Reds Under

The Reef

By lan Williams

Robert Burns, the Scots poet,

prayed, “Oh, would some

Power the giftie gi’ us, to see ourselves as others see us”.

Pacific people have an oppor tunity to see themselves as the American foreign affairs estab lishment see them in John C.

Dorrance’s book, The United States and the Pacific Islands.

While the State Department often has a body of expertise on international relations, its policies can be and often are derailed by vociferous domestic lobbies, whether commercial, military or political. Such influences thrive in the absence of public interest in the region in question, and ordinary Am ericans are notoriously uncaring indeed ignorant about the rest of the world. Even more than in other parts of the globe, this is true of the Pacific where, paradoxically, the US probably has more power than anywhere else.

During World War 11, the islands were newspaper head

lines as Allied troops leap-frogged their way towards Japan. Out of the headlines, they dropped out of public awareness except when they were illumi nated by the glare of nuclear test programs in the fifties. “There are only 90,000 people out there. Who gives a damn!” Dorrance quotes Henry Kissinger saying of the Micronesian trust territories when he was National Security Ad viser. Up to 1990, only

three Pacific specialists had been trained in the State Department and none of them was being used.

However, John Dorrance was one of the few specialists on the region before he died in early 1991. As such, he fought against what he termed the US’s “benign neglect” of the Pacific islands. He died before this study was completed, and so the text was adjusted by someone else who left anomalies like a discussion of the possibility of UN membership for the Marshalls and FSM, 15 months after they had successfully obtained such membership.

Dorrance’s point of view is strangely flawed. He sees facts clearly, but his analysis bears little relation to them. In his analysis of the motives of island leaders he is quick to see “Soviet inspried,” “leftist” or “pacifist” outside inlfuences at work when there is disagree

‘Most island states have little or no potential for economic development that promises future self sufficiency; they are probably permanently depen dent on aid.’

ment with Washington’s whims. Such paranoia sits strangely in a book which chronicles the US’s sins of omission and commission quite diligently, and thus gives quite rational, and local reasons for Pacific islanders not to confuse Uncle Sam with Father Christmas. For ex ample, Dorrance points out the US’s refusal for years to agree to a fishing agreement; the refusal to sign the Treaty of Rarotonga, the tacit approval of French nuclear

testing, the huge arrears to SOPAC and so on.

He makes it plain the American interest, intermit tent though it is, has never been that altruistic. From a

strategic point of

view the islands, as in the War, straddle the Pacific basin, which is now an economic

powerhouse rival

ling the old trade routes of the Atlan

tic. The air and sea routes which pass the islands now account for half of American foreign trade. However, he tends to see things as he would like, rather than as they were. His vision of the US role does not, for example, mention the overthrow of independent Hawaii by US marines.

In more contemporary times, he men tions the Indonesian threat to Australia and Papua New Guinea, without even a passing reference to East Timor, and the US role there. In discussing Palau, he skips the sordid tale of IPSECO and the power station which has saddled the Palauans with a massive foreign debt and in which several friends of the White House were closely implicated.

However, he accurately lists the prob lems of the region “Most island states have little or no potential for economic development that promises future self sufficiency; they are probably perma

nently dependent on aid.” All arr exceptionally vulnerable to world prices for energy and food and they have sorm of the world’s highest youth suicide rates high rates of alcoholism, as well a j internal problems of ethnicity, ano economics and, of course, he adds “vulnerability to external mischie makers.”

Despite references to problems witH conservative nobles in Tonga, and untii recently Western Samoa, not to mention the traditionalists in Fiji, he consider that ,“A major success...has been th« blending of Western democratic parliaj mentary institutions and values witH those of traditional cultures into goverm mental institutions that ensure, witH some exceptions, a level of democracy and human rights unmatched elsewhere in the Third World.”

He identifies what locals call “the Pacific Way” without ever using the term himself the need to win a consensus before a vote. But other traits can causo problems like the unique attachment to and trusteeship for the land that fuel:J conflict in Bougaineville, Palau, Fiji anc

Fiji’s parliament building: blending wes[?]

An American view of the Pacific

New Caledonia. He is equally critical of . American inattention as when he calls I “US policies inadequate in the face of i new challenges to old interests.” He points out that while island countries attach much importance to their rela ; tions with the US, they find their attention is not reciprocated. This, he concludes, leaves the field free to Austra lia and New Zealand in political and strategic terms, and Japan in economic investment terms. This conscious policy, he claims, ignores island leaders’ motives which see the US as a counterbalance to the regional superpower.

In addition he has noticed the locals are sensitive to threats to their sover eignty, but considers they are apt to see “mythical CIA and other activities ... promoted by US Australian and New Zealand leftists and peace groups and inadequately addressed by the Lhiited States” but then he goes on to suggest the Forum time its meetings to coincide with the ASEAN ministers meetings so the US Secretary of State can attend.

This may be a practical suggestion but in its unconscious assumption of superior ity, it tends to reflect exactly the same insensitivity he has documented so richly

in US/Pacific relations.

The credibility of his study is lowered by his own, even more pro nounced, tendency to see reds under every reef in the Pacific. “Much of their data can be traced back to Soviet disinformation,” he says of journalists working in the area, while he says of the World Council of Churches and its Pacific affiliate that their work "had the practical effect of Soviet surrogacy.”

In fact, as the major victims of nuclear w eapons since Nagasaki, islanders

have many sane eminently non ideological reasons for opposing the nuclear weapons programs in the region.

Indeed his constant invocation of shad owy pro-Soviet and Leftist external sources, tends to contradict his own more balanced judgments on the insensitivity of the nuclear powers. Neither dead nor red would have been a better summation of the views of most people in the region.

The list of suggestions for the future perhaps does not look forward far enough. One of his suggestions is the US should encourage Japanese economic investment and involvement in the region. In fact, there are few cases in history where such involvement has not been eventually matched by political and military clout so one does not have to consider old stereotypes of Japanese behaviour to consider that when Japan develops a more assertive role, there may well be room for conflict with the US.

The credibility of his study is lowered by his own, even more pronounced, tendency to see reds under every reef in the Pacific.

Japan has already floated the possibility

of membership of the South Pacific Commission. It is difficult to disbelieve the rumours that someone, deep in the Pentagon, is drawing up strategy and

plans for a future Japanese-US conflict, if only to mitigate the strategic unemploy ment caused by the end of the Cold War.

While reading this book to see what the Washington Security establishment thinks of them, Pacific islanders will also get an insight into the strange nature of American decision making in the region.

Dorrance's determi nation to see almost anyone who would not

go the whole way with the conservative policies of the Republican Administra tion as a Soviet stooge, is a throwback to the early fifties. However, he accurately suggests the end of the Cold War may see a lessening of interest in the region and hence fewer prospects for aid and serious co-operation. If he had lived, one wonders who would be getting the blame for future Pacific “dissidents.” Islamic Fundamentalists? □ The United States and the Pacific Islands by John Dorrance, is pub lished by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington

Dc. Isbn 0-275-94472, U 5514.95

available from CSISBOOKS, 1800 K Street, NW, @) 400, Washington DC,

20006, Usa.

Asalei Lave racy with traditional culture