Gregory Ernest Fry

Australian National University | ANU · Department of Pacific Affairs

Now that the 'Pacific solution’ has become an ongoing arrangement for Australia’s 'border protection' rather than a short-term political expedient for re-election, it is important to examine the ethics of the ‘Pacific Solution' more closely. Behind this rhetoric of 'solution', 'protection' and 'security' is a policy that has been developed without...

This chapter examines two puzzles: why should Pacific regionalism of the past 50 years be seen as politically significant, and who has it been for? In relation to the first it argues that its significance relates to its role as a site of normative contest over how Pacific islanders should live their lives in a globalised world. With regard to the s...

Since 2009 there has been a fundamental shift in the way that the Pacific Island states engage with regional and world politics. The region has experienced, what Kiribati President Anote Tong has aptly called, a ‘paradigm shift’ in ideas about how Pacific diplomacy should be organised, and on what principles it should operate. Many leaders have cal...

During her visit to Suva in November 2014, Australian foreign minister, Julie Bishop, received a very warm reception to her attempts to achieve a rapprochement in Australia–Fiji relations. By the end of her visit, diplomatic, economic, and defence relations had been fully restored with the newly elected Bainimarama government (Bishop and Kubuabola...

The recent hostage crises in Fiji and the Solomon Islands quickly merged into a series of deeper crises to do with the political legitimacy of the government of the day, of the Constitution, of 'democracy', and even of the idea of the post-colonial state itself as a continuing political entity. While the other twelve post-colonial states in the Pac...

The contemporary debate concerning the shape and possibilities of world politics, on which this volume has focused, is a debate about fundamentals. The protagonists have not focused on questions concerning the relative power of particular states, or on how particular international regimes can be bolstered, or on the fortunes of particular alliances...

When W. W. Rostow was asked in 1990 by the journal Encounter to suggest a ‘metaphor for our time’ he offered ‘the coming age of regionalism’ (Rostow 1990).² He argued that it was the single image of the future that had the virtue of relating significantly to ‘the other major dynamic forces’ shaping global society. The outcome of such forces would,...

In 1989, just prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama penned his famous essay, ‘The End of History?’. His dramatic image of a new world in which ideological struggle was coming to an end, and in which perpetual peace among the liberal democracies was in prospect, was the opening gambit in a debate about the essential features of the...

In the South Pacific, the end of the Cold War has not been the dramatic turning point in security terms assumed for other regions. It has not created new states or new conflicts or the prospect of new military threats; nor has it meant a 'falling off the map' in the way often assumed in conventional accounts of the post-Cold War South Pacific. The...

When colonial administrators decided to encourage a sense of unity among the members of the emergent élite of their Pacific Island territories in the late 1940s, they regarded their project as novel. Rather than a sense of tapping a pre‐existing affinity, it seemed that what was being attempted was social engineering on a grand scale. The first Sou...

For several generations Australians have generated powerful depictions of a region they have variously called “the islands,” “the South Seas,” or “the South Pacific.” The most recent characterization is embedded in a forthright salvationist message that warns of an approaching “doomsday” or “nightmare” unless Pacific Islanders remake themselves—jus...

In the early 1990s it might have been expected that the Pacific islands region would fall off the Australian policy maker’s map. This seemed plausible given Canberra’s preoccupation with Asia and the end of the perceived security problem in the South Pacific. Instead, Australian decision makers embarked on an ambitious campaign to radically transfo...

Regional cooperation in the South Pacific has become a highly complex polidcal process. One sou¡ce of that comPlexity is üre large number of states and terriiorial administ¡ations involved in the process. There a¡e about 35 such political entities currently trying to influence the outcomes of regional coopération. These entities represent divergent...

During 1985 there were several indications that countries in the remote South Pacific region were asserting an antinuclear position, and that Washington and Moscow, not to mention Paris and Beijing, were taking these moves seriously. First came the decision of New Zealand's Labour government to refuse permission for the U.S. destroyer Buchanan to e...

In August, Pacific leaders will consider a treaty to make the South Pacific the next nuclear-free zone. Though it will not affect current U.S. and French involvement, the treaty could prevent further nuclearization.

The question ol whether Australia and New zeâland should promoie a.ms control in the Paclfie region, ând if ê-o in what iorm, is a vexed one. It involvêg conslderation of the nost important defence iasue for both countriea-the neceesity of the security relationship with the Unlted State8" In the Pacifìc context, regional arms control effectlvely ne...

The mechanisms for changing governments in the post‐colonial states of the South Pacific constitute a unique variant of the Westminster mechanisms earlier adopted in the Dominions and in the ex‐British colonies of Africa, Asia and the Caribbean. This is so to the point where we can speak of a ‘South Pacific model of succession’. In this model, the...

The South Pacific region has been generally regarded as a quiet backwater isolated from the mainstream of international relations. This view has been reinforced by the fact that, until re- cently, the twenty island-territories in this area came under the direct control of France, Britain, the United States, Australia and New Zea- land. From the per...

The Pacific lsland stat€s currently have before them four proposals involving a substantial reshap¡ng of the ¡nst¡tut¡onal arrangements serving the So;th Pac¡fic region. Each of these proposalõ, if adopted, could have s'tgn¡f¡cant effects on the ¡nternat¡onal politics of the area They are not just concerned w¡th adjusting the ex¡st¡ng regional stru...

The South Pacific region has been recently undergoing the most rapid and fundamental political change it has experienced since its partition by the colonial powers in the nineteenth century. Beginning in 1962, with the granting of independence to Western Samoa, the decolonisation of the region has proceeded swiftly, if selectively. By 1979 ten Brit...

In the past year the ‘war against terror’ and perceptions of state failure within the post-colonial Pacific have sparked an Australian-led initiative to deepen and widen regional integration in Oceania. This paper argues that behind the seeming unanimity of the 2004 Auckland Declaration and agreement by Pacific Islands Forum leaders on a ‘Pacific v...