Godfrey Baldacchino
‘Some Bridges’ is the title of a perspicacious 2024 review of Some Islands 2, penned by Joel Lektemann, published in Lingoblog.dk. Therein Letkemann argues that “If each article is an island, the journal itself is more, to use editor Joshua Nash’s words, ‘amorphous,’ something of an archipelago of artifacts through different media, a landform that morphs and adapts to each reader.”
Taking Joel’s reflection as challenge, this piece is inherently something of an archipelago, in and of itself, with (at least) two different strands of engagement, that coalesce around two men who have met once.
The motivation to consider both threads stems from serendipity. The day, 12 July 2024, was yet another afternoon at my home office. But these two ‘memes’ have come up, in mad and unruly succession, in the course of this afternoon’s musings, internet searches and email correspondence. Here is what happened.
My wife and I ended up watching US President Joe Biden’s unscripted press conference yesterday, live on TV, hot on the heels of hosting NATO’s seventy-fifth anniversary meeting of heads of state. I am sure many viewers were looking out for glimpses of mental incapacity and other lapses in the octogenarian; I found myself thinking of the leadership narrative that the US has assumed of and for itself, and which was again being peddled by the US President, while addressing not just a domestic but also an international audience.
At around the same time, the recently elected Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands, Jeremiah Manele, was in Beijing, People’s Republic of China (PRC), at the head of a high powered delegation, and being hosted by President Xi Jinping. Of all Pacific small island developing states, the Solomons is the one that has reached out most prominently to embrace collaboration and cooperation with the PRC, establishing a foothold for China’s Belt and Road Initiative in the Pacific. Such initiatives rankle Washington since they fly in the face of a discourse where the US is the undisputed patron of and for developing countries. The Western media speak of how such a visit, and what it implies, raises fears of Chinese involvement in a region long dominated by the US, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. But, hold on a moment: PM Manele has already visited Australia. Indeed, this was his first overseas trip as PM – and had talks with his Australian counterpart Albanese. He now plans to visit Japan in a bid for investment and development assistance. He represents and is head of an archipelago, with a population of around 750,000, flexing its sovereignty by not excluding donors merely on ideological or geo-political grounds; and which, under Manele’s predecessor, switched their country’s recognition from Taiwan/Republic of China to the People’s Republic of China. (The details of a security pact with China remain so far unknown.)
I. In my (perhaps twisted) frame of mind on that afternoon, Biden and Manele feature together, but come across as two men standing at opposite ends. Yes, two heads of state. But: is that where the similarities end? Large state versus small state. Continental, heart of empire versus a small archipelago in Earth’s “Empty Quarter”. One leading a superpower, with a GDP per capita of US$76,000, and with petroleum, vehicles and integrated circuits as main exports; the other leading a developing country, with a GDP per capita of US$2,000, and with wood, fish and palm oil as main exports. One is getting close to the end of his current mandate, and still keen on being his party’s candidate for possible re-election; the other is freshly elected, after various stints as senior civil servant, diplomat and minister. One is advancing a hegemonic worldview; one is preferring a more pragmatic approach. One coming from the US State of Delaware, home to over one million business entities that benefit from its favourable corporate laws; the other hailing from the antipodean island of Santa Isabel, and is the first prime minister of his country from this province (population: 35,000).
II. That such a comparison is at all possible speaks to the power of sovereignty. While there may be around 85,000 populated islands in the world, a few of these are actually jurisdictions, equipped with some modicum of local government, such as municipal status. And among these, a few are full-blown sovereign states, They emerged on the world political map in that great age of decolonisation, spanning half a century: largely, from the independence of Iceland in 1944 to the independence of Palau, after protracted referenda, in 1994. Thus have some small islands been thrust on the world stage: occupying seats in the United Nations General Assembly; wielding crucial votes on international organisations such as the International Whaling Commission; having flags, anthems, top-level internet domain names; and, above all, governments and a diplomatic service. Thus, in spite of their smallness – 27 countries are small by any measure, each with resident populations of less than one million; of which 20 are island and archipelagic states. These jurisdictions are visible and command respect. Because of their voting power; because of how they now control huge tracts of ocean because of their exclusive economic zone, itself an outcome of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which, also came into effect in 1994. This is why the Maneles of this world, men and women at the helm of small island governments and diplomatic offices, can and do attract the world media. They also demand and deserve attention. What they do and say also contains news value. And it is not just their position at the helm of their respective country’s government that gives them clout. Personality, leadership, savviness, and presentation skills provide a top-up that makes some of these characters tower over others, and not just others from small island states. Think Mia Motley from Barbados, or Simon Kofe of Tuvalu, or the sadly departed Tony deBrum from the Marshall Islands. This is why it is possible to find out and read about what Biden, but also Manele, is doing, on 12 July 12 2024.
III. The power of jurisdiction is not to be underestimated or romanticised. It may appear cute to outsiders to have a country no larger than a medium-sized town. And, in the course of the study of small (often island) states in politics and international relations, the emphasis has been definitely put on the word ‘small’ rather than ‘state’. Scholars and observers from large states, and notably from the United States—Robert Keohane, Annette Baker Fox, Peter Katzenstein, David Vital—have been ‘outsiders looking in’, examining the quirks and peculiarities of these (mostly new) jurisdictions from a distance, while rarely engaging with their agency and influence, often dismissing them as powerless and inconsequential. The most recent years has, however, seen a flourish of small (often island) state studies, led this time by authors from small states themselves: Cyprus (Nicos Trimikliniotis), Denmark (Anders Wivel), Norway (Iver B. Neumann), Iceland (Baldur Thorhallsson), Luxembourg (Anna-Lena Hogenhauer), Malta (Roderick Pace) and Mauritius (Roukaya Kasenally). (I humbly and responsibly add myself to this tradition.) Moreover, the sheer presence of small, often island, states in international organisations (IOs) is so weighty that they are impossible to ignore. Indeed, the very legitimacy of these IOs can be seen to depend nowadays on their ability to acknowledge the presence of and factor in and address the specific interests of these small states. The latter, in turn, have risen up to the occasion, and increasingly flexed their newly found voice and status to make their concerns felt. I have called this ‘positive sovereignty’ and ‘the resourcefulness of jurisdiction’; as if sovereignty cannot be anything but positive. Nowhere is this positivity and resourcefulness more notable than at the UN Climate Change negotiations, with the inordinately active role of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS). A Small Island Developing State lobby is officially recognised within the UN, and gets to organise its global summit once every ten years: the most recent event concluded in May 2024 in Antigua and Barbuda in the Caribbean. The emphasis, in small state studies, has shifted from considerations of ‘smallness’ to those associated with ‘statehood’.
IV. Let me be bolder: if there are quirks in the international system, it is the large states, not the small states, that stand out, and really deserve scrutiny. There are some 15 countries in the world with populations over 100 million. Only three of these—Indonesia, Japan, Philippines—are island and archipelagic states. A proper theory of international relations needs to start from the ‘small state’ as the given orthodoxy, the mainstream jurisdiction of choice of contemporary history. After all, the median sovereign state population of the world today is 5.3 million, represented by a country like Finland. If our starting point is thus unsettled and refocussed, perhaps we would stop obsessing ourselves with looking at small, mainly island, states as powerless, vulnerable, lacking heft and clout, since such conclusions only emerge from a deficit paradigm, and from a biased examination that contrasts their predicament to that of the large states which seem to have it all in their favour. But, this is not true, since large states come with their own issues and baggage: militarism, imperialism, nuclear capability, regional power projection, threats of secession, unwieldy forms of federalism.
Biden and Manele have thus occupied my thoughts on this particular afternoon. For the first time and perhaps for the only time. They constitute the sinews and rhizomes of an unlikely archipelago of contrasts. It is this human mind that has construed and constructed them as protagonists of the same mise en scène. Some events just stand out, together, because of their sheer sense of difference.