I am in the unusual position of both agreeing with Helen Clark, and disagreeing with PC, over the Anzac deployment to riot-devastated Nuku’alofa. As Clark has pointed out, New Zealand has little choice but to intervene. Instability in our part of the Pacific could have serious consequences for us, for many reasons: the tendency of failed states to export crime, disease, and even terror; the potential for violence to spread to NZ’s Pacific Island populations; the fact that we would have to deal with a humanitarian crisis and refugees if it got really bad.

The concerns expressed about the Anzac intervention are as follows, in order of credibility:

• Chris Trotter’s nightmare scenario – but he might call it utopian – of riots in Tonga eventually sparking a Marxist-Leninist revolution here in NZ, with colonised ethnic minorities and urban workers marching in socialist solidarity.
• No Right Turn says “It’s offical: we are now on the wrong side.” According to NRT and some in Tonga’s democracy movement, Australia and NZ are propping up a corrupt dictatorship by providing security after the riots.
• New Zeal points out the revolutionary socialist ideology which motivates many in the pro-democracy movement in Tonga. As in East Timor, Trevor worries that we are defending hard-core communists, who could become a greater threat to our security.
• PC and commenters have libertarian, non-interventionist concerns. Robert W:

Because if the choice is just the Kleptocrat vs The Mob, we don’t want to get in the middle of it unless we are prepared to (and I’m not) annex Tonga.
Our armed forces are being diluted away to nothing. What happens (in this benign security environment) if a military emergency arises in our country?

Good point, and I think that’s the best objection so far. However, I don’t agree. As I said before, we don’t have much choice. The consequences of not intervening could be far worse than the (so far minor) costs of sending a small force. There are a couple of additional points I will make, though.

“The Kleptocrat vs. The Mob”?

Commenter King Jr. on one of my previous Tonga posts had this to say:

Majority of the rioters and so-called reformers don’t even know what democracy means and how it’s supposed to affect the current monarchy. As for the King and Tongan government, whatever they did or say doesn’t justify all this rioting, burning, and looting. They’ve just put Tonga in a worst economic, social, and physical state then it already was.

Tonga has a population of over 100,000, and the rioters make up at most 1%, probably less, of the total. With democracy, I suspect traditional, conservative parties would do best, and that would be good for order. To assume that the hardcore rioters would seize power in a democratic election is misguided. We don’t have to choose the lesser of two evils – democratic elections would be a huge improvement. The King had the responsbility to govern well and provide security, as sovereign. Without denying the free will of the rioters, his government bore responsbility for what happened, and the anger of the pro-democracy supporters was justified, although many reprehensible acts took place.

The ambulance at the bottom of the cliff

NZ and Australian interventions are, too often, like an ambulance at the bottom of the cliff. We send in troops after the riots happen, after the massacres, civil war or coup. And before that our aid props up corrupt leaders, and our military training goes to trigger-happy or overly ambitious officers. The worst example is the way Australia screwed things up with the copper mine on Bougainville.

But, anyway, it’s too late to review the $10 million in aid that we gave to Tonga each year. Our actions provided support and sanction for the corrupt royal family, contributing to the current strife. I think the aid should have arrived with strings attached, and it should have been closely monitored to make sure it goes to the right people. Better would be to send teachers and scholarship funds. My parents were teachers in Tonga 25 years ago. In the 1990s, all the expat teachers were sent home in favour of locals who had degrees, but no teacher training. It was a purely nationalistic move that probably reduced the standard of education. Better intelligence, as Paul Buchanan says, would not go amiss either.

Conclusions

I am still optimistic about Tonga’s future. However I think NZ and Australia will be intervening in the Pacific many more times, and we should try to aim for prevention instead. Better governance, more foreign investment, and less corruption can be encouraged with more engagement, better intelligence, and greater leadership, including putting conditions for political and economic reform on aid, and allowing intervention forces more leeway to pick sides, politically.

Posted by Phil on Tuesday, November 28th, 2006 at 12:56 am.