Islands of Neglect

Abstract

Weak governance, widespread corruption, economic mismanagement, nsmg crime, and violent ethnic conflicts are undermining the stability of the island nations of the South Pacific. As some countries assume the status of Somalialike 'failed states', the formerly benign South Pacific islands represent a growing threat to regional security. This process has been hastened by the lack of attention to the region's problems by traditional powers like the United States, Australia and New Zealand. Now, rising Asian powers like China and Taiwan - which have important diplomatic, economic and strategic interests in the region - are moving to fill the vacuum created by the weakness of the region's states and their debilitating internal conflicts. The facts of these internal conflicts are grim. Over the past year, there has been a coup in Fiji, followed two weeks later by the overthrow, at gunpoint, of the Solomon Islands government and a bloody civil war between rival ethnic militias. There has also been insubordination by the disciplined forces in Vanuatu, the assassination of a cabinet minister in Samoa, and growing criminal influence in 'rnicrostates' like Nauru and Tuvalu. In March 2001 the region's largest country, Papua New Guinea, saw a short-lived uprising by elements of the Defence Force against their own government as part of a pay dispute. The region is also mired in sub-standard economic performance. In fact, the South Pacific is on a par with sub-Saharan Africa in its per capita GDP, literacy and schooling rates, public health statistics and, ominously, in its lack of economic opportunity for young job seekers. What underlying forces are driving this 'Africanization' of the South Pacific region? Show more