Scholar tackles Pacific conflicts

By Craig DeSilva

For Saipan Tribune

HONOLULU, Hawai’i (PIDP/CPIS) — A scholar of the Pacific Islands addressed a roomful of University of Hawai’i students this week at the East-West Center regarding the political and social unrest plaguing the region.

The talk by Dr. Gerard A. Finin, a fellow at the EWC’s Pacific Islands Development Program, was based on a working paper entitled “Coups, Conflicts, and Crisis: The New Pacific Way.”

Finin co-authored the paper with University of Hawai’i Pacific Islands Studies professor Dr. Terence A. Wesley-Smith in June following the May 19 coup in Fiji.

“We were prompted to write this paper by the coups themselves and the hostage taking in Fiji and the different kind of coup in the Solomon Islands,” Finin said.

“The main reason why we wrote the paper was to argue that the media characterizations of the situation were at best simplistic and perhaps at worst plain wrong. It was not just a case of ethnicity breaking out all over, but there were some deeper underlining currents that deserved attention,” he said.

Although many people may be unaware of the Pacific Islands, the region consists of one-third of the globe, Finin noted.

Melanesia makes up the largest population and land area. Melanesia contains Papua New Guinea, the largest country in this grouping, with three-fourths of the population and land area of the entire Pacific Islands region.

Finin noted that most Pacific Island nations gained independence during the 1970s and 80s. Palau was the last Pacific Island nation to gain independence, which occurred in the mid-1990s.

“In this respect, they’re relatively young,” Finin said.

Unlike some other parts of the world, nationhood for Pacific Island countries did not come after long and bloody wars of liberation, he added.

“In my own view, the type of nationalism found in the Pacific is quite different,” he said. “Some might say weaker – that may be debated – than that found in parts of Southeast Asia.”

The Pacific region has relied on foreign aid, which has come in large quantities from Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and France.

“It was at a level that was really quite remarkable in terms of the per capita types of investments that were made, rivaling only countries like Israel and Egypt,” he said.

Aid rapidly declined after the Cold War and for the first time many Pacific Island nations faced restructuring, downsizing, and economic hardship, he said.

One of the challenges in the Pacific today involves nation building and national coherence in places where boundaries were conceived by colonial powers, he said.

“Fiji’s traditional confederacies, for example, tend in many ways to undermine the idea of a single indigenous Fijian people. Old and new structures of governance. . .( are) not always melding easily with western forms of governance,” Finin said.

Although the ali’i system of governance has disappeared in Hawai’i, certain traditional forms of government still exist elsewhere in the Pacific. For example, the chiefs in Samoa, Tonga, and Fiji still play significant roles in island politics, he noted.

But perhaps the most controversial and sensitive issue in the Pacific involves land ownership.

“This is a key element in the current crisis facing both Fiji and the Solomons,” he said.

Globalization has affected Pacific Island society, such as global sugar and copra prices. Also, international development agencies have increasingly been demanding restructuring with layoffs and downsizing of government, he said.

Finin listed several propositions about the Pacific Islands region that currently are topics of debate among scholars and policy-makers:

• Most Pacific Islands are inherently too small and lack resources to survive long term as nation states. It was the massive infusion of aid by metropolitan powers – such as Japan, Australia and the United States – that have kept the Pacific Islands afloat.

• Recent events in Fiji and the Solomons are the beginning of a domino-like pattern that will continue. The best thing an island nation can do is negotiate a sub-servant status with a metropolitan power.

• There’s nothing unique about the Pacific Islands as compared to nations in the Caribbean and Indian Ocean. “These are normal growing pains that can be remedied through support of outside metropolitan powers,” he said. “It’s conceivable that some island nations will in time break up into smaller entities.”

• The current and future problems of the Pacific Islands are limited to Melanesia, which includes the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, New Caledonia, and Papua New Guinea. Micronesia and Polynesia do not face the same fundamental problems.

“There are some strengths but significant weakness to all of them,” he added.