Tom Orsag
Since the official end of the war in Iraq, Australia, the former British colonial settler-state, has gone on to send troops and police to recolonise parts of the South Pacific, its so-called backyard.
Prime Minister John Howard is US President George Bush's only loyal ally in the southern hemisphere. Around 800 Australian troops remain in Iraq. A new US troop base in Australia is being discussed as the US finds its military forces unwelcome in Okinawa and South Korea.
In July, Howard sent 2000 troops to the Solomon Islands, ostensibly to disarm "criminal gangs", "end corruption" and pre-empt "terrorists" gaining a foothold in islands more than 1000 kms from Australia.
The US, Britain and Australia have divided up large sections of the world into spheres of influence, with Australia literally "policing" the South Pacific. As Bush noted, when he visited here, Australia is a "sheriff" in the region.
Australia's foreign minister Alexander Downer met US Secretary of State Colin Powell in June to discuss this so-called "division of global responsibility". US deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage praised Australia for the Solomons "intervention" when he visited Australia in August.
Downer argued in a speech in November that "Australia is not just a middle power... We are a strong Commonwealth with about the 12th largest economy in the world... We are a considerable power".
Downer wants Australia to shrug off the "middle power" tag of the past and embrace the "interplay of national interests and global responsibilities".
Howard and Downer never tire of bleating that "the world expects us to look after our region" — "the world" meaning Western imperialism; Canberra's policy documents pinpoint one country — the US.
The day after 9/11, Howard was knocking on the White House door offering Australian "assistance". That led to Australia being involved in the inner planning of the US-led wars against Afghanistan and Iraq.
The real reason for Australia's adventure in the Solomons was that free-market capitalism has ravaged small Pacific nations. The Solomon Islands state fractured along ethnic lines, between Guadalcanalese and Malaitians, culminating in the June 2000 coup. This division was a direct result of the Asian economic crisis of 1997, as prices for the Solomons' main exports — timber and copra — collapsed.
As the lone regional power, Australia sees the only way to prop up the state machine in small Pacific countries is by using the reliable Australian military and police.
The prohibitive cost of extended military operations means the government is looking to create a highly mobile, regional riot police force, drawn from existing Australian police forces.
The other reason for the intervention was to counter Indonesia's offer, in April-May 2003, of troops to the Solomons.
Australia did nothing during the Solomons coup of June 2000 and oversaw a peace deal that entrenched the "ethnic divide" is Solomons' society and corruption in government. Indeed, Howard wants to work with the openly corrupt Solomon Islands PM Allan Kemakaza.
In August, Australia bullied the 16-member Pacific Islands Forum into making Howard's hand-picked candidate, Greg Urwin, the new PIF secretary-general, against PIF tradition of not having an Australian or New Zealander in the post. Howard hinted that Australian foreign aid would be withdrawn from the tiny island states if they did not do as they were asked.
With a "review" of the PIF and unspecified new powers, Urwin will be more aggressive in pursuing Australia's economic and strategic interests in the region.
Australian government documents talk of a Pacific Union, modelled on the EU, with the Australian dollar becoming the regional currency. An openly talked about bonus for Australia from a Pacific Union is the cheap labour the islands can provide for northern Australian agribusiness.
In December, Australia announced that its police and public servants were to run Papua New Guinea's police and administration. Australia was PNG's colonial master until 1975.
Australia will force through the loss of 50,000 state sector jobs in PNG — two-thirds of the state sector work force. This will be a disaster in a country in which half the employed people work in the state sector.
Australian Federal Police will be stationed around key areas of Australian economic interest: Port Moresby, the capital city and home of expatriate capital, and the remote Australian-owned gold and copper mines, which include Panguna and Porgera.
As the former colonial power, Australia was well placed to use the blackmail of "aid" withdrawal to bully the PNG government to "agree" to all this. Australia provides the PNG government with 20% of its revenue each year via this "aid".
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, the ruling-class think-tank document that justified these imperialist interventions also lists Vanuatu as a "failed state" like the Solomon Islands and PNG.
In an interview on Australian TV in July, Serge Vohor, Vanuatu's foreign minister and deputy PM, outlined Australia's prior interference in Vanuatu's internal affairs.
Vanuatu achieved its own independence in the late 1970s from France and Britain, and has had a record of pursuing an independent foreign policy thereafter.
The newspeak of "failed states" is a US foreign policy buzzword for small states ravaged by the free market and whose state machines are weak or have been fractured in the process.
Pacific island states are weak due to the legacy of British, French and Australian imperialism. Today, as "donor countries", London, Paris and Canberra — backed by Washington — enforce the diktats of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank on those states.
PNG, in particular, was held in "backwardness" by Australia, which has only sought to plunder its resources and use its people as slave labour in PNG and Australia. To this day, PNG oil and gold are refined in Australia, not PNG.
Whether Vanuatu becomes the next victim of Australia's predatory imperial plans remains to be seen. Vanuatu is less beholden to Australia than the Solomons and PNG, and if the people of Vanuatu force the government to hold firm, they may prevent an Australian intervention.
What is certain, however, is that as long as the Australian left remains wedded to a particularly virulent form of "left nationalism", with ideas that regard the South Pacific as "our backyard", it will hold back a movement developing against this local imperialism.
"Securing" the South Pacific for Western imperialism delivers Bush the ability to look further north to North Korea and China, where future war looms.
To oppose Australia's plans in the South Pacific is to oppose Bush's plans for the world.
[Tom Orsag is a member of the Socialist Alliance and the International Socialist Organisation.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 25, 2004.
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