Kelly is a harbinger

Pim Opinion

The Kiste-Herr Report begins by saying it is “a study in vulnerability,” and “a review of the potential for external influence” in the South Pacific.

While most of their attention is devoted to the risks of major-power intervention by the Soviet Union or its surrogates, the authors also look at the capacity for mischief in the region of organised crime and free-booting carpetbaggers.

They assume, as do most observers of Pacific affairs, that while Moscow might not have intrusion into the Pacific very high on its list of priorities, it is there, and will be acted upon whenever, and wherever, opportunity presents itself, either directly, or through some suitable surrogate. Such opportunity would depend, the authors suggest, on how Moscow saw the risk-benefit equation.

The answer to that depends very much upon the political climate in the Pacific, and that, in turn, will be governed, to a fair extent at least, by the manner in which the island countries are treated. Almost without exception the island countries are western-oriented and anti-communist. They are Christian with a devotion which puts many more advanced peoples to shame.

The report might have been the subject of some ill-mannered levity among untutored people in Washington (see accompany ing box), but it does appear to have performed as one of several blades wielded in Washington over the last six to 12 months to open some air-holes in the blankets of ignorance which existed there on the importance of US relations in the Pacific region.

Kiste and Herr were not exactly voices crying in the wilderness, for their commission came from the US State Department, and their support has also come from officers within that department who had been battling for years to get their views heard by the policymakers.

Clearly, the US Navy and its two recent commanders in chief, Pacific, have had their influence, too. As has also had, obviously, the Soviet’s deal with Kiribati, their continued wooing of Vanuatu and other small countries in need of income, and the huge expansion of their naval and air bases at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam.

Thus, better late than never, came Mr John H. Kelly, a courteous, senior, astute and very attentive diplomat of the US State Department. He spent most of December visiting just about every capital of the Pacific island countries, starting with Tahiti, and including along the way Australia and New Zealand.

In a world governed by brain-power (one is forced to avoid use of the word intelligence because of its connotation with spies and intrigue), and a genuine desire to improve the lot of the planet for all living things, rather than by politics, the measured conclusions Mr Kelly will reach would be used as guidelines for designing a coherent and constructive US policy for the Pacific.

At risk of appearing to favor benevolent dictatorship as a system of government we are forced to observe that it is an unfortunate aspect of the American domestic system that anything Mr Kelly or his department propose will have to run the gauntlet of the US Congress. In that body power lies not at the top, but among the ward-heelers in the grassroots. Lack of knowledge about the Pacific is not only monumental, but it exists alongside a carload of romantic misconceptions about the region, carried along on the tunes of Rogers and Hammerstein.

President Tabai, of Kiribati, earned some brickbats for signing his deal with the Soviet fishermen, and while he might have helped the American Tunaboat Association’s lobbyists in Washington by appearing to act like some “coconut republic commie boss” he probably in the end did more to wake up the US administration, and discomfort the “good ole boys” in Congress, than he did damage to regional security.

One readily concedes that the US has great call upon its resources, many critics both within and without (which is to say that it gets a lot of advice it doesn’t ask for from people who demand it be grateful for their gratuities), and a bureaucratic process at least as lugubrious as any now operating.

While the Americans have been unnecessarily obtuse on the Pacific, and deaf to their own experts, for too long, the Soviet Union is by no means top of the pops in the Pacific. They have been very careful in the Pacific, with their fishing boats and their cruise ships, but their record of dealing with the Third World has never ever been good, and their overall image in the islands is no exception. They are not trusted.

This is an asset of goodwill for the West which it would be a shame to see Congress fritter away in the lobbies and around the pork barrels, just as a region where they have enjoyed a fine reputation for many years is about to be hauled, unwillingly, but inevitably, into the age of super-power politics.

One prays, therefore, that Mr Kelly’s inquiries discover this fact, and that his report receives earnest, swift,and favorable response.