Barely had the Solomons intervention begun, John Howard was already talking up a plan to strengthen Australian domination over the countries of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF).

Answering a question at a July 22 press conference, Howard stated that "…many of these countries are too small to be viable… and we really have to develop an approach that I could loosely call… pooled regional govern-ance…. [I]t's just not possible if you've got an island state of fewer than 100,000 people to expect to have all of the sophisticated arms of government".

The next day, in an interview with the ABC, foreign minister Alexander Downer further clarified this proposal with a suggestion of trade liberalisation and a European Union-style common market for the southwest Pacific.

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Sections of the foreign policy elite have been trying to push a more interventionist Pacific policy for some time, especially since the 2000 Solomons coup. At that time, Howard turned down Honiara's request for an Australian military deployment.

Nevertheless, the crisis got Canberra very worried. Weighed down by years of "free market" restructuring (largely pushed by Australia and New Zealand), more and more Pacific states have been hobbling closer to all-round crisis - one that the region's neo-colonial elites can no longer contain, such as in the Solomons.