roles, but can cater for more flexible commercial arrangements between individual vessel operators and countries that sell then fishing days’.
But the US notice of withdrawal will complicate future discussions and make it difficult to rebuild the treaty in anything like its current form. As the FFA’s Norris points out: ‘events like this (the notice of withdrawal) can damage relationships and erode trust that may take significant time to rebuild’.
Advancing Australia’s regional interests: don’t ditch the POE
If there was an award for most audacious title for a blog, Peter Layton’s ‘Shortcomings of the next defence white paper’ would surely take the prize. It was posted just months after the 2013 edition hit the streets and immediately following the then-new minister’s ASPI address. To be fair, the focus of his criticism was on what he regards as an overly narrow white paper process rather than the future volume’s possible content.
As we approach the launch of an actual DWP, probably in the third quarter of this year, it doesn’t seem quite so bold to offer unsolicited advice on the direction of a work-in-progress. Doing so still has its perils, as we can only speculate what the document will say. But it’ll be too late to influence the strategy (or final adjustments to the May Budget) once it’s published, and there are some pretty strong clues as to its likely shape. Prime Minister Tony Abbott last week announced we’ll purchase two more giant C-17 Globemaster transport aircraft, and announced the dispatch of an important ADF–NZDF mission to train Iraqi troops against ISIL on the eve of a long run of Centenary-of-ANZAC commemorative activities. This week, ADF troops will join US and Philippines forces in, as Fairfax puts it, ‘South China Sea war games’ for only the second time, and as China builds artificial islands and military facilities on disputed reefs.
With other analysts now commencing or already well into their own preemptive strikes and raids on the white paper, I’ve just published a new ASPI paper, ‘No exit: next steps for promoting South Pacific peace and prosperity’.
My report’s main aim is simply to remind readers not to lose sight of the importance of our near neighbourhood as Australia naturally focuses more on its global interests in a changing and challenging international environment. But I particularly wanted to make a security case for preserving a substantial and well-targeted development assistance program as savage aid cuts loom. That message still tends to be based mainly on appeals to the public’s conscience (some partial counter-examples here and here), despite aid’s contribution to regional growth and cohesion, given the clear nexus between underdevelopment, insecurity, and instability.
While I welcomed Foreign Minister Julie Bishop bringing the aid program under more hard-headed discipline in pursuit of our national interest, it’s hard to see how it’ll be able to do much more than tread-water after it’s defunded by 20% next month, despite all the promise of the new aid paradigm and just-launched innovation hub. I also wanted to offer some concrete suggestions for enhancing our regional diplomacy and security engagement.
If the Abbott Government’s inclinations, experience, and spending plans all point to the next white paper discarding the 2013 edition’s stipulation that we only buy military equipment needed to prevent direct attacks against Australia or to contribute to regional security, Alan Dupont suggests the focus on the loose arc referred to as our ‘area of direct military interest’, ‘primary area of strategic interest’, or ‘primary operational environment’ (POE) in successive declaratory strategic policies is, in any case, past its use-by date. Rory Medcalf, meanwhile, wonders whether we’ll be forced to reassess whether we’re even able to remain the security provider of last resort for a ‘troubled neighbourhood’ by the possibility future crises could overwhelm our ability to respond. That question may gain significance as PNG’s population climbs towards 15 million in 2030 and up to 30 million by 2050, for example. Others, however, would argue its more helpful to focus on opportunities than glass-half-full risks, with the region in better shape than at any point since strife re-emerged in Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands, Fiji saw a fourth coup, and rioters torched Tonga’s capital nine years ago.
For me, as causes for serious concern remain, and the very trends fixing our attention on global worries could raise the cost of regional problems, we don’t have an either/or choice to focus on nearby or distant challenges. It’s not an option to ignore potential disorder nearby, as it would be difficult to be more active further afield while facing potential disorder in our approaches. We’ll retain a strong interest in, and considerable capacity to promote, stability close to home and respond to contingencies. As John Howard and Alexander Downer concluded in finally deciding, against official advice, to rescue Solomon Islands in 2003, there’s no exit strategy from our own region: a failed state on our doorstep will jeopardise our own security, so it’s worth paying some premium for regional leadership. Accepting the continuing relevance of a POE wouldn’t imply it’s our sole operating environment if we shift toward a region-first-but-not-only stance. But if we need to acquire weapons for high-end coalition ops outside the POE, that shouldn’t be at the expense of equipment to lead potentially difficult missions where the ADF’s most likely to have to work.
Given the potential severity of future crises, the trick will be to prevent them arising in the first place or to de-escalate them earlier-on, so we don’t have to lead further costly, risky, and protracted interventions. Of course that’s far easier said than done. But it shouldn’t be impossible, even in a tight budgetary setting. For some possible first steps, click here.
Status quo Australia versus revisionist Fiji
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’s in, who’s out, and who decides.
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’s Supremo.
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 ‘Pacific Way’. 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’s revisionist agenda would be to redefine regionalism so that Australia isn’t part of the South Pacific. In this revision, New Zealand would also be expelled—Canberra and Wellington would become powerful outsiders, not natural insiders. Read more
France in the Pacific: ambiguity and ambition
Australia’s approach to France in the South Pacific oscillates between fear and forgetfulness.
The fear moments have marked some notable points in Australian history. The fear of what the French were up to in the region was one of the external factors that produced a highly unusual moment—when the six Australian states managed to agree on something big, the creation of the Commonwealth. Another notable fear moment was the frenzy of Francophobia which surged through Australia in the 1970s during the French nuclear tests in the South Pacific.
The wrangle with France caused a boycott of all things French—and produced one of the great Gough Whitlam stories, as recounted by Geoff Barker. The editor of The Age, Graham Perkin, with Geoff in tow, travelled to Kirribilli House for lunch with the Prime Minister. As the meal began, several bottles of French wine were presented to Whitlam. ‘Jesus, Gough,’ expostulated Perkin, ‘you can’t drink French wine’. ‘Never fear, comrade’, replied Gough, ‘as it passes my lips it becomes Australian’. Read more
Defence deal with PNG sharpens our South Pacific focus
Coming just a week after the inaugural South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting in Tonga, Friday’s Australia–Papua New Guinea Defence Cooperation Arrangement helps cement the new Defence White Paper’s emphasis on security cooperation in our near neighbourhood.
The arrangement was signed during Julia Gillard’s first trip to PNG as prime minister—a visit aimed at updating trade, aid, education, police, immigration and other links as much as our defence ties.
The elevation of a defence deliverable Minister Smith would probably have enjoyed announcing himself (he’s driven this initiative and similar formal instruments with other partners), and its use in a prime ministerial visit not lacking other substance, helps signal the strength of the White Paper’s renewed focus on ‘the backyard’. Given PNG’s central place in the South Pacific, the deal showcases our commitment to regional security, stability and cohesion; gives concrete effect to deepening our strategic partnership with an important neighbour; and offers a possible centrepiece for region-wide joint training opportunities under the new regional exercise framework. Read more
Cyber in the Pacific Islands
Internet access in Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia is on the rise. That’s a good thing, but there are gaps in governance. It would be in Australia’s interests, and those of our friends and neighbours to help.
Mobile phones with 3G and 4G are rapidly spreading across the region (PDF)—around 60% of Pacific Islanders have access to one. In 2012, the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu announced that they would be undertaking an undersea fibre cable project to improve their internet connection. It is expected to be completed by the end of this year. Fiji is already connected to the Southern Cross Cable and enjoys good internet connection. These and other benefits also bring new cyber security challenges. Read more
The South Pacific ‘arc of opportunity’
I’ve previously written on The Strategist that it’s time for Australian policymakers and academics to see the South Pacific as an ‘arc of opportunity’, rather than an ‘arc of instability’ (PDF). That proposal was tested at an 8 February workshop at the Australian National University (ANU), which brought together two often separate communities: security and strategic thinkers on the one hand; development and governance thinkers on the other.
The overwhelming consensus was that it’s time to reframe Australian perceptions of the South Pacific to focus not only on the region’s challenges but also its potential. Professor Peter Leahy, Director of the National Security Institute at the University of Canberra, emphasised that the region sits across the ‘shoulders and flanks of approaches to Australia’, and therefore that securing it through supporting development offers an opportunity to make Australia more secure. Emeritus Professor Paul Dibb from the Strategic and Defence Studies at the ANU stressed that these efforts should focus on strengthening South Pacific states (PDF), reflecting the approach of the recent National Security Strategy.
His Excellency Charles Lepani, Papua New Guinea High Commissioner to Australia, argued that the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea should shift from one of ‘perceived dependence’ to one of ‘mutual respect’, in which Australia recognises Papua New Guinea’s trade, investment and other economic opportunities. James Batley, Deputy Director General of the Asia, Pacific and Program Enabling Group at AusAID, expressed confidence that the relationship between Australia and South Pacific states is improving and highlighted an emerging sense that Australia is working with the region as ‘partners’. Batley also argued that strengthening South Pacific states will involve new approaches to development at sub-national levels, including by working with communities and NGOs. Read more
The Pacific: from ‘arc of instability’ to ‘arc of opportunity’?
In 1999 Paul Dibb used the concept ‘arc of instability‘ to describe the security challenges facing the Pacific. The concept had its roots in the geographic school of strategic thinking, which holds that Australia’s main strategic priorities lie in its immediate neighbourhood, as unstable or weak Pacific states could pose a risk to Australia, particularly if they fall under the influence of a hostile power. Indeed, as Dibb argued in his 1986 Review of Australia’s Defence Capabilities (PDF), the Pacific ‘is the area from or through which a military threat to Australia could most easily be posed’.
The concept ‘arc of instability’ re-emerged after the September 11 terrorist attacks; at a time when Australia’s focus was shifting towards non-traditional security challenges. Australia became concerned about instability in the Pacific, in part influenced by a wider international discourse about the perceived threat posed by failing states, which it was claimed could become staging points for transnational criminals and terrorists. Australia saw itself as responsible for securing the Pacific through a series of interventions, aid programs and governance, military and policing assistance aimed at strengthening Pacific states.
But a lot has changed in the Pacific since then. The Australian stabilisation mission in Timor-Leste has finished its mission, and in 2013 the small military component of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (RAMSI) will return home, while its other components scale-back (although an Australian policing and governance presence will remain in the medium-term). Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste held relatively peaceful elections in 2012, and both appear to have formed fairly stable governments. The performance of the Solomon Islands government has improved, and the Vanuatu government now functions quite well. In 2012 the military regime that has been in place in Fiji since their 2006 coup confirmed that elections will be held in 2014, and created a Constitutional Commission to make a new constitution. So it’s timely to reflect on progress and prospects in the Pacific. Read more