UK move towards Pacific Islands to have limited impact: Professor Fraenkel Featured
Pacific leaders at talks with the head of Britain's Diplomatic Service at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Sir Simon McDonald. Photo: Government of the Kingdom of Tonga
26 April, 2018. An academic says he expects the move by the United Kingdom towards a closer relationship with the Pacific Islands to have limited impact.
The British government has linked its new foreign policy outreach to the Pacific to its need to take up opportunities in other regions as it proceeds with a planned exit from the European Union.
Professor of Comparitive Politics at Victoria University of Wellington Jon Fraenkel said Britain had historic links especially with Tonga and Vanuatu but it pulled away from the Pacific in the late 1990s as it drew closer to Europe.
He said while the planned opening of the diplomatic posts in Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu signalled a renewed interest in the Pacific, he did not expect the move to be hugely significant.
"It's an attempt to ramp up a diplomatic presence which is I suppose a good thing after an era where Britain has withdrawn. But I don't really see the connections with the Island States figuring in a major way in British foreign policy in the future. It's too far away and its interests aren't there."
Professor Fraenkel said trade, in particular protections on Fiji's sugar industry, may be affected by Brexit which is due in a year's time.
-RNZI
