36th-Parallel Geopolitics & Strategic Assessments: Asia Pacific/Latin America Strategic Architecture Assessment Part 1

Executive Summary

The South Pacific is rapidly becoming an area of economic and political importance. Spanning the waters from the equator to the Southern Ocean between the West Coast of South America and the East Coast of Australia, Papua New Guinea and Indonesia, the region is characterized by great travel distances, a broad range of nation-states, a maritime orientation and previously inaccessible resources. During the last thirty years technological, economic and political change has seen the region emerge as a strategic arena in its own right, with both resident and extra-regional actors now vying for influence and wealth. In this two-part assessment 36th Parallel outlines the major features of the strategic architecture underpinning this evolution.

Part One: Introduction and Overview.  

Until the late 20th century the strategic importance of the South Pacific was only apparent during wartime. With the revolution in transportation, telecommunication, services, production and exchange that swept the world economy over the last three decades, the South Pacific has increasingly become a region of major economic importance. This includes the sea lines of communication that connect Asia to Australia, New Zealand and the West Coast of South America, as well as the increasingly exploitable natural resources above and below water in Melanesian and Polynesian island states, the open waters between them, as well as along the Eastern and Western South Pacific Rims. With trade and production trend forecasts predicting continued growth in Australasian-South American commerce, the region has assumed previously unknown prominence.

The three main legs of South Pacific strategic architecture are Trade, Politics/Diplomacy and Security.  Although intertwined and overlapped, they can be analytically distinguished from each other. These “pillars” span three distinct sub-regions: the Southeastern Pacific, which extends westwards 2500 kilometers from the South American coast line from the Equator to Chilean Patagonia; the South-central Pacific, which occupies 3000 kilometers of mostly open water between the Equator and the Southern Ocean west of Easter Island to Fiji and Rarotonga; and the Southwestern Pacific, which covers the 2000 kilometers of water and land masses extending from Australia, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea to Fiji and the Cook
Islands (distances approximate).

The pillars of the architecture can be respectively sub-divided into Production, Commerceand Services,  (with regard to trade), regime type and stability, local political culture and foreign relations (with regards to politics and diplomacy); and enforcement authority and armed force (with regard to security).

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