Pacific Regional Order, and: Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Pacific Regional Order and: Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance Roderic Alley Pacific Regional Order, by Dave Peebles. Canberra: Australian National University Press and Asia Pacific Press, 2005. ISBN 0-7315-3733-5; xvi + 322 pages, tables, figures, notes, bibliography, index. A$40.00. Pacific Islands Regional Integration and Governance, edited by Satish Chand. Canberra: Australian National University Press and Asia Pacific Press, 2005. ISBN 0-7315-3739-4; xiii + 266 pages, tables, figures, appendixes, notes, bibliography, index. A$40.00. These two books are timely additions to the available literature, since both optimism and apprehension mark ­current initiatives designed to enhance regional cooperation in the Islands Pacific. Central here has been the Pacific Islands Forum Pacific Plan, underway since 2004, and comprising [End Page 308] a series of interlocking implementation strategies due for interim review by 2008. Among other topics, they address intra-regional market expansion, transportation and communications, conservation and energy, health and education, vocational training and youth programs, governance, comprehensive security, enhanced financial regulation, international treaty ratification, poverty eradication, human rights, special needs of small island states, cultural identity questions, and civil society participation. Readily conceded at official ­levels is the fact that the effective advancement of these objectives will require matching national capacities, since current deficiencies at that level are highlighted by an increasingly ubiquitous, generally essential, but not always comfortable Australian assertiveness in the region. Dave Peebles, a staff member of the Australian Labor Party, claims in his ambitious, well-documented prescription that the Australian presence is indispensable for providing leadership for badly needed, fundamental regional reordering. The boldness of this assertion, reflecting the confi­dence of an assumed hegemony, aims for nothing less than a complete new deal for the region. While enhanced cooperation is not the full answer to the region's problems, Pebbles believes that it remains its biggest missing piece. As a guide he looks to Europe, in particular the severity of a post– World War II crisis of confidence that forced governments to look beyond the space of sovereign statehood toward the supranational regional institution-building endeavor that subsequently widened and deepened. Obvious discrepancies involved in any comparison with Europe aside, has the regional experiment in the Islands Pacific now reached a stage where a similar infusion of vision is needed for its revitalization? If so, what is recommended here? First, and however difficult, the principle of shared sovereignty requires realization. If the small islands of the Eastern Caribbean have moved down this path to some effect, why not the Islands Pacific? Assuming that the region's governments are serious about wanting the advantages of fuller trade and economic complementarities, then for Peebles a commitment to wider and deeper integration cannot be avoided. Here he sees a Community of Oceania comprising distinct but related orders evolving toward an eventual common market; a monetary union (joint measures to target inflation control and monetary union); security cooperation (a crisis management center, a standing peace monitoring group); human rights (a standing commission); a legal structure (regional court system dealing with rights, environmental, and constitutional cases); political incorporation (a regional parliament); and ­outreach strategies (commitment to pursue regional integration in the wider region). These objectives would assume institutional form—an envisaged Parliament, Court, and Human Rights Commission as companions to a Heads of Government Forum (delegating powers to ministers meeting according to policy responsibilities), and an Oceania Commission, headed by a Secretary-General, and comprising functional divisions managing the regional order sectors identified. Second, much of the prescribed and comprehensive Oceanic Community [End Page 309] appears to hinge on a changed set of Australian attitudes and policies. For Peebles, Canberra has continued to view the region through an unduly narrow security perspective, ignoring to its longer-term cost any internal causes of instability. As the region's key player, Australia must act as catalyst for change, being "an integral, intimate partner in the change effort and this demands a new phase in ­Australia's Pacific relations" (260). Yet just how realistic is this possibility? Beyond immediate damage control, and an already extensive development assistance commitment, is there any...