During the first five years of the twenty-first century the Howard Government took on a more activist role in the South Pacific. This trend was influenced by the ‘war on terror’, particularly the Bali bombings, which struck home in a manner that the 11 September attacks could not, but it also firmly reflected policy orthodoxies. This is not to say that responding to terrorism closer to home has not become a justification for intervention in the region, but it must be acknowledged that declaratory policy was not always matched by operational realities. The ‘war on terror’ opened up the political space in which increased intervention in the South Pacific could be undertaken, but events within the region itself were the central factor contributing to intervention. In particular, domestic crises in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea, and to a lesser extent Nauru, presented major challenges for Australia, and the creation and maintenance of an environment conducive to intervention was a significant foreign policy shift by the government.

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the sense of a region in crisis had prompted talk of the ‘Africanization’ of the Pacific, with the possibility of state failure creating an ‘arc of instability’ stemming from a malaise in several domestic political settings, all providing opportunities for transnational criminal and terrorist networks to gain a foothold in the region. At least this is how it appeared in some commentaries from Australia. From where New Zealand sits in the regional security scenario, these discourses perhaps seemed rather alarmist, while for most of the Pacific Island states security concerns tended to focus on more immediate, non-traditional threats, including environmental hazards such as adverse climate events impacting infrastructure, productivity and food and water security. Even so, the situations in East Timor, Bougainville and Solomon Islands, in particular, were a matter of life and death for many local people and would only be resolved with external assistance.