When we think of the end of US global hegemony, it’s perhaps worth reminding ourselves that we are also talking about the decline of the global neoliberal capitalist order. This global order has ‘warehoused’ the Pacific Islands at the extreme periphery of the global economy. Indeed, as the government of Nauru stated in its concept note for the 2018 Forum Leaders Meeting, the global economic order was designed without small island nations in mind. As such, we should insist that the current turbulence and uncertainty in the global order provides an opportunity for the Pacific to assert itself and reshape the post-neoliberal order in a manner that is more equitable and favourable not just to Pacific Island nations but to all nations. However, this is a vision that currently remains a remote prospect at best due to persistent dependency and vulnerability of Pacific Island nations.
The Home Coming
Rather than the decline of US global hegemony triggering a Pacific-led revolution, it is rather looking like something more of a US ‘home coming’ for the Pacific. That is, as the US hegemon goes down swinging it will look to the global South to call in favours from local elites (what my Interglobalist co-host Chanzo Greenidge terms the US recline rather than decline) and/or assert its control more directly.
US hegemony has been experienced differently across the Pacific region, and a US homecoming too will be experienced differently. The Micronesian countries in the Northern Pacific are most closely tied to the United States. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands remain US colonies. However the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia who were formally administered by the US as trust territories from 1947 until 1978 on behalf of the UN persist today as freely associated states of the US. While under the Compacts of Free Association these three island nations receive significant financial assistance and uninhibited travel to the United States, there are some big trade-offs; namely, that the US has responsibility for defending the territorial integrity of the island nations, as well as enjoying unlimited and exclusive access to the land and waterways for strategic purposes. Indeed, Kwajalein Island in RMI is home to a US missile defence base and in 2017 during the heightened nuclear tensions between Korea and the US, Palau agreed to install air and maritime radar systems. In fact, the president of Palau has recently been making calls for greater US military presence in his country. [This is not to mention of course the 67 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the United States in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958].
The current Compacts are due to expire in the next few years and negotiations for renewal are ongoing. So, within this context – and with the caveat mentioned earlier that there is no Pacific mobilisation for an alternative – one can easily imagine the homecoming that will land on the shores of these Micronesian nations. That is, the financial benefits from the Compact will be used as leverage for increased militarisation. Complicating things further is that even if the Compact Agreements cease then the US purportedly maintains the legal protection to access land for defence purposes until at least mid-century.
In the South Pacific the story is a bit different. US presence is far less than in the north, but this is nonetheless made up for by Australia who plays the role of deputy sheriff on behalf of the US. Australia’s modus operandi is effectively a mix of multilateral and bilateral actions. For example, it is both a member and number one financier of key regional institutions including the Pacific Islands Forum, the Pacific Community and the Forum Fisheries Agency. It uses these institutions to gain the necessary regional policy cover to then engage bilaterally to shape national policies. A recent example of this is the regional security policy called the Boe Declaration agreed to by Forum Leaders in 2018 which emphasises the development of national security policies. The government of Australia and its interlocutors are of course more than willing to provide the funding and capacity to support such developments.
With the immanent decline of the US led neoliberal global order, Australia has stepped up its game beyond the usual benevolence of aid. For example, in 2018 Australia joined the US and PNG in a deal to upgrade the Lumbrum naval base on Manus Islands in PNG. Since the fall of the Peter O’Neill government in 2019 however, the deal has been put on ice over a lack of consultation with land owners. There has also been an onslaught of Sino-phobic propaganda in Australian mainstream media. As with the countries in the North, the island nations in the South Pacific remain heavily dependent on external financial aid, including Australia. Recently there have been increasing calls for Australia to look at entering into Compact like agreements with small island states, in particular Nauru, Kiribati and Tuvalu.
The Pacific Proletariat?
At the beginning of this post I made reference to what could be considered a small caveat. That is, the description of the US homecoming briefly outlined above will continue unabated unless there is a region-wide mobilisation around an alternative. Of course the US and Australia will do what they have always done and seek to manipulate the leverage they have enjoyed over island nations in order to get their way, while local elites will only be too happy to oblige. For far too long we in the Pacific have been told we have no other options than to remain heavily dependent on others for our viability. While Epeli Hau’ofa sought to address this failure to realise autonomy following political independence, he nonetheless fell into a fantasy space of cultural autonomy which has lead to nothing other than providing a cultural edge to our dependency. As Interglobalist co-host Arnie Saiki wrote recently, “what motivates our liberation in the Pacific must be more than cultural, it also has to be economic, for if it is not, we will not be able to adequately address climate change on our terms, nor will we be able to remain in our homes.”
The Pacific’s position at the extreme periphery of the global economy makes it an excess, or as Jacques Ranicere puts it, ‘a part of no part’. One might even say that at the level of nation-states, the Pacific occupies the position of Marx’s proletariat – not in the sense of them being workers for big Capital, but rather as those whose structural exclusion is necessary for the global economic order to appear consistent. As long as we don’t acknowledge the case of the Pacific Islands then the facts of global neoliberal development agenda speak for themselves. But if we continue for a moment the analogy of the Pacific as proletariat, then one could perhaps argue that for structural reasons equalizing the Pacific’s place in the global economy would have the impact of transforming the entire global economic order.
As to how this may even be possible, let me simply refer you the book Ecological-Economic Accounts: Towards Intemerate Value…and invite you to listen in to the Interglobalist podcast!