Preventing a South West Pacific ‘shatterbelt’

The South West Pacific is at risk of becoming a shatterbelt, and military and political strategists would do well to acknowledge the region’s challenges and sources of potential division, writes Ben Morgan.

This is the Pacific’s century, the focus of world affairs pivoting towards the region. It’s an era that could see either great prosperity coming to the region or some parts of the region descending into chaos.

In particular, the South West Pacific (SWP), a sub-region including Melanesia, Oceania and Polynesia, possesses a range of existing risk factors, with recent economic, social and political trends contributing to these.

Renowned geopolitical theorist Professor Saul Cohen characterised ‘shatterbelts’ as strategicallypositioned regions that are deeply internally divided and caught between the conflicting interests of great powers.

This article argues that the SWP’s currently benign security environment is at risk, and that it is in the interests of all states within the region to acknowledge this risk and to take action to mitigate it. The potential consequences of failing to do so could be the descent of the region into instability and its becoming a 21st century ‘shatterbelt.’

What makes the SWP a risky place?

Beyond the postcard images of tropical beaches, there exist a range of complex factors that increase the region’s risk of instability.

The first, is that its member states tend to be small, relatively new nations. Many were recently colonised, and are now working hard to build new post-colonial state institutions.

A slow process exacerbated by the region’s poverty. With few resources available for governance, security or stability, most SWP nations have struggled to maintain governance systems and the rule of law, with some local militaries cross traditional lines of control, interfering in politics:

• Timor Leste . A very new nation, that has suffered political violence requiring Australian and New Zealand military intervention to reassert the rule of law in 2006.

• Papua New Guinea. A nation that suffers from inter-tribals wars, piracy and unstable government. The 1997 Sandline Affair involved direct conflict between the elected government and the military over the employment of mercenaries to fight in Bougainville. More recently, in 2012, the army mutinied in a dispute over pay and conditions.

• Solomon Islands. Descended into civil war in the early 2000s and until 2017 has required military interventions by other Pacific nations to re-assert the rule of law, including a surge of additional Australian and New Zealand soldiers and police in 2006 to stop politically inspired rioting in the capital.

• Vanuatu. In 1996 the country’s military abducted the Prime Minister over a pay dispute. Recently the nation has seen rapid changes in political leadership.

• New Caledonia and French Polynesia . French Pacific colonies that have a long history of political violence as their indigenous peoples seek independence. In the late 1980s New Caledonia’s issues resulted in armed insurrection, and this year the island was subjected to violent political riots.

• Tonga . The nation’s capital Nuku’ alofa experienced political riots in 2006 requiring military intervention by Australia and New Zealand.

• Fiji . A nation with a history of political instability, including military coups in 1987, 2000 and 2006.

Geography also contributes to the SWP’s risk of instability. Rugged and dispersed island terrain presents challenges to the imposition of state authority. Road access is often limited, making regular surveillance and responding to threats quickly difficult. Recent violence in Papua New Guinea is a case in point , with inter-tribal fighting and violence escalating quickly in remote, mountainous, hard to reach areas. Additionally, the region’s complex geography presents opportunities for illegal activity to be conducted far from the eyes of government. Recent increases in the Pacific’s drug trade are influenced by the ability for traffickers to set up large operations in remote areas. This aspect of the region’s geography also makes it suitable for the waging of insurgent war.

New challenges

In addition to these factors, the SWP currently faces a set of additional security challenges that may contribute to the region collapsing into a divided and dangerous area:

Challenge 1 – Unexpected wealth

Money is pouring into the SWP – from legal both legal and illegal sources. The first and most wellknown legal source is foreign aid. China, the US and others competing for access to the SWP are willing to use aid money to influence local politics, delivering projects and providing finance for economic development.

As significant as it is, this income may be dwarfed by new