"The purpose of soft power is to
prevent push coming to shove.
So what can "hard money" buy in the Pacific? And could New Zealand compete with it? And how important is money in the scheme of things anyway?"
Soft power is merely a means to an end, not necessarily limited to 'goodwill'. Hard Cash can fund the influence on and the sustainability of these island economies, which let's face it, are failed states without tourism operating thanks to Covid-19 and even in good times they are heavily reliant on seasonal / predominately low skill job access (& remittances) in NZ & Australia to be viable economies.
NZ & Australia combined can compete with China for now for influence, but China can easily step up itself as a lender to build roads, communications, and then "fishing ports" and fishing rights to those countries EEZ's. The island nations desperately need 'sustainable' jobs and won't necessarily be fussy over who supplies them.
Whether they are entrapped by debt provisions / asset takeovers on possible loan defaults is another matter entirely as other developing nations have been, but China will have refined its strategies following Western criticism to enhance its ultimate lending & asset control.
"What are the Pacific micro-states interested in? I would guess that at the moment they are interested in what's going on in their EEZs. And that they're looking
very carefully at the saga of that Chinese fishing fleet which was working around the Galapagos, and wondering what it might mean for their interests."
I would hope they are looking extremely carefully into the Galapagos islands situation as should New Zealand itself. The ability to GPS spoof their fleet locations as being in New Zealand, should be a wake-up call to be very suspicious of China's motivations & intentions wrt. the maintenance of a sustainable fishery resource.
On a side note, I wonder if at least one of the recent US Navy ship collisions was somehow associated with GPS spoofing, but this is speculation on my part...
"I suspect they're also aware that there's no prospect of ongoing seasonal or agricultural work for their people in China."
I expect that if a logistical response was able to form a "Jobs Bubble" with Covid-controlled China, that this would be a point of leverage against NZ & Aust.
"So New Zealand has some levers to pull in the Pacific. As does Australia." In terms of goodwill, yes for now, but "money talks".
"Perhaps it's worth teaming up with Australia to set up in-air refuelling capability for the P8s?"
I would expect this capability to be covered off with Aust if required. Not sure what option they chose at this point. It would be better if we could demonstrate some operational self-sufficiency and budgetary independance from Aust also but see below...
The P-8 cannot use the hose-and-drogue in-flight refueling method, instead featuring a flying boom receptacle on the upper-forward fuselage, making it, like the USN's
E-6 Mercury TACAMO aircraft, reliant on
U.S. Air Force KC-135 Stratotanker,
KC-10 Extender and
KC-46 Pegasus aircraft for in-flight refueling. In April 2017, the USAF
459th Air Refueling Wing worked with the Naval Air Systems Command to certify operationally the P-8 for in-flight refueling.
[52] For extended endurance, six additional fuel tanks from
Marshall Aerospace are housed in the forward and rear cargo compartments.
There's still no "a" in Ernest
Originally Posted by Davexl
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