Contenu du sommaire : The Pacific In The 'Asian Century'

Viewing Asia Pacific as a strategically contested space, this article examines the landscape of international institution building in the region. We build on the literature of international institutions to understand how the institutional anarchy in the region has given rise to the Trans-Pacific Partnership and its successor. We further analyze the changing dynamics of regional rulemaking and highlight strategic implications for regulatory competition in the region.

After the Second World War, the Pacific Rim powers started to penetrate Oceania in order to maintain or develop their political and economic influences. The Asian states had used the reluctance and fatigue of the Pacific island countries with the American bilateral cooperation. The Asian tigers therefore introduced the new politics directed to the Pacific region, called “the new regional order” being a response to Washington's proposition entitled “the new world order”. Diplomatic struggles between Japan, China and Russia in fact made the Pacific microstates to look for cooperation inside their own region, with neighbours at the same level of economic development, (post) colonial struggles and shared values. Since two waves of decolonization in the Pacific, the newly established island states have been constantly tempted by the Asian governments to collaborate with them. Such humanitarian and financial aid is very often understood as the consent to interfere in the Pacific islands' affairs and their natural resources. Hence, since the turn of 20th and 21st century, Asian influence has become one of the most important motivators for Pacific regionalisation. Establishment of most, not to say all, the regional institutions and organizations were driven by the fear of external imposition of law and policy.

As the Pacific region has become more strategically contested, regional powers have intensified their use of defence diplomacy. As a result, the number and scale of military Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) deployments, exercises and cooperative security ventures being undertaken in the South Pacific have dramatically increased. Yet despite the assumption that defence diplomacy has furthered the political objectives of initiating states and benefitted Pacific Island Countries (PICs), few studies have examined the reality of these claims. This lack of research is concerning, particularly considering the long term impacts these activities may have on regional development, stability and security in the South Pacific. In this paper, we evaluate defence diplomacy in the South Pacific. Comparative case studies were undertaken on Australia, China and New Zealand, as these countries have recently expanded their defence presence in the region.