KEY POINTS:
The deaths of a pilot and an SAS trooper in the Black Hawk helicopter crash off Fiji on Wednesday sent two sharp - but very different - messages.
The first, to Australians, was a reminder their forces are almost constantly at work and in danger in an immediate neighbourhood that is becoming ever more volatile.
The second, to Pacific Islanders, was confirmation Australia is not only the major power in the region, but also one that is increasingly ready to intervene when trouble erupts.
Unless invited by a legitimate government, Canberra will not use military force - but has no hesitation in wielding a large diplomatic and economic cudgel.
And while the guided missile frigate and two other navy ships steaming slowly off Fiji are there to evacuate Australians in the event of a violent coup, there is the underlying message of real muscle - recognised in warnings against armed intervention by Fiji's military leadership.
Dr Malcolm Cook, programme director for Asia and the Pacific at the Lowy Institute for International Policy, says Canberra has been increasingly sensitive to the fate of its nationals since criticism of its tardy evacuation of Australians from Lebanon.
And, as in the recent crisis in East Timor, the Navy was dispatched well ahead of time to ensure Canberra could move when it had to.
"But, especially in the Fiji case, I'm sure people have deep suspicions about gunboat diplomacy," he said.
If Australia's guns are silent, however, its diplomatic rhetoric is set on rapid fire.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer has almost been talking up a coup, warning for the last fortnight that the military was about to take over and repeating, at every opportunity, his belief that Commodore Frank Bainimarama has not only the will but the absolute power to oust Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase.
In contrast to Wellington's much lower-key approach, Downer has also been warning that if Qarase falls to a coup, Fiji will again be expelled from the Commonwealth, it will become a regional pariah and its economy will be devastated.
Canberra has the ability to do much of that itself, should it wish to. In addition to important military links, Fijian exports worth more than A$600 million ($692 million) a year are given concessional entry to Australia, and almost 40 per cent of its imports are from Australia.
Canberra is also a key player in attempts to revive Fiji's flagging textile, clothing and footwear industry, second only to tourism in economic importance.
And tourism, Downer warns, would be as flattened as it was after the previous coups. About 35 per cent of Fiji's tourists are Australian.
"I would think that with the strong language [Downer] is using, messages are certainly being sent by Australia," Cook said.
"The Australian Government sees it has a role in ensuring - as much as a foreign power can - political stability in each country of the region. Australia would see a coup as an unacceptable outcome."
A chain of failed states on its doorstep is a nightmare for Canberra.
It sees crumbling Pacific states not only as basket cases vacuuming vast sums of money from Australia, but also as potential bases for terrorism and trans-national organised crime.
In response, the Pacific has moved sharply up the policy agenda, matched by increasing engagement both in cash terms - aid has effectively been doubled - and in a broad span of resources ranging from experts and administrators to the machinery of government. But Australia has also been waving a big stick.
Its aid is tied to good governance and the open threat that it will continue only if its standards are met: effectively, island states must work towards rules set by Canberra.
When Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands began bucking at Australian intervention, and gave sanctuary to Julian Moti, an Australian lawyer of Fijian-Indian extraction wanted on child-sex charges, the stick came crashing down.
Prime Minister John Howard is unrepentant, calling Canberra's tough love in the Pacific a "robust" approach.
But it is also an approach that has inflamed passions in the Pacific. Australia is frequently attacked as an arrogant neocolonialist.
Cook notes Canberra has also been accused of taking sides in the internal disputes of sovereign nations, most recently by Fiji and Tonga and previously by PNG and the Solomons.
"This kind of greater focus on regional stability means that Australia, by definition if not by choice, is getting itself much more deeply involved in the internal politics of these countries," Cook said.
"That's potentially opening up a Pandora's box.
"[The island states] are presenting Australia's interest in political stability as oppressive and, while I don't think that's true, by committing itself and being the regional stabiliser of first resort it's going to open itself up to those kinds of criticisms."
