Events in Fiji would struggle to be among the 200 most important items on the radar of professional foreign policy people in the United States at the moment. US citizens are almost entirely unaware of the coup, if news coverage is any indication. It doesn't rate that much more highly in Australia.
Compared with other international crises, even (as with Thailand) in our general area of the world, the coup politics of Fiji, like the supposedly comical coup politics of South American nations in the 1930s, find it hard to rate. Particularly from America's point of view, when there is a new president seeking both to remake the world and to cope with an international financial crisis.
This is not to say that the US has not officially said all of the right things deploring the coup, and done all of the things, such as suspending any remaining aid, which other nations of the region, particularly Australia, have done and recommended. They might even be worried in a vague sort of way but are happy enough to follow the lead of the neighbours, and regard it as one essentially for Fijians, those neighbours and Australia, both as neighbour and American surrogate, to settle. It could only get messy, and not just with Fijians, if the US threw any actual weight around.
It's not quite fair to suggest that Australia, in accepting some leadership responsibility, is playing deputy sheriff. We have our own interests in a peaceful, prosperous and democratic Fiji, even if they are in almost all respects the same as America's. Some in Fiji or in other Pacific nations think, cynically, that those interests are primarily colonial, neo-colonial or in some manner focused on exploitation. Or, in denying access to those people or resources by potential mercantile or military enemies such as China or Japan.
But Fiji is (and always has been) entirely unimportant to us economically, and is of only passing interest as a very minor potential pawn in geopolitics. So far as most Australians think or care about Fiji at all, it is a relatively idyllic and lazy holiday spot with a friendly, devout and welcoming population with a good deal of history in common with us. With that, and rugby, in common, Australia has been historically generous with aid and has allowed Fijian citizens fairly easy access. Australia matters to Fiji, but not the other way about.
But our clout is nonetheless limited. Sometimes it has seemed counterproductive, as when successive coup leaders have used our attempts (alone or with our neighbours) to pressure them as evidence of their willingness to stand up to interfering outsiders. Any such resistance strikes a chord with other troubled neighbours themselves trying to defy Australian or regional efforts to help them, or to force them to deal with their domestic problems.
In most parts of the central and southern Pacific, Australia is by now more resented than respected, with less and less capacity to be seen as a disinterested friend. New Zealand, by contrast, has tended to retain respect and affection, even when it too has been pointing the finger at some of its more errant neighbours.
But the big world increasingly regards the deterioration of the economies and polities of the Pacific nations as ''our'' problem, even as external factors, such as the global financial crisis and climate change, accentuate basic problems of good governance, law and order and delivery of basic services.
We have to face up to the fact that our capacity and clout are seriously deteriorating. Sooner or later, Australia will have to cease acting as mere disinterested, generous and forgiving friend, and demand a more adult relationship with mutual responsibilities.
In some senses, the decline of our influence is simply a measure of time since independence. But it is also a result of a tendency, particularly during the Howard years, of seeing the Pacific as full of problem children needing parental discipline and scolding, and of a defence and national security tail increasingly wagging the foreign policy dog. The Rudd Government has worked hard, particularly through Trade Minister Simon Crean and Parliamentary Secretary for International Development Assistance Bob McMullan, to change the relationship. But so far it is hard to see much practical effect, whether with Fiji or with other problematic relationships, such as Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, or the Solomons.
In the meantime, problems in the Pacific are getting less attention because of competing needs to deal with events in East Timor, Indonesia, the Indian subcontinent and Afghanistan, and instability in South-East Asia.
In 1987, I was in Hawaii on a Pacific Rim politics study tour at the time of the first Fijian coup. When the news came in, I was talking with analysts, some spooks, attached to the CINCPAC headquarters, many of whom were very knowledgeable about domestic Australian politics. But few had any instinct for how Australia would react to the coup and were cross-examining me closely. Did I think that Australia might do something military or semi-military, they asked.
I didn't know myself, and said I thought it unlikely. I thought that there would be some, particularly on the Defence side, who would seriously contemplate sending a few warships with troops on board. We had no important economic interests there but many Australians visited, and their safety could be affected by marked disorder which could prompt a limited intervention to ''secure order'' and ''rescue'' our citizens. If we did go in, I doubted we would merely establish a secure cordon for Australians: we would probably casually disarm the coupmakers and restore the elected government, at all stages pretending this was only an incidental matter, not the reason for our intervention.
On the other hand, any idea of intervention would horrify many Australians, even those who deplored the coup the more so if it was perceived as a unilateral measure rather than a combined action of the Pacific nations. And I doubted that the disorder would be so general that Australians would actually be at any risk. We had no tradition, as with the US in Haiti, of interference with our neighbours. In those days, before a fundamental review of our aid policies, we were rather proud of how little our aid was physically or morally coercive or indeed tied to particular projects. Wiser counsel would want to wait and see, I thought and, probably, Australia would do nothing much except to promote regional sanctions.
As it was, I was mostly right, though I was surprised to discover later, on return, how strong the impulse to intervene, particularly coming from then defence minister Kim Beazley, had been.
That was all 22 years and at least five Fijian coups ago, of course. It is almost unimaginable that we would now respond in any sort of military way. More importantly, though the coup this time is probably even more unpopular and catastrophic for Fiji, it is likely that any intervention would be far more difficult and, probably, involve a good deal of bloodshed. Military intervention in Papua New Guinea or the Solomons might be easier in terms of human resistance but even more of a challenge when one takes into account matters of terrain, logistics and local infrastructure. It would certainly cost us far more and set us back further than the cost of aid and diplomacy.
If we have learned as a consequence to stop thinking of actual interventions, it is by no means clear yet that we have learned ways of effective diplomacy which will actually have much influence on outcomes. The Fijian coupmakers are making very bad choices, which will hurt Fiji and Fijians. We may have a role in drawing that to their attention, and perhaps later in helping them clean up the mess. The instability (from the coup and its aftermath) will add to other regional instabilities, but in the scheme of things, will probably not make a great deal of difference to Australia or anyone else outside Fiji. Our main concern is not for ourselves but our friends, not least the unlucky Fijians.
Jack Waterford is editor-at-large.
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