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I must be in a pessimistic mood tonight, but all I can think of is ... quagmire.
Now it could be that Solomon Islanders might roll over like the good little natives of yesteryear, filled with awe at the authority and might of the white man (in uniform, both blue and khaki). If so, then they will happily hand over their arsenals (apparently there are damn near as many guns as they are males). If not, it will be all down hill.
Without a doubt the first order of business of Australian law enforcement will be to disarm the populace. Whether or not this is appropriate will not even be considered: disarmament is doctrine.
Conceivably the gun-holding locals could have sufficient trust in the new arrivals to comply, deliver their guns up (or at least bury them) and rely on the police protecting them from their enemies.
But somehow I doubt it. Should they resist, violence will ensue. After the first few Aussie police are shot, they and the Aussie soldiers will want to consider firm measures. But there will be ABC and SMH journalists and Care and other NGO aid workers running around the place, antennae quivering with anticipation of catching police and military brutality.
Will the government support the necessary firm measures? Probably not. The police and soldiers will be left in an impossible situation. It will become a common understanding that these guys have 'bungled' the situation. ('Bungle' is the word used when officials have impenetrable barriers placed between them and their work, and then fail to perform effectively. Consider the pre-S11 US intelligence bungles. After all, the preceding three decades of tighter Congressional constraints on these agencies' activities -- including the outlawing of hiring of the unsavoury types of informants who might have been able to give dirt on Al Qaeda -- had nothing to do with it!)
The end result: quagmire.
The little pleasures and securities and freedoms enjoyed by us here in the Western world were not an overnight invention. They are the result of the ten thousand years worth of one hundred steps forward, ninety nine steps back, that separate us from our tribal origins (I'm figuring here from the first known built-up communities in the Middle East around 8,000 BC). Yet we expect other peoples, who were living tribal existences less than a century ago, to shed their cultures and adopt our cosy, tolerant, peaceful lifestyles more or less instantly.
It won't happen. Not that quick. I wish there were a nice answer, but there isn't.
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