Burden-sharing: the US, Australia and New Zealand alliances in the Pacific islands

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Wallis ◽  
Anna Powles

Abstract One of President Joseph Biden's foreign policy priorities is to ‘renew’ and ‘strengthen’ the United States' alliances, as they were perceived to have been ‘undermined’ during the Trump administration, which regularly expressed concern that allies were free-riding on the United States' military capability. Yet the broad range of threats states face in the contemporary context suggests that security assistance from allies no longer only—or even primarily—comes in the form of military capability. We consider whether there is a need to rethink understandings of how alliance relationships are managed, particularly how the goals—or strategic burdens—of alliances are understood, how allies contribute to those burdens, and how influence is exercised within alliances. We do this by analysing how the United States–Australia and Australia–New Zealand alliances operate in the Pacific islands. Our focus on the Pacific islands reflects the United States' perception that the region plays a ‘critical’ role in helping to ‘preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific region’. We conclude that these understandings need to be rethought, particularly in the Pacific islands, where meeting non-traditional security challenges such as economic, social and environmental issues, is important to advancing the United States, Australia and New Zealand's shared strategic goal of remaining the region's primary security partners and ensuring that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold.

Author(s):  
Jean H. Baker

Building America: The Life of Benjamin Henry Latrobe is a biography of America’s first professionally trained architect and engineer. Born in 1764, Latrobe was raised in Moravian communities in England and Germany. His parents expected him to follow his father and brother into the ministry, but he rebelled against the church. Moved to London, he studied architecture and engineering. In 1795 he emigrated to the United States and became part of the period’s Transatlantic Exchange. Latrobe soon was famous for his neoclassical architecture, designing important buildings, including the US Capitol and Baltimore Basilica as well as private homes. Carpenters and millwrights who built structures more cheaply and less permanently than Latrobe challenged his efforts to establish architecture as a profession. Rarely during his twenty-five years in the United States was he financially secure, and when he was, he speculated on risky ventures that lost money. He declared bankruptcy in 1817 and moved to New Orleans, the sixth American city that he lived in, hoping to recoup his finances by installing a municipal water system. He died there of yellow fever in 1820. The themes that emerge in this biography are the critical role Latrobe played in the culture of the early republic through his buildings and his genius in neoclassical design. Like the nation’s political founders, Latrobe was committed to creating an exceptional nation, expressed in his case by buildings and internal improvements. Additionally, given the extensive primary sources available for this biography, an examination of his life reveals early American attitudes toward class, family, and religion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. Newton-Howes ◽  
M. K. Savage ◽  
R. Arnold ◽  
T. Hasegawa ◽  
V. Staggs ◽  
...  

Abstract Aims The use of mechanical restraint is a challenging area for psychiatry. Although mechanical restraint remains accepted as standard practice in some regions, there are ethical, legal and medical reasons to minimise or abolish its use. These concerns have intensified following the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. Despite national policies to reduce use, the reporting of mechanical restraint has been poor, hampering a reasonable understanding of the epidemiology of restraint. This paper aims to develop a consistent measure of mechanical restraint and compare the measure within and across countries in the Pacific Rim. Methods We used the publicly available data from four Pacific Rim countries (Australia, New Zealand, Japan and the United States) to compare and contrast the reported rates of mechanical restraint. Summary measures were computed so as to enable international comparisons. Variation within each jurisdiction was also analysed. Results International rates of mechanical restraint in 2017 varied from 0.03 (New Zealand) to 98.9 (Japan) restraint events per million population per day, a variation greater than 3000-fold. Restraint in Australia (0.17 events per million) and the United States (0.37 events per million) fell between these two extremes. Variation as measured by restraint events per 1000 bed-days was less extreme but still substantial. Within all four countries there was also significant variation in restraint across districts. Variation across time did not show a steady reduction in restraint in any country during the period for which data were available (starting from 2003 at the earliest). Conclusions Policies to reduce or abolish mechanical restraint do not appear to be effecting change. It is improbable that the variation in restraint within the four examined Pacific Rim countries is accountable for by psychopathology. Greater efforts at reporting, monitoring and carrying out interventions to achieve the stated aim of reducing restraint are urgently needed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-55
Author(s):  
Mohamad Zreik

AbstractThe Chinese Ministry of Commerce issued a statement Friday morning, July 6, 2018, confirming the outbreak of a trade war between the United States and China. The statement came after the United States imposed tariffs on many Chinese goods, in violation of international and bilateral agreements, and the destruction of the concept of free trade which the United States calls for following it. It is a war of opposite directions, especially the contradiction between the new Trump policy and the Chinese approach. The proof is what US Defense Secretary James Matisse announced in Singapore in early June 2018 of “the full strategy of the new United States, in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific,” where China was the “sole enemy of the United States” in China’s geostrategic region. Intentions have become publicized, and trade war between the two economic giants is turning into a reality. This paper will give an overview of the US-China scenario of trade war, then a focused analysis on the Trump’s administration economic decision regarding China, and the consequences of this decision.


Author(s):  
Scott Edwards

From 6 June to 20 August, 2020, I undertook a 76-day, ~3800 mile bicycle trip across the United States from the Atlantic to the Pacific oceans. In this talk I will share with you some of the amazing people, landscapes and birds I encountered, mostly in rural towns and along blue highways. The gradually changing birdscape, both in sight and sound, underscored the sensitive ecological gradients to which birds respond, as well as the ability of some species to thrive in agricultural monocultures. Rivers large and small regularly benchmarked my progress, as well as the western journey of Lewis & Clark over 200 years ago. The recent incidents in the US involving African Americans as targets of white violence inexorably caused me to festoon my bicycle with #BlackLivesMatter (#BLM) signs and share my experiences on social media. I encountered a variety of reactions, often positive and occasionally sharply negative, in a sea of generosity and extraordinary kindness as I wheeled my way through towns on the brink of collapse, vast private ranches and the occasional city. Rural America exhibits an abundance of loyalty and empathy for local communities, yet it is sometimes hard for Americans – myself included – to empathize with people they have never met in person. Two imperatives I took away, with ramifications for both biodiversity and political stability, were the need to somehow bring divergent communities together and to encourage empathy at the national level, among communities that otherwise experience each other only on TV.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Sōsefo Fietangata Havea

<p>On April 2, 1987, the Treaty on Fisheries Between Governments of Certain Pacific Island States and the Government of the United States of America was signed. The signatories to the Fisheries were the 16 members of the South Pacific Forum and the United States of America. After six difficult years of negotiations, the Treaty permitted American fishing vessels to fish in Pacific Islands’ waters in exchange for a substantial access fee. This thesis identifies key aspects of that treaty and examines what it meant from both a theoretical and practical standpoint. How did a collection of small, comparatively weak Pacific states strike a satisfactory deal with the most powerful state on the planet? What did the agreement mean in terms of its political, legal and environmental consequences? As well as looking at the events and negotiations that led to the treaty, this thesis also attempts to discern the key political lessons that flow from this case that might be relevant for the future development of the Pacific island States in the key area of fisheries regulation. The thesis argues that disputes between Pacific nations and the United States over tuna resources and the presence of the Soviet Union in the Pacific region were the two critical factors that led to the adoption of the Treaty. From the United States’ perspective, the Treaty was seen (at the time) as the only viable option if it were to reconsolidate its long and prosperous position in the Pacific region. The US did not want the Soviet Union to capitalize on American fishing disputes with the Pacific islands, and it could not afford for the Soviet Union to establish a strong association with the Pacific islands. The Treaty therefore served three purposes for Washington: (i) it maintained its long friendship with the Pacific islands, (ii) it maintained its fisheries interests in the region, (iii) and it kept the Pacific communist-free. This fusion of US economic and strategic interests gave Pacific Island States a stronger hand in the negotiations than their size and power would have otherwise offered.</p>


Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sinn

This chapter takes a broad look at the Pacific Ocean in relation to Chinese migration. As trade, consumption and capital flows followed migrants, powerful networks were woven and sustained; in time, the networks fanned across the Pacific from British Columbia along the West Coast of the United States to New Zealand and Australia. The overlapping personal, family, financial and commercial interests of Chinese in California and those in Hong Kong, which provide the focus of this study, energized the connections and kept the Pacific busy and dynamic while shaping the development of regions far beyond its shores. The ocean turned into a highway for Chinese seeking Gold Mountain, marking a new era in the history of South China, California, and the Pacific Ocean itself.


1973 ◽  
Vol 67 (5) ◽  
pp. 21-28
Author(s):  
James M. Wilson ◽  
Angel Calderón-Cruz ◽  
John Tarkong

There can be no doubt that the principle of self-determination is applicable to the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. The UN Charter applies it. The United States as administering authority under its 1947 trusteeship agreement with the Security Council has explicitly and repeatedly recognized its applicability. The real question is precisely what elements of the principle are applicable, how they are to be applied, and within what framework.


1954 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 611-613

On September 8, 1954, representatives of the United States, United Kingdom, France, the Philippines, Thailand, Pakistan, Australia and New Zealand signed the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, a protocol designating the areas to which the treaty was to apply, and the Pacific Charter, a declaration setting forth the aims of the eight countries in southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific. Negotiations leading up to the actual signature of the treaty had been underway throughout the summer of 1954 and had culminated in an eight-power conference in Manila which opened on September 6.


1989 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 461-464 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimmy Chan ◽  
Richard Lynn

SummaryEvidence has accumulated to suggest that the mean IQs of Orientals in the United States and in the countries of the Pacific Basin are higher than those of Whites (Caucasoids) in the United States and Britain. This paper presents evidence from IQ tests on 4858 6-year-old Chinese children in Hong Kong. On the Coloured Progressive Matrices these children obtained a mean IQ of 116. Samples from Australia, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Romania, the UK and the US obtain IQs in the range 95–102. It is suggested that these results pose difficulties for the environmentalist explanations commonly advanced to explain the low mean IQs obtained by some ethnic minorities in the United States.


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