Australia Network program Business Today segment that aired on Oct. 12 2011, interviews Australia's Parliamentary Secretary of the Pacific, Richard Marles, who touted Australia's vaunted big brother role in the Pacific region and Fiji. (Video posted below)
Lowy Interpreter blog post from Jenny Hayward Jones articulates the objectives about the Poll and artfully defends the methodology against the unfounded assertions.
During the interview, Richard Marles played up the rhetoric about Australia's role in the region (as routinely as a sales person pitching a product). However, Marles conveniently glosses over several unmentioned stains on Australian Foreign policy. Such sins of omissions only further illustrates the sincerity of Marles in seeking dissenting opinions on regional affairs, as well as pointing out the glaring holes in his own sentiments and shortcomings of the Government's foreign policy.
Among these sins that are rapidly eroding the image within the region of the RAMSI treaty and its creator, is outlined by a recent Black and Black post.
Another unmentioned area, in the Pacific, that escaped the attention of Marles; was the magnitude of effort and costs between Australia's over extended role in the foreign wars of Afghanistan and Iraq; when cross compared with regional priorities like the Tuvalu water shortage which is presently unfolding.
The Economist blog post, clarifies the dimensions of the water problem.
Kevin Rudd
"So how much is this bid costing Australia? Whatever it takes, apparently. Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd stated in an address to the Press Club in June this year: “The government’s view is simple—you’ve got to be in it to win it."
"So how much is this bid costing Australia? Whatever it takes, apparently. Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd stated in an address to the Press Club in June this year: “The government’s view is simple—you’ve got to be in it to win it."
Foreign Policy Journal (FPJ) article: Where America Goes, Australia Goes, especially on Afghanistan- highlighted the mounting costs in the expedition to nowhere:
Military deaths, Afghani deaths, billions of dollars, war-weary constituents, declining public support, and a lack of moral legitimacy means that both Australia and America need to exit Afghanistan now. As we know in Australia, as soon as American gets out, so will we. So why is the exit taking so long?The answer to question posed by the FPJ article, as it now appears has been answered equivocally by Australian Defense Minister, Stephen Smith, as reported in The Australian newspaper article:
Mr Smith reiterated that Australian special forces and instructors would stay on after 2014 to continue training and supporting the Afghans. He said it was important to send a message to the region that Afghanistan would not be abandoned and that there was a comprehensive development plan for the future.
NATO, the US and the international community generally must maintain their commitment to a long term strategic partnership with Afghanistan, Mr Smith said.With such a lengthy deployment of troops overseas, it is no secret that the costs of maintaining such an exercise, is simply unsustainable.
"Australia has made clear it expects to maintain a presence in Afghanistan after our current training and mentoring mission has concluded, potentially through institutional training, a special forces presence, military advisers, capacity building and development assistance."
Hillary Clinton on America's Pacific Century
"We are also making progress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which will bring together economies from across the Pacific -- developed and developing alike -- into a single trading community. Our goal is to create not just more growth, but better growth[...]
And the United States and Australia agreed this year to explore a greater American military presence in Australia to enhance opportunities for more joint training and exercises[...]
How we translate the growing connection between the Indian and Pacific oceans into an operational concept is a question that we need to answer if we are to adapt to new challenges in the region[...]
As those wars wind down, we will need to accelerate efforts to pivot to new global realities.
We know that these new realities require us to innovate, to compete, and to lead in new ways. Rather than pull back from the world, we need to press forward and renew our leadership.
In a time of scarce resources, there's no question that we need to invest them wisely where they will yield the biggest returns, which is why the Asia-Pacific represents such a real 21st-century opportunity for us.
"
"We are also making progress on the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which will bring together economies from across the Pacific -- developed and developing alike -- into a single trading community. Our goal is to create not just more growth, but better growth[...]
And the United States and Australia agreed this year to explore a greater American military presence in Australia to enhance opportunities for more joint training and exercises[...]
How we translate the growing connection between the Indian and Pacific oceans into an operational concept is a question that we need to answer if we are to adapt to new challenges in the region[...]
As those wars wind down, we will need to accelerate efforts to pivot to new global realities.
We know that these new realities require us to innovate, to compete, and to lead in new ways. Rather than pull back from the world, we need to press forward and renew our leadership.
In a time of scarce resources, there's no question that we need to invest them wisely where they will yield the biggest returns, which is why the Asia-Pacific represents such a real 21st-century opportunity for us.
"
Given the recent progress of the Carbon Tax, that just passed in Australia's lower House of Representatives, coupled with the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, are technically supposed to create such a windfall of taxes for Australia's treasury dept, and ultimately pay for these foreign entanglements.
US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, recently opined in Foreign Policy magazine article titled " America's Pacific Century":
As the war in Iraq winds down and America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States stands at a pivot point. Over the last 10 years, we have allocated immense resources to those two theaters.
In the next 10 years, we need to be smart and systematic about where we invest time and energy, so that we put ourselves in the best position to sustain our leadership, secure our interests, and advance our values.
One of the most important tasks of American statecraft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased investment -- diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise -- in the Asia-Pacific region.It appears that the opening sentence of Clinton's opinion article, does not exactly mesh with the Australia's Defense Minister's comments about the draw down in troops.
Three options are on the cards. Either, the U.S and Australia both pack it up. Or the US exits and Australia is holding down the Afghanistan fort. Or both nations (including other coalition members) stay indefinitely.
Odds are heavily on the latter choice, due to the strategic aspects of Afghanistan with respect to Eurasia and the discovery of rare earth mineral deposits in-situ.
One would think, if there was oil or minerals to covet in Tuvalu or other low lying Pacific islands; the water problem among others, would have been solved years ago.
Without a doubt, there is some degree in double speak on Clinton's part, when she points out the regional ambitions for the U.S:
The time has come for the United States to make similar investments as a Pacific power, a strategic course set by President Barack Obama from the outset of his administration and one that is already yielding benefits [...] We are also expanding our alliance with Australia from a Pacific partnership to an Indo-Pacific one, and indeed a global partnership. From cybersecurity to Afghanistan to the Arab Awakening to strengthening regional architecture in the Asia-Pacific, Australia's counsel and commitment have been indispensable.
It is geopolitics and the tools of statecraft that are being utilized in liberal proportions. Susan Merrell's article in October's issue of Island Business under girds such politics used and abused in the Pacific region.
The excerpt of Susan Merrell's article:
POLITICS: Courting the Pacific for a seat in UNSC Leaders meeting target of lobbying
Susan Merrell
Australia’s engagement with the Pacific is more a matter of national responsibility than national interest, said Lindsay Tanner, former Australian Federal Minister of Finance and Deregulation, during a keynote address in Sydney at an Australian Economic Summit last month.
The summit, hosted by the Australian public policy network Global Access Partners, included in its delegation senior public servants, members of Australian parliaments both state and federal, and industry captains. Amongst this milieu, no one challenged his statement.
“All of the South Pacific countries can fit into something the size of Brunei,” Tanner explained to justify his ‘our-national-interests’-lie-with-Asia stance’.This was an interesting comment as the summit only marginally post-dated the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) meeting in Auckland.
Were you to judge the importance of the Pacific by the stellar international cast assembled for its 40th occurrence you may be forgiven for thinking the Pacific was of considerable interest to most of the world.
There was a 50-member strong delegation from the US; there was the French Minister of State for Foreign and European Affairs, Alain Juppé (seems the Rainbow Warrior incident has been forgotten while maybe not quite forgiven); and Asia was well represented by, amongst others, both China and Taiwan.
There were new associate members present and more announced for next year and numerous and ever-increasing groups with observer status, including the United Nation—with the icing on the cake being the visit by the Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon. This year, more than in previous years, PIF was ‘bigger than Ben Hur’.
Ulterior Motives
But ‘national interest encompasses so much more than the economic terms that largely informed Tanner’s comment; like the bid for a seat at the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) that the current Australian government is vying for in 2013, in competition with Finland and Luxembourg. (Whether a place on the UNSC is indeed in the ‘national interest’ is a debate that needs to be saved for another time.)
In the voting, tiny Pacific nations, if a member of the United Nations, have the same weighting as larger, richer, more populous countries in the election of delegates to the UNSC—one member country, one vote.
With the advent of PIF, the Pacific nations were conveniently gathered in one place—sitting ducks for a spot of lobbying. (If you’re wondering why Australia is competing with the strangely dissimilar and geographically remote countries of Luxembourg and Finland, it lies in the fact that the entire Pacific falls under the category of Western Europe and Others.
Lobbying for votes could be why Luxembourg and Finland had their own representatives hovering around the periphery of the Auckland conference. All of this, hijacked and detracted from the core business of the Forum.
In this ‘lobbying’, Australia was an unashamed participant. Ban Ki-Moon, for example, was in the region as Australia’s guest. He will be a crucial player in whether Australia is successful with its bid.
The Secretary-General was flown around the Pacific in an RAAF aircraft to visit Kiribati and the Solomon Islands, in the company of the Parliamentary Secretary of the Pacific, Richard Marles, ostensibly to meet with government officials and to observe first-hand the effects of global warming.
But more than this, it was an opportunity, not lost, to showcase what Australia is achieving in the Pacific, guided by a chaperone with considerable vested interest. To this end, RAMSI’s headquarters in the Solomon Islands was also visited.
The cost to Australia of strutting the world stage in money and integrity
So how much is this bid costing Australia? Whatever it takes, apparently. Australian Foreign Minister, Kevin Rudd stated in an address to the Press Club in June this year: “The government’s view is simple—you’ve got to be in it to win it.”
And, as it will take more than just the votes of the Pacific to win the bid, Australia has been courting African votes too with pledges of aid (for example, an extra $10 million was pledged by Prime Minister Gillard for the Horn of Africa, bringing Australia’s contribution to $100 million, fourth largest in the world.)—or am I just being cynical?
The head of the conservative Lowy Institute’s Melanesian programme, Jenny Hayward-Jones in an article titled “Rudd neglects friends in the Pacific” is equally as cynical.
She asks what relevance Luxembourg has to a Melanesian Spearhead Group meeting (to which it was invited last March) and goes on to wonder whether that’s any stranger than Rudd speaking at the African Union? Where’s the interest?
It’s all about securing votes. Julian Moti, a constitutional lawyer and controversial former attorney-general of the Solomon Islands who is a strong critic of Australia’s role in the Pacific, seems to be in agreement with the far more conservative Hayward-Jones. Moti told the Fiji Sun: “It is the case of the pot calling the kettle black when Australia condemns the practice of corruption in the Pacific yet resorts to buying votes to secure a seat for itself in the UNSC by dispensing billions of dollars to Africa and the Pacific in aid funds.”
Strutting the world stage does have its costs and Australians do not bear them uncritically. While in the Solomon Islands, Marles was presented with a Solomon Sharks footy jumper in appreciation of the Australian government’s commitment to developing sports in Solomon Islands, in particular AFL with its Australian Sports Outreach programme and Australian Volunteer positions.
This is shaky territory for the Australian government, especially in light of the recent media attention about the failed 2022 bid to host the Soccer World Cup with allegations of improper AusAid involvement, bribery, corruption, and yes, buying of votes.
The UNSC lobbying is starting to feel a little like déjà vu. At what stage does lobbying becomes bribery?
“As noble as it [the dispensing of aid] might otherwise appear,” says Moti, “one cannot de-link Australia’s practice of sovereign charity from its national aspirations nor Rudd’s personal ambition to sit where H.V. Evatt once did.”
And all this raw ambition is impacting negatively on the Pacific Islands Forum that is threatening to be overrun by peripheral issues of the powerful.
Has the Forum gone beyond its original remit?
The Forum was set up as an offshoot of the South Pacific Commission (SPC) in 1947 to promote trade and development in the colonies. By 1971, the Pacific countries had created PIF, separate from SPC, so that they were able to debate political matters forbidden at SPC by the colonisers.
It was why, according to Moti, that “…there was an initial resistance to their [Australia and New Zealand’s] inclusion by the Forum’s founders.” They feared the continued domination of the bigger powers.
Now in 2011, President Anote Tong of Kiribati has noted the manifestation of this original fear. He told the press: “If you allow yourself to be bullied, then you shall be bullied.”And there is evidence that the less powerful are intimidated by the political might of the Australian and New Zealand delegations, even within the ranks of the influential Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG).
Immediately prior to the Pacific Islands Forum meeting, the MSG met in Nadi, Fiji. Fiji is still an active member of this group although suspended from the Forum. In a show of support for Fiji and solidarity with each other, there was only one member missing from the table and this was the Front de Libération Nationale Kanak Socialiste (FLNKS) of New Caledonia.
PNG and Solomon Islands sent their Prime Ministers and other government ministers; there were senior government representatives from Vanuatu as well as Commodore Bainimarama. Resolutions were passed including the MSG nomination of Ambassador Kaliopate Tavola of Fiji as the joint MSG candidate for the position of PIF’s next Secretary-General.
Nevertheless, facing New Zealand’s opposition at the Forum, they elected to take the path of least resistance and go with the crowd to unanimously vote in the incumbent, Tuiloma Neroni Slade of Samoa, for a further term.
The big powers had their way as they had with the continued suspension of Fiji. Why the MSG buckled is anyone’s guess—one I’m going to attempt to make.
The Melanesia/Pacific Way
In my dealings in Melanesia, I’ve often been frustrated by the locals’ distaste for confrontation. Seemingly unable to say “no”, an agreement is often made that is never intended to be acted upon.
Could this be what’s happening to the 2005 PIF Agreement?Each member of the PIF (16 of them) signed the latest agreement in 2005. However, to-date, only 8 have ratified it.
Ostensibly, the agreement is much the same as the one from 2000 except the ‘Secretariat’ has been replace by ‘Forum’ and the ‘Secretary General’ replaced by the ‘Secretariat’. Also included in the new agreement is that the ‘Forum’ is “established as an international organisation.”
It seems the Forum is becoming more legalistic whereas originally it was a far more loose association.
It may be that some of the members are wondering just who these latest changes benefit and are reluctant to take this final step. I may be wrong, perhaps eight countries have just overlooked the ratification—but for six years?
And while the Pacific Islands Forum leaders have “…reaffirmed their strong and unanimous support for Australia’s candidature for the UNSC for the term 2013-2014…”, maybe their votes are another manifestation of that apparently not unique aforementioned syndrome.
For while tallying the promised and possible votes for Australia for the seat on the UNSC, a Sydney Morning Herald opinion columnist warned: “Some of Australia’s existing commitments will undoubtedly fall through,”—“victims of the ‘‘rotten lying bastards’’ syndrome, as Australia’s former UN ambassador Richard Butler once put it. Some countries pledge support simply to avoid the embarrassment of saying no. Others play double-games.” That sounds so Melanesian!
Other related SiFM posts on Pacific geopolitics.
Club Em Designs
