On May 14, opposition Alliance Party member Taniela Veitata addressed the assembled members of the Fijian Parliament, stating, Peace and harmony is the governing principle on which the Fijians have been running their lives since the advent of Christianity...this is in contrast to what Mao Tse-Tung believed - that political power comes out of the barrel of a gun.

Minutes later, 10 Fijian soldiers invaded the Parliament building. In a bloodless coup, they overthrew the newly elected National Federation/Labor Party government of Dr. Timoci Bavadra. This military takeover was the first to occur in the South Pacific.

As widely reported in the press, the coup was partly due to racial tensions resulting from the election of the predominantly Indian National Federation/Labor Party. Fiji had been a British colony from 1874 to 1970. During the colonial period, the British brought in indentured laborers from India to work for the plantation economy. Today, the Fijian population is comprised of more than 50 percent Indians and 45 percent indigenous Fijians. The remaining 5 percent consists of Europeans and Chinese.

Three other significant international events led to the coup. From 1980, US military assistance and ties to the Fijian military have grown rapidly. Secondly, from 1978, Fiji has sent one-third of its armed forces to serve on the UN Peacekeeping Forces in southern Lebanon and on the Multinational Peacekeeping Force in the Sinai. Finally, the newly elected Bavadra government was committed to a nonaligned stance in world affairs and pledged to make Fiji a nuclear-free nation.

Recent Historical Overview

The recent history of the Pacific region is one of colonialism and war. Spain and Britain were the dominant Pacific colonizers until the 1898 Spanish-American War, when the Germans and Americans bought or seized Spanish colonies. World War I eliminated Germany as a colonial power in the region and gave control of the Central Pacific to Japan. World War II eliminated Japan's control and gave it to the US. Britain and France emerged from World War II with their colonies intact. Independence followed slowly for most of the island nations, with the French still controlling New Caledonia and French Polynesia today. There was no fighting in the Pacific during World War I, but World War II brought fierce combat directly to the islands. The costs to the islanders were staggering. Over 160,000 Okinawan civilians were killed by the Japanese and American soldiers in the fight for control of their island. Fierce struggles on the Micronesian islands of Tinian, Saipan, Guam and others left 10 percent of their populations dead. Island peoples realized that the vast distances of the Pacific no longer protected them from the global conflicts of the Western nations But this has not spurred them to build large defenses or armed forces or to join military alliances.

Today, little fear of outside military intervention is found in the Pacific. In a 1984 colloquium in New Zealand, the island nations agreed that their remoteness had protected them from any serious geopolitical/strategic calculations for almost 40 years. They saw their major security threat as economic dependence (Kiste and Herr). The nations of the South Pacific in general spend very small amounts for defense. Of the nine independent nations of the regional South Pacific Forum, only three (Fiji, Tonga and Papua New Guinea) maintain regular defense forces, whereas two others (the Solomons and Vanuatu) have paramilitary capacity. The rest (Kiribati, Western Samoa, Tuvalu and Nauru) have no military forces and rely on police to solve internal problems. South Pacific Forum members have refused Western requests to build a regional security force.

The Pacific has been referred to as an "American Lake." The US has five of its seven defense agreements with nations of the Asia-Pacific region and maintains a large naval and basing presence in the region. US policy is based on "strategic denial," which denies access to the islands by the Soviet Union, and assures that any political change within the islands is pro-Western. US Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger has stated that the South Pacific is not a region where "equivalence" or "parity" with the Soviet Union has any meaning (The New Statesman 8 February 1985). An assessment from the US State Department in December 1984 noted that "while one might dismiss the general policy of strategic denial as a US objective in every corner of the world, the fact is that in no other major area of the world is the USSR so completely without friends, access or influence.

In Fiji, during his first press conference, the newly elected Prime Minister Bavadra agreed there was no threat from the Soviets in the region, and stated Fiji could now move out from under the US defense umbrella. Bavadra rhetorically asked,

Protection from what? Are we under threat? You see, the threat always talked about is from the Russians...the Red threat...the Russian presence in the region is limited to fishing deals…

He furthermore stated that the new government would not allow a Soviet embassy in Fiji's capital, Suva.

US concerns over Bavadra's nonaligned and nuclear-free positions were understood by the Fijian military. Lieutenant Colonel Rabuka, the coup leader, stated that under the new government the interests of Fiji would have been "pushed toward the interests of the Soviet Union and Libya" and he overthrew the government "to stamp out ideas that would have been detrimental to the well-being of people at large". A US State Department official in Wellington, New Zealand stated the US government had been "uneasy" with the Bavadra government, but did not want to be seen supporting the military coup.

Fiji and the West

During World War II, the US built bases on Fiji, while Fijian commandos trained American soldiers in jungle warfare. Fijian soldiers fought successfully against the Japanese in the Solomons and Guadalcanal campaigns. Later, in the 1950s, Fijian troops fought with British and Malaysian forces against the communist guerrillas in the "Emergency" war in Malaysia.

Since independence in 1970, under Prime Minister Ratu Mara's rule, Fiji has continued to support Western interests far from its shores. In 1978, a battalion of the Royal Fiji Military Forces was sent to serve as part of the UN Peacekeeping Forces in southern Lebanon. (Lieutenant Colonel Rabuka, the leader of the May coup, had been the commander of Fiji troops stationed in Lebanon.) Fiji also sent a 24-man contingent to Zimbabwe in December 1979 as part of a peacekeeping monitoring force. In response to President Reagan's request in 1981, Ratu Mara sent an additional 550 soldiers to serve as part of the Multinational Peacekeeping Force in the Sinai Desert.

During the early 1980s, close US and Fijian military contacts were developed. In return for Fiji's commitment, the US provided Special Forces training for Fijian soldiers and expanded military aid; $1.5 million in military assistance was provided in FY 1981 alone. This was the first such US bilateral military aid to a South Pacific nation. In the period 1983-1986, US training for 52 Fijian soldiers was provided under the International Military Education and Training Program (IMETP). From 1950 to 1982, no Fijians were trained under the IMETP.

In 1974, the Fijian armed forces had military expenditures (in constant 1983 dollars) of $2 million for an armed force of under 1,000. Ten years later, total expenditures reached $16 million for an armed force of 3,000. With a population of less than 700,000, the ratio of soldier to civilian is 4.4 per 1,000, or higher than Afghanistan (US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency). The Fijian military is more than 95 percent indigenous Fijian.

Fiji and the Nuclear-Free Pacific Movement

The Pacific peoples may have suffered more from the nuclear age than any other peoples. The planes that carried the atomic bombs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki came from the Micronesian island of Tinian. From 1946 to 1954, the US tested 54 nuclear weapons above ground. The British also tested in the Pacific, at Christmas Island and then Australia. The French still test their nuclear weapons underground in French Polynesia. Whole populations of islands were forced to move because the-land was needed for testing. Hundreds of Micronesians were exposed to high levels of airborne radioactivity from the tests. The effects are still showing up in health problems in Marshallese islanders.

As a result, two major movements are present in the Pacific. On the one hand, pressure is growing to make the region free from nuclear weapons, whereas on the other, the US and the USSR are rapidly increasing their naval military presence in the Pacific. These two movements invariably come in conflict when a Pacific nation decides to become nuclear free. This conflict was clearly present during the coup in Fiji.

The new National Federation/Labor Party in Fiji had been elected on a platform promising to install a nuclear-free ban of all nuclear capable warships from Fiji's ports. The government also pledged to support the Non-Aligned Movement, called for ending French nuclear testing in French Polynesia, and backed the independence movements in New Caledonia, French Polynesia and the Indonesian-occupied area of West Papua. These positions signaled to the US that the 17-year-old pro-Western relationship was ending.

In 1982, a Parliament coalition poised a short-lived nuclear warship ban, but a year later Ratu Mara reopened Fiji's ports to US warships. In Hawaii, the former US ambassador to Fiji stated that the call for a nuclear-free Pacific runs counter to US strategic needs. He warned that

[t]he most potentially disruptive development for US relations in the South Pacific is the growing antinuclear movement...the nuclear-free concept is being put forward by people who either do not understand the full implications of such a policy for American strategic interests or who do not wish to see the United States maintain a military presence in the South Pacific...I am convinced that the United States government must do everything possible to counter this movement (The Honolulu, Advertiser February 11, 1982).

The Bavadra government expected retaliations from its shift of international position toward nonalignment. When asked about Fiji's warship ban, Bavadra said if the US pressured New Zealand about its legislation banning US warships, the US surely would also pressure Fiji. He remarked that he still had not received a telegram of congratulations from Washington following his election victory. In early May, the US ambassador to the UN Vernon Walter, traveled to Suva to meet with National Federation/Labor Party leaders. Soon after Walters visit, the foreign minister said Fiji would not rule out nuclear capable warship visits.

Conclusion

The May 1987 coup in Fiji was primarily the result of internal racial and economic tensions. The multiracial National Federation/Labor Party had promised to change the longstanding political preeminence of the indigenous Fijians and to give political power to the majority Indian population. This clearly threatened the status quo, which had excluded Indians from power since independence in 1970.

In a region of the world unique in its absence of strong military forces, military coups and perceived threats of outside intervention, the actions taken by the armed forces in Fiji seem to have been shaped by external influences. The rapid rise of US military aid to the Fijian armed forces starting in 1981 guaranteed the Fijian military would have a stronger voice in internal political affairs. Fijian soldiers were brought to the US for military training beginning in 1983. Fijian soldiers who served in the Mideast also came back with both closer US military contacts and a larger geo-strategic perspective of Fiji's relationship in world events. Finally, the foreign affairs positions of the National Federation and Fiji Labor parties had worried US military and political leaders since the first nuclear warship ban in 1982. This point could not have been missed by Lieutenant Colonel Rabuka and his troops.

The recent coup in Fiji signaled the end of both democracy in this island nation and the tradition of military nonintervention into politics in the South Pacific. The result of the Fijian military joining the UN Peacekeeping Force in the Mideast, closer sensitivities to Western interests and the rapidly growing US military aid almost guaranteed that the military would seek a nondemocratic solution to the internal problems of Fiji.Article copyright Cultural Survival, Inc.