（如在Dailykos上交叉发布，并通过重新编写的介绍和结论进行修订）

汤加处于动荡之中。 亲民主力量对政治改革的缓慢步伐和对华裔的不满表示不满，华裔与16月XNUMX日在首都努库阿洛法街头暴动的不受欢迎的君主制有关，烧毁了中国企业和政府建筑物。

汤加只是南太平洋几个处于危机中的国家之一，民粹主义民主力量与根深蒂固的精英，经济上占主导地位的非土著族裔进行斗争，并且澳大利亚有意识地以布什政府在中东的政策为蓝本，对地区霸权进行了假装。

澳大利亚在南太平洋控制事件的能力已经在所罗门群岛，汤加和斐济进行了测试。 下一次危机（可能会迫使堪培拉决定是否真的愿意并准备在动荡且更大，更危险的舞台上承担新殖民主义国家的重担）在巴布亚新几内亚爆发。

是的，天堂有麻烦。

在某种程度上，汤加的危机类似于今年XNUMX月所罗门群岛的动荡。

但是存在差异。

就像我 写 早在四月份，所罗门群岛危机就受到了台湾资金和澳大利亚力量的推动—台北和堪培拉做出不明智的决定来支持（并鼓舞）一个政治派系，该派系显然是极度腐败且极不受欢迎的。 民众对某些愤世嫉俗的政治恶作剧的愤慨立即在攻击海外华人利益方面找到了出路。

在汤加，中国人显然是作为附带损害出现在舞台上的：与不受欢迎的精英紧密接触，致力于维持现状，但在迅速发展的政治危机中试图走出中间路线却未果。

另一方面，澳大利亚的约翰·霍华德（John Howard）似乎打算重新扮演乔治·布什（George Bush）在南太平洋的“警长”的角色，并把奥斯特里亚（Austrlia）的重担作为主导该地区事件的主要军事力量，即使布什主义错开了从失败到中东崩溃。

汤加（Tonga）由一个笨拙的戴髓头盔的白痴，世袭的君主乔治·图普五世（George Tupou V）和他的吸引力不强的家族经营，这是一种不友善但又不准确的做法。

独立 提供 即将成为国王的国王和他的妹妹正在等待父亲的去世，这是一些当地的色彩：

国王最有可能的继任者是现年58岁的桑德赫斯特大学毕业生，拥有牛津大学文凭的图普托阿王储曾经将汤加人形容为“会在电梯里小便的棚户区”。 他还提倡鼓励警察从吸毒者中“摆脱习惯”。

王子控制着汤加的啤酒公司，手机公司，电力公司和有线电视公司。 他还是汤加.to互联网域名后缀销售的主要受益者。 他曾经是汤加的外交大臣，但是却放弃了他的商业事业。

Pilolevu公主控制着该国唯一的免税特许经营和卫星公司。 她还拥有一家进口业务，一家旅游公司以及汤加最大的保险公司。

当王子在今年XNUMX月登基时，《新西兰先驱报》的简·菲尔（Jane Phare） 添加 其他一些切割细节：

尽管乡村妇女花了数百个小时来制作ta'ovala，以便男人，妇女和儿童都能穿着得体，向已故国王去世后一个月表示敬意，但图珀四世严厉地驳斥了“篮子编织法或他们所做的一切”在电视采访中，他谈到了自己作为商人的技能。 这在人民与新君主之间开辟了更大的鸿沟。

...

[新]国王，一个人……在58岁的岁月中，比皇室想要的吸引了更多的唱片公司-军事恋物论者，网络监督者，疯狂的天才，像马基雅维利的策划者，喷气式单身汉和花花公子。

...

亲民主运动的领导人阿基里西·波瓦（Akilisi Pohiva）…希望看到新国王的权力减少到类似于英国制度的仪式性角色。 他说，人们想要一个“真正的汤加人，而不仅仅是生物学的国王”。

他说，国王的态度和生活方式对汤加人来说是陌生的。

“他生活在一个幻想世界中。 他脱节了。”

自由撰稿人马泰尼·塔佩鲁埃卢（Mateni Tapueluelu）也因撰写的文章而入狱，他说，新国王是一个“现代男孩”，他希望汤加实现现代化而又不放弃其传统权力。 “他自大。 他自称是英国贵族，但他的政策是“朝东方看中国”。

啊，中国。

汤加于1999年从中华民国轨道上惊人地撤离，并与北京建立外交关系，这由现任国王的妹妹皮洛列武·图伊塔公主（Pilolevu Tuita）助产，其业务和外交优先事项从独特的计划到主张和销售赤道卫星时隙—汤加斯（Tongasat） 。

根据 英特尔卫星公司高级官员马特斯·尼尔森（Michaels Nilson）的记者迈克尔·菲尔德（Michael Field）仁慈地指导汤加，说明如何索取一些卫星插槽，而这些插槽并不会充斥汤加的太空和电信业的成果，而是可以出售给出价最高的人。 公主给出了开展这项业务的简要介绍，最终获得了汤加萨特60％的股份，汤加萨特因各种原因而不是汤加在香港注册成立。

然后，为了确保为老虎机准备好市场，并向中国开放基督教徒进行（悔（在卫斯理牧师的领导下，汤加王室戴着世袭的精神王冠），公主拉开了与中华民国的关系的大门。

实地报告：

公主在双月刊《 Matangi Tonga》杂志上解释了她的职位。

她说，她的父亲已授权她进行谈判，并表示：“这是他ma下做出的最勇敢的决定之一。

这是“汤加成为联合国正式会员国的第一步”，这是一个奇怪的说法，承认中国永远不是加入联合国的先决条件。

这位公主现已与中国的商业伙伴弗雷德·王（Fred Wang）在香港成立，试图将汤加卫星的卫星插槽出售给中国。

她对杂志说：“我相信上帝发明了我们来从事这项工作，否则我们可能会成为另一位在北京多年敲门而没有机会见中国领导人的外国人。”

“我们很荣幸我们成为汤加ma下对汤加未来的愿景的一部分。”

公主说中国将成为汤加传教士的目的地。

“我认为与中国的这种新关系是将上帝的话语传播到中国的一种手段。

“当中国向福音传教士敞开大门时，汤加应该就在门口。”

然后是某种认识到涉及金钱的东西。

“业务-良好的关系，正常化的关系-是的，但这是我一直在看的帽子，因为his下的愿景是使汤加人成为传福音的人，使汤加成为传播这个词的传教士国家，我真正地将这视为一次机会为汤加的所有好基督徒。”

在北京通过提供一个比生命更大的青铜雕像陶法阿豪·图普四世（Taufa'ahau Tupou IV）来完成交易后，该雕像被吉尼斯世界纪录列入世界上最肥胖的君主制，同胞贵族汤加社会轻易地滑入了中国阵营。实地报道。

Quiet now is the Speaker, Noble Fusitu’a, who was a high ranking member of the Taiwan funded World Anti-Communist League. They convinced him that the democracy movement in Tonga was made up of “crypto-communists”.

He was strongly anti-Communist.

“The exact definition of communist nobody has ever tried to explain. A communist to you is different to a communist to me. Anybody who tries to move the people against the established order, causing chaos, anarchy, that’s the first degree of communism.”

On that note—chaos and anarchy—we can fast-forward to November 2006, when the new king and his prime minister fumble away an opportunity to transition from an inept, spendthrift autocracy to a responsive parliamentary monarchy, and an enraged populace takes to the streets and starts burning stuff—including Chinese stuff associated with the despised aristo/business elite—to the ground. Ethnic Chinese shelter in the PRC embassy and get evacuated by chartered plane to China.

Things don’t look too good for China in the short term, at least until it can negotiate a place in whatever populist order establishes itself as a result of the collapse of the monarchy’s privileges.

The king’s brother and heir, Crown Prince Tupouto’a Lavaka, had, in a previous incarnation as prime minister in 2001, 有序 the expulsion of Chinese immigrants as part of a power play against his satellite-loving sister:

The princess, who has extensive business interests in China, is understood to support Chinese immigration to stimulate the economy—a policy promoted by her father. An influx of Chinese took place from the mid-1990s on work permits issued with the royal seal. Many found jobs as construction labourers.

...

Now, in a crude appeal to Tongan nationalism, prince-cum-Prime Minister ‘Ulakalala [the current crown prince—ed.] has changed tack and ordered the expulsions. While the immediate target appears to be his sister, the decision reflects wider divisions in the country’s tiny ruling elite arising from recent attempts to open up the island’s fragile economy to overseas investment, particularly from China.

Maybe not good times ahead, for the Chinese and the Tongans, if the crown prince decides to rev up his political career at the expense of his older brother and sister with some anti-Chinese pseudo-populism.

Fortunately for China, there is always somebody around to do something stupid enough to distract popular rage from the Chinese—the Australians and, to a lesser extent, the New Zealanders.

The power vacuum left by the retreat of Taiwan has been filled by Australia, which has decided to contest the Pacific islands with China on the most dubious basis imaginable.

In a replay of the Solomon Islands story, Canberra sees the unrest as a chance to assert its regional sheriff role in Tonga and has made the potentially ruinous decision to send troops to Tonga to prop up the ever more unpopular king.

Writing on the New Zealand website Stuff, Michael Field (again) 写入:

A joint contingent of New Zealand and Australian troops flew into Tonga yesterday at Sevele’s request. It includes 62 New Zealand Defence Force personnel plus police and other government staff.

Halapua said Tonga was proud of never having been colonised, and that Sevele, who is royally appointed, had made a serious mistake by inviting foreign forces in.

“That says a lot about him and his government. He knows very well that people don’t have confidence in him any more. In other different governments, they would step down,” he said.

“If Australia and New Zealand police and army are there to prop up the government, they are propping the government up against everybody else. It’s not just the pro-democracy (protesters).”

Halapua said there was a belief among some some people in Nuku’alofa that the New Zealand and Australian forces were coming “to make people afraid and to support the government”.

Instead, said Halapua, the government should step down so the foreign forces could work with a new leadership.

As 报道 on the Planet Tonga Newswire, Halapua—a highly respected figure in Tongan politics—has called on the Tongan prime minister to resign for inviting the foreign troops in.

根据 Renmin Ribao, New Zealand, at least, has no appetite for Tongan nation-building and expects all Australian and New Zealand forces to be off the island within the week.

Australia might have other ideas.

Indymedia, a left-wing Australian website, in an article prepared before the Tonga crisis, 提供 its take on Canberra’s policy choices in the region and in the process updates the situation in the Solomon Islands, where a populist regime is butting heads with Australia over accountability of the unpopular RAMSI (Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands) force:

The Howard government calculates that any concession in the Solomon Islands would undermine its authority throughout the region. In PNG and Fiji the crisis has already emboldened elements of the ruling elite who are looking to China and other powers for aid, investment and political assistance to offset Australia’s domination. Canberra’s increasingly aggressive actions are in turn driven by the fear of ceding geo-strategic influence to rival regional powers in what Howard has designated “our patch”.

The New Zealand Labour government has distanced itself somewhat from Canberra’s approach. “The consent environment for the [RAMSI] regional mission is not what it was,” New Zealand Prime Minister Helen Clark admitted on November 13 in a speech delivered in Germany. “I believe [RAMSI] can be secured if the mission has a broader Pacific flavour about it, and if clear benchmarks towards an exit strategy can be set.”

Clark senses in the mounting regional hostility to Canberra an opportunity to advance New Zealand’s independent interests. While the New Zealand government has been an active accomplice of Canberra’s neo-colonial interventions in the region, it has long sought to gain regional advantage by portraying itself as a sensitive ally of the Pacific states.“We cannot act effectively without the agreement of our partners in the region,” Clark explained. “A hallmark of New Zealand’s diplomacy in the south Pacific is our commitment to seeking a strong consent environment for what we do.”

The Howard government has not backed down, however. “I think inevitably there are going to be moments of tension with some of the political elites,” Downer declared on November 15. “When we embarked on this change of policy in 2003 we did it very much with our eyes open. We knew that it would be resisted by some people, particularly by some of what you might call the political elite, in some of the countries of the region…. We are a very big country by the standards of the south Pacific and I suppose you put up with a modicum of criticism.”

The Howard government’s stance has led to calls within Australian ruling circles for an open discussion of the implications of the re-emergence of regional colonial rule. “If the job [in the Solomons] is to be done properly, Australia is unmistakably launching a new form of colonialism, the nature of which is not yet fully understood or developed but which is none the less real,” Michael O’Connor writes in the latest edition of Quadrant. “If we are to understand this reality—and support the commitment it deserves—it may be first necessary to abandon the shibboleth that colonialism is irredeemably bad.”

In the bad old days of apartheid, when an international jetliner landed in Johannesberg the pilot would jokingly announce, “We’ve arrived in South Africa. Please set your watches back 15 years.”

For Australia, the equivalent joke would be, set your calendars back 100 years to the heyday of the British Raj or, maybe just three years back—to a time when regional transformation through military force was still considered to be a moral and viable foreign policy.

I don’t think even George W. Bush believes in the Bush Doctrine anymore and I can’t think that anyone in their right minds thinks that his all-too-loyal ally John Howard can buck the trend toward populism and democracy in the South Pacific with hard language and determined nut-twisting. Quagmire and repudiation probably await Australia.

It would be rather amazing if the last act of the Iraq tragedy unfolded in some beautiful, angry islands in the South Pacific.