In 1995, France signed the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty, which moved from refusing to participate in nuclear disarmament to a certain degree of unilateral reduction, after 1996, France ended its nuclear tests in the South Pacific, and in 1998 it completed the removal of nuclear warheads for all missiles. The issue of fisheries has also been resolved with the signing of the Nauru Agreement. Although New Caledonia is not yet independent, it has a high degree of autonomy and has the right to hold an island-wide referendum to decide whether the region will remain. Measuring the difference between Melanesian's self and the other requires finding new criteria, and subregional identities need to be given new content to be prominent in interaction.
The 1988 Guidelines for Cooperation among Independent States of Melanesia and the 1999 La Carraro Declaration emphasized the issue of Melanesian independence. Beginning with the 2007 MSG Declaration on the Establishment, there have been more references to economic development, political progress, and human rights benefits in official documents of the subregion.
The goal of political independence has begun to shift from individual sovereignty to international action in the subregion as a whole. In 2011, the foreign minister of Papua New Guinea said: "We must never lose sight of Vanguard as a regional organization composed of indivisible countries of the Pacific. We also have an international image that it is not subject to any person or entity, including the Pacific Islands Forum and the Commonwealth, or to the guiding decisions of any person or entity, whether regional or international.
Abundant resources and great development potential inspire pride in the countries of the subregion and hope to play a greater role in the international community on behalf of the Pacific island countries. As the then Prime Minister of PNG Peter O'Neill said: "The Melanesian subregion is the largest group of countries in the [South] Pacific region, and once we are clustered, we can be more active and other Pacific [island countries] can follow us." Solomon Islands Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lillo focused on "Vanguard: Our Place in the Sunshine of Oceania" at the 19th MSG Leaders' Summit in Noumea, New Caledonia, on June 21, 2013.
The theme was addressed and called on "Melanesians to rise to the challenges facing the region and find their place on the world stage." On the one hand, Melanesian countries helped Micronesian countries to establish their own subregions, share experiences, and successfully enable Micronesian countries to establish the Micronesia President's Summit (MPS) and the Micronesia CEO Summit (MCES). On the other hand, Fiji, PNG, Vanuatu and other countries actively participate in world climate negotiations and relevant forums of developing countries. At the same time, the Melanesian subregion has actively established communication channels and cooperation mechanisms with other countries, regions and international organizations.
As a result of significant progress in cooperation with the Asian region in recent years, in 2013 a panel of eminent personalities described the Melanesian subregion as "a stepping stone and bridge for growing Pacific economies to Asia."
As former PNG Prime Minister Sir Michael Somare commented: "MSG's collaboration began as a politically informal group and has now become an institution covering most areas of human pursuit." MSG's collaborative efforts in political and security, trade and economic, social, cultural and sporting activities are intensifying in ways our founders never imagined. When we first met in Goroka in 1986, none of us in the room imagined that MSG would grow from a simple political "pressure group" to an organization as dynamic and successful as it is today. We are the only subregional group in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) region with a formal secretariat and headquarters. ”
The Melanesian Spearhead Group is the only subregional body in the South Pacific region. The establishment of the Vanguard Group is an important embodiment of the in-depth institutionalization of subregionalism in Melanesia. At the same time, however, Melanesia's subregional cooperation, as a case of small country cooperation, will inevitably have instability and potential threats due to the characteristics of small countries.
Since its establishment, the Melanesian Pioneer Group has provided a platform for exchanges and communication among countries in the subregion. Even in the 80s and 90s of the twentieth century, Vanguard Group served subregionalism in the form of informal institutions, but still provided public services to the countries of the subregion and sent common signals to the outside world.
Since its inaugural congress in July 1986, 21 biennial MSG summits have been held, with the last one taking place in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, on 13-14 February 2018. In 2007, Vanguard was officially recognized by the United Nations as an international organization and in 2008 established a permanent secretariat and appointed a Secretary-General in Port Vila, Vanuatu, which was an important step towards organization. The MSG Secretariat was officially opened in Port Vila on May 30, 2008. The Secretariat is headed by the Director-General, who carries out the leadership mandate and directs and coordinates policies within the framework of the MSG 2038 Prosperity for All Plan.
The governing body of the MSG consists of the Senior Officials' Meeting (SOM), reporting to the Foreign Ministers Meeting (FMM). The MSG Secretariat consists of the Executive Agency, the Director General, the Deputy Director General, the Senior Executive Officer and five programs headed by the Program Manager, respectively. The main tasks of the pioneer group have long been not limited to traditional issues such as political independence and economic development, and now the pioneer group has expanded the cooperation topic to non-traditional fields such as people-to-people exchanges and Melanesian heritage protection. In the future, Pioneer Group will closely follow the purpose of establishment and promote the common cause development of Melanesia.
The development of Melanesian subregionalism has also faced some tests and resistances. First of all, in a legal sense, although the South Pacific region has become an independent international region, and most of the countries in the region have achieved independence, due to many factors such as history and geographical environment, sub-regional countries will still be directly or indirectly pressured by Australia, New Zealand and Western powers outside the region, as well as formal or informal control.
In the international community, the national autonomy of island countries will be weakened, and the new regional mechanisms established and decided independently by island countries will also have certain limitations in the process of development. Secondly, the pioneer group is basically bounded by the Melanesian cultural circle and sub-regions. Once these boundaries are transcended, membership or functional expansion and the provision of public goods are hindered or significantly more difficult. This intangible boundary can also be called the "boundary of externality" of these regional mechanisms, that is, the state that defines the balance of benefits and costs of property rights.
Third, although the development of countries in the subregion has basically improved in recent years, after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic in late 2019, global tourism and trade have been seriously affected, island countries have lost their main fiscal revenue, and economic development has been in trouble.
The latest estimates from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) show that the overall Pacific economy will shrink by 8% in 2020, and the economic recovery will be weak in 2021, with growth of only 3%. The IMF expects Fiji's GDP to contract by 21 percent, Palau by 11 percent and Vanuatu by 8 percent in 2020. Conservative estimates suggest that the region's real GDP per capita will not return to 2019 levels until after 2025.
After the pandemic was contained, the South Pacific region continued to face short-term difficulties with weaker commodity demand, reduced remittances from diasporas, and disruptions to supply chains and major infrastructure projects. The vulnerability of island States themselves makes their future developments uncertain. Finally, there are frictions and many disputes among the countries of the subregion, and the structural contradictions between countries remain unresolved. For example, although the two major countries of Papua New Guinea and Fiji have cooperated well for a short period of time, the two countries have been at loggerheads on economic and trade issues and regional affairs. Therefore, there is considerable uncertainty about the direction and trend of subregionalism in Melanesia in the coming period.
This article focuses on the factors involved in the development of subregionalism and the entire history of the development of subregionalism in Melanesia. It is found that the sub-regional structure of institutional "gap" and identity reconstruction are three important factors affecting subregionalism, which is confirmed in the development of subregionalism in Melanesia. The "gap" in the system reflects the fact that the interests of some regional members are damaged by the regional system.
When a regional issue does not involve all regional subjects, if the existing regional institutional framework cannot respond to the demands of stakeholders, or if regional organizations refuse to accept the escalation of some regional issues to regional organization issues, which makes some regional entities pay a large long-term cost, then stakeholders tend to seek small group cooperation under large regional cooperation.
In the 80s of the twentieth century, within the institutional framework of the South Pacific Forum, the failure to effectively resolve the issue of New Caledonia was the direct reason why the Melanesian countries chose to cooperate. Around 2006, the South Pacific economic integration negotiation process reached an impasse, and the implementation of the free trade agreement was "unsatisfactory", prompting the Melanesian countries to expand the areas of sub-regional cooperation and establish the first substantive sub-free trade area in the region.
In the process of deepening cooperation, the leadership of major countries within the subregion plays an important role in it. The single-core leadership of Papua New Guinea in the 80s of the 20th century and the collaborative leadership of Papua New Guinea and Fiji after 2007 provided the sub-region with "hard" resources such as the domestic market and "soft" resources such as spiritual guidance, which strongly promoted the process of sub-regional integration.
After 10-20 years of turmoil, the political stability of Melanesian countries has gradually increased, and all countries (regions) in the sub-region have carried out in-depth sub-regional cooperation on the basis of a relatively stable domestic environment. At the same time, against the backdrop of growing stability within the subregion and changing conditions in the South Pacific region, Melanesians are beginning to give themselves more identity. The Melanesian countries gradually changed from radical anti-colonial independents advocating freedom to leaders in the development of the South Pacific that led the peoples of the subregion to prosperity and strength. The countries of the Melanesian cultural sphere hope to seek more development opportunities for the subregion in the process of interacting with other countries and international organizations in the world.
Although this paper studies Melanesian subregionalism in some detail, there are still shortcomings, and many research contents still need to be explored. First, in the process of subregional development, different Western countries, such as France, Australia and New Zealand, have played different roles.
What are the attitudes and measures taken by these countries towards the development of the Melanesian subregion? Whether the relationship between island countries and Western powers will affect the development trend of the sub-region, as European scholars view, there is still a certain mode of interaction between subregionalism and regionalism, which may not be explained in generalization with the European model, and needs to be demonstrated according to the actual situation in the South Pacific region.
Finally, how to view the complex relationship between the Melanesian and Polynesian subregions and look to the future, the Melanesian subregion has developed, but it is undeniable that the fragile nature of the island States will still influence the future direction of the entire subregion. In addition, relations between the countries of the subregion are not stable, and incidents occur occasionally between countries. Therefore, sub-regional studies in the South Pacific should also dig deep into the theme, comprehensively use multiple disciplines, and explore from multiple perspectives.
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