BY THIAGO OPPERMANN
All of Australia's politicians — from Prime Minister John Howard to Greens senator Bob Brown — agree that the Solomon Islands is ripe for some tutelage. That state "failed" and "anarchy" reigns as "warlords terrorise" villagers, to use some of the obligatory words.
Comparisons will no doubt be drawn between this exercise and the intervention in East Timor in 1999. Whether that is a noble aspiration or an unfortunate return to yet another mystification is beyond the scope of this essay, but it bears noting that there is a markedly different rationale for the current adventure.
While John Howard would have us imagine him riding into Dili to safeguard the independence of the East Timorese, his explanation for sending troops into the Solomons is mostly grounded on a discourse of national self-interest. If we let the situation there fester, he suggested to the Sydney Institute, money laundering, drugs smuggling and terrorism will multiply. Helping the islanders comes as a beneficial side-effect — a feature of his discourse that has drawn some qualified criticism, namely that although intervention is in order, the prime minister has the Solomon's needs upside down. Yet, there is something very puzzling about this, since humanitarian rationales are in this case far more credible than those of national interest. In fact, the stated reasons for intervention border on the absurd, and that bodes terribly for everyone concerned.
Terrorism 'threat'
With the exception of money laundering, they are derivative of the US rulers' paranoias, for there is no signal whatsoever that there is terrorist activity in the Solomon Islands, at least not of the kind which worries Howard. So scarce is evidence that in a heroic effort to sell the PM's rationales to the public, Sydney's right-wing Sun Herald even suggested that the Solomons ought to be dealt with because there are terrorist training camps in West Papua. No mention that these are tolerated, if not incited, by Australia's Indonesian allies.
The confusion of lands two thousand kilometres and several hundred cultures apart should not surprise us. As Hugh White, head of the influential government-funded Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) think-tank pointed out on SBS's Dateline program, foreign policy cannot afford to have a basis on empirical facts. Reality must be pre-empted.
Up to a point that is as trivial as it is fair — it is wise to anticipate. However, elevated to the status of a basic principle, the doctrine of pre-emption corrodes the capacity for foresight. It comes to be that, instead of a reasoned argument, we have been given a rather overcooked theory — leave a state in chaos and international terrorists will burst from it like maggots from spoilt fruit. In the no less florid language of the ASPI report on Our Failing Neighbour, such a country becomes "a petri dish for transnational threats". The language of this intervention oscillates between patronising and infectious metaphors.
Unfortunately, the real world isn't so clear cut. While there is no doubt that international crime would rather lodge itself in a weak state, not all international criminals are terrorists, institutional weakness is not the only attractant for criminals and not all weak states come to harbour terrorists. In fact, only a minority of extremely poor countries become bases for international terror.
The argument regarding terrorism, in fact, joins a long list of dodgy applications of insights from other colonies to the Melanesian context. A closer observation of the rise of terrorism in Somalia and Afghanistan reveals a 30-year history of interventions, imperial games and the reliance on terrorists by the regional powers, none of which is reproduced in the Melanesian context, with the uncomfortable exception of Indonesian terror in West Papua.
Not only is incitement lacking, there are immense cultural differences between the Islamic regions and Melanesia. Al Qaeda feeds off Muslim frustration, and in the Solomon Islands there is much frustration but very few Muslims. With zero popular support, it seems, on the face of it, highly implausible that al Qaeda cells would find safe harbour in Malaita or Guadalcanal. They would probably be killed. As for the notion that the Solomon Islands are somehow a serious source of drugs, one might add that the notion of a war on drugs is silly enough as a simile. There is no sensible reason to make it an actual war. It is supremely unjust that another country must forfeit its already meagre sovereignty to satisfy Australia's incapacity to deal with a problem that is ultimately its to deal with.
Given the government's attachment to antique conceptions of demand reduction through abstinence that are wildly at odds with cultures of drug consumption, there is much to do in the home front before invading countries under pretext of exasperation. Then there is the matter of money laundering and financial swindles. In fact, the Solomon Islands scores well below Vanuatu in this regard — not surprisingly Vanuatu has been the first country, anywhere, to express concern at the new Australian policy. And that's not only because that country is the only south-western Pacific island nation with something like an independent foreign policy — from its perspective, the Australian gambit is a very clear signal.
That, indeed, it is — recklessly so, for the notion that a couple of thousand ANZACs are needed to safeguard financial institutions in a backwater beggars belief, and if this really were the justification it would be a scandal. It is striking that such motives are invoked. My immediate reaction to Howard's speech was to imagine that, again, a decision had been taken and the marketing department was left to clutch for public justifications, but the PM compulsively reaches for three badly crafted lies when one better truth is available.
The same government that suggested Iraq ought to be taken over because it was unbelievably dangerous and yet easily conquerable now tells us that an imploding society with plenty on its hands is a threat to this land. Tellingly, a vote by the Solomons government, judged to be a "part of the problem" by the ASPI paper, is now the source of legitimation for Howard's occupation force.
Perhaps there is a method to this apparent madness, though it is likely an accident.
The effect of the mishmash of phoney excuses is to make it virtually certain that should something go wrong, this or that piece of the puzzle will be retrospectively seen not to fit, and people will not bother looking to see if the picture made sense even if properly assembled.
Failing states
The Solomon Islands, it is true, is in deep trouble, as are the other south-western Pacific nations. There are chronic problems of economic underdevelopment, political disintegration, corruption and social upheavals that cannot be ignored. There is severe and worsening suffering. There is a time bomb, HIV, ticking away that could have catastrophic effects.It would be callous to object to efforts to help; it is however, in my opinion, even more callous to suggest that unless we take what the PM offers it must be judged that we desire the worst for our neighbours.
Those of us who work in the field have, over the years, become quite desperate about the increasing abnegation of responsibility by former colonial powers and donor countries. It has been evident to most that Melanesian states are largely artificial structures that require constant maintenance and many of us have pulled hair off our heads while already meagre resources have dried up and flimsy governments seemed to hang in mid air, and then, predicably, collapse.
So it comes naturally to think that at last relief is at hand. The PM, some will say, may have stupid reasons for sending the military into the Solomons, but at least he is doing something about it. We should hitch a ride. Odious as I believe such thinking is, it does have an advantage over oppositionist discourse that immediately projects onto the intervention the character of neocolonialism. The chief fault of such a reaction is the implicit suggestion that the former state of affairs was not neocolonialist.
It is not as if the Solomon Islands has much room to move, politically or economically. Twenty-four years of aid after the withdrawal of the British administration has left a tangled mass of strings. The formal economy, or what is left of it, is almost entirely owned by foreign interests. The country is heavily indebted, indeed technically bankrupt.
Part of the blame for this must be attributed to those in Canberra and London who approached independence as a cost-reduction exercise.
Perhaps it is true that with an Australian military presence, some responsibility for the mess will finally come to be apportioned to Australia. Consequently, it is not unimaginable that more resources will be available for the maintenance of the Melanesian state, even if it is kept in a condition of dependency or indenture. Yet, the prospects are dim. A serious and potentially very dangerous expedition is being joined under pretexts that are transparently manufactured. The troops go with unclear objectives and an endorsement by a compromised host government, simultaneously cited as the very reason for the intervention.
Very little new thinking is to be found among the marching drummers — the notion of facilitating emigration of islanders to Australia is anathema to a government in the grip of a lively race panic, though that would probably be beneficial if overpopulation really is one of the problems. Substituting grants for loans, and perhaps forgiving debt could allow the country to begin accumulating. Were it not captured by neoliberalism, Australia could use trade policy to encourage regional growth far more aggressively than it presently does.
These options would of course come at a cost to self, but it is one of the puzzling aspects of "humanitarian" interventions that they are usually pursued instead of more expensive and equitable solutions.
The military dimension is being added as a new layer of complexity, while the fact of the economic misery of the Melanesian nation receives lip service. Perhaps a little more aid. The military will be there to make sure it is well spent this time. These are dangerous illusions.
[Thiago Oppermann is a solidarity activist in Sydney.]
From Green Left Weekly, July 23, 2003.
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