Michael Powles: Political solutions best for the islands

What little Pacific news we get has naturally focused on the Solomon Islands lately and on the need for a regionally approved police and military deployment. Intensely difficult decisions have been required.

Sensibly, Wellington has moved with extreme caution. It has waited to ensure that parliamentary as well as Government requests have come from Honiara (to the extent that they mean much in the Solomons today), and also that the deployment will have regional endorsement, through the Pacific Islands Forum and the involvement of Pacific countries as well as Australia and New Zealand.

There's been recognition, too, that an immediate deployment will achieve little if it is not followed by major economic reconstruction. Apparently, at least some development assistance decisions have been taken with that in mind.

Equally sensibly, the Government, while properly endorsing Australia's responsible decision to be prepared to act over the Solomons, has said nothing in support of the development of a broader doctrine - sometimes called a Pacific Doctrine, sometimes a Howard Doctrine - which the Australians seem to argue should apply beyond the Solomons.

But what does lie beyond the Solomons? More states waiting to fail, as the doctrine suggests? Or is the doom and gloom emanating particularly from Australia a little exaggerated? (One could be forgiven for wondering if Polynesian and Micronesian Pacific countries still existed, such has been the focus on one or two countries of Melanesia.)

For sure there are serious corruption and governance problems in several countries. But even a quick look at the different individual circumstances of Pacific Island countries beyond the Solomons shows the fallacy of the assumption that some kind of intervention doctrine is needed for the wider Pacific.

The major countries of Melanesia, with the Solomons, are Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. In Papua New Guinea there are clearly serious problems in parts of the country. But government has not broken down and there is not the national anarchy evident in the Solomons.

Nor is there any likelihood that a PNG Government would invite back its former colonial power, Australia, to fix problems which some people believe could have been helped more before independence.

Vanuatu, too, has had problems but there is little similarity to the situation in the Solomons.

Further east, Fiji, of course, has had its coups but there is no serious suggestion that the Government, elected in a United Nations and Commonwealth-endorsed election in 2001, is not in charge.

Constitutional issues of importance remain, but together with an elected Government, Fiji also has a Judiciary and a human rights commission that operate independently of the Government.

Ethnic tensions continue and could flare again, but intervention from overseas is likely to be neither sensible nor practicable and no serious observers suggest otherwise.

So we are left with the countries of Polynesia and Micronesia, for whom an intervention doctrine seems even less appropriate.

Samoa is widely regarded as doing better economically than it ever has, and continues to have a stable democratically elected Government.

Tonga's Government controversially continues to disregard accepted constitutional processes in some areas, and there continue to be reports of dramatic governmental mismanagement. As a result there must be some uncertainty about the future.

But these issues tend to obscure the existence of a stable and largely cohesive society beginning to grapple with notions of constitutional change - hardly a candidate for intervention, according to any kind of doctrine.

Then there are the smaller states of Tuvalu, the Cook Islands and Niue. All are grappling with difficult development challenges but are stable and cohesive and surely equally unlikely candidates for intervention.

In Micronesia, Nauru is not faring at all well in facing its unique challenges - brought about partly by misuse of accumulated revenue from phosphate exports - but part of the background is also phosphate payments by Australia and New Zealand which many believe to have been inadequate. More direct economic aid with financial management expertise would obviously be preferable to intervention.

Overall, the picture is of Pacific Island states grappling more or less successfully with the challenges that all small states have to survive in a globalised world. These challenges are seriously compounded by isolation, distance from markets, and the economic disadvantages of small size.

They are all grappling, too, again more or less successfully, with making Western political institutions work in alien environments.

So where does that leave an intervention doctrine for the whole region? Surely the better course is to deal as necessary, and as requested, with particular problems which arise. Essentially that seems to be the New Zealand approach in the Solomons.

More generally, an increasing number of observers believe that what the region needs is significantly increased political co-operation between Governments. Unfortunately, the promotion of a region-wide intervention doctrine does little to help the mutual goodwill that is necessary to underpin increased political co-operation.

Leaders meeting in Auckland next month at the Pacific Islands Forum will be aware of these calls from various quarters - a former New Zealand Prime Minister, at least one Australian academic, and journalists - for much closer political collaboration between Pacific countries as the best way both of avoiding the worst problems emerging in the region and providing a more secure foundation.

But there is little chance of these ideas being viewed favourably in the present atmosphere. The possible threat to national sovereignty that is implicit in any region-wide intervention doctrine can only delay closer political co-operation.

* Michael Powles is the chairman of the Pacific Co-operation Foundation, which is funded by the Government and private interests to promote the Pacific. It was launched in Wellington last night.