[Special guest blogger Phil Howison of Pacific Empire brings us his second installment introducing Oceania’s geography for our Oceania Day series. Enjoy! — YH]

Last week I wrote:

But by the 1980s, it was clear that the region was no longer entirely peaceful… Democracy appeared to be weakening, and one academic warned of “Africanisation,” forecasting a dark future for Oceania.

...Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand are increasingly concerned with maintaining security in their Pacific backyard, fearing an influx of refugees, transnational crime and even terrorism from the “arc of instability”.

With that in mind, lets take a closer look at these influential concepts…

“Arc of instability”

The term “arc of instability” was first used to describe the region in 2000, following another attempted coup in Fiji – this time not bloodless – a civil war and coup in the Solomons, and international intervention in East Timor following Indonesian-sponsored militia violence. Since then, the idea has informed Australian policy towards the region, contributing to the negative “neo-colonial” perception of Australia among some regional leaders.

The idea has justified several regional interventions, in East Timor, the Solomons, Bougainville, Port Moresby and recently Tonga. Most of these were fairly successful, and have been accomplished with very few casualties. However the Solomons and East Timor have seen several resurgences of violence, even after intervention, while Papua New Guinea mounted a successful legal challenge to the presence of Australian police officers, and – despite unprecedented gang violence in the capital – they were sent home.

Curzon recently posted on how instability spreads. Just a few dozen guns or a few million in bribes in the right hands can be enough to bring down a government, due to the small size and poverty of most Pacific island states, making them almost uniquely easy to destabilize.

“Africanisation of the South Pacific”

These terms have been criticized for being alarmist and exaggerated. Perhaps the most extreme view was Ben Reilly’s November 2000 paper, The Africanisation of the South Pacific (.pdf). As the name suggests, Reilly compares the problems of the Pacific to sub-Saharan Africa. But despite all the criticism, events of the last seven years have hardly weakened Reilly’s argument.

According to Reilly, a professor at the Australian National University, there are four major features of African conflict which we can now see in Oceania:

1. Civil/military tensions: For example, coups in Fiji (1987, 2000) and the Solomons (2000), along with mutinies in Papua New Guinea (the Sandline affair) and Vanuatu (1997). Since Reilly wrote, there has been another coup in Fiji and further mutinies in PNG (2001, 2002 etc).
2. Ethnic conflict mixing with competition over natural resources: The Bougainville war, 2000 Fiji coup, and the Solomons civil war all revolved around ethnic conflict over resources. Since then, anti-Chinese riots in the Solomons, protests against corporate mining in New Caledonia and tensions in PNG and West Papua have threatened further ethnic conflict.
3. Weak governance: Political parties are unstable and focused on identity rather than ideology. Political institutions tend to be weak compared to traditional, tribal or religious institutions. This is perhaps most apparent in PNG.
4. Increasing use of the state to gain wealth and exploit resources: Corruption is endemic in many Pacific states, and the problem is exacerbated by the limited private-sector opportunities. This can be linked to traditions in some Pacific cultures of showing respect to leaders by giving generous gifts. This is the case in Samoa, for example, where a dispute over lucrative corruption led to the assassination of a Cabinet minister in 1999. A New Zealand MP of Samoan origin, Taito Phillip Field, is involved in an unprecedented corruption case involving alleged bribe-taking – the first such case in NZ history.

Clearly, these four trends have continued, although the comparison to Africa remains somewhat exaggerated.

“Arc of Instability” and “Africanisation” are both important in understanding security concerns in the Pacific. They have inspired several interventions by Australia and NZ, and are reflected in aid and assistance packages. While this has resulted in accusations of “neo-colonialism” and “imperialism,” most Pacific states admit that there is a need for international involvement to prevent conflict, as demonstrated by the Pacific Forum’s 2000 Biketawa Declaration which provided member states for the first time with a mechanism to request assistance.

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