Nuclear posturing by North Korea; continuing separatist violence in Indonesia; racial strife in Fiji; the ongoing China-Taiwan situation; civil unrest in the Solomon Islands and now an unhappy military in the Philippines, already a hotbed for Islamist terror all add to the potential for instability in the Asia Pacific and it is Australia which seems to be caught right in the middle.
Australia's ambassador to the Philippines Ruth Pearce was briefly caught up in the "rebellion" -- she and other residents were initially prevented from leaving an apartment block as the situation in Manila's financial district unfolded and it was a visibly fatigued Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer, who told a press conference called over the Philippines crisis that the Manila mutiny added to Australia's concerns in the region.
The thorny issue of North Korea and its nuclear posturing, for example, has seen Canberra come under intense diplomatic pressure from Japan, South Korea and China to tone down its early strident support for US President George W. Bush's call for intervention against the rogue state.
Australia was bluntly told by Tokyo and Seoul -- both major trading partners -- that Bush adventurism could end with a North Korean nuclear strike and a massive death toll in both countries. That message appears to have sunk in. The emphasis in recent Australian statements about Pyongyang has been on negotiated settlement.
And Canberra's relations with Washington are not only putting Australia at odds with its neighbors over over North Korea, it is also turning an awkward spotlight on Australia's attitude towards China.
Public debate about Australian foreign policy is increasingly touching on what is being seen as an impossible dilemma for the Howard government if it is forced to take sides with the US against China over anything, but most likely, Taiwan.
Every Australian government since Gough Whitlam became Labor prime minister in 1972 has followed a Beijing-friendly policy with few exceptions, including generally muted discussion of human rights issues, even after the Tiananmen Square atrocity of 1989.
However the worst case scenario for Canberra is a surprise attack on Taiwan, or a prolonged deterioration in Beijing-Washington relations over the future of the country in which Bush calls on Howard for support that Howard is believed to be ideologically incapable of refusing.
And while the short lived mutiny by the soldiers in the Philippines is over, the problems of the government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo persist.
The first public inkling that something was wrong came two weeks ago, when the feared Jemiah Islamiah bomb maker, Fathur Roman al-Ghozi, escaped from his Manila prison. The Jemiah Islamiah group has been implicated in the bombing of two adjacent Bali night clubs last October in which 202 people died, as well as a campaign of terror within Indonesia and the Philippines.
Currently, the terror group is spreading a doctrine of a pan-Asian Islamic state stretching from Malaysia through Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia to the Philippines and including parts of northern Australia, where Islam has won many converts among Aboriginal communities, marginalized by poverty, alcoholism and ineffective government welfare programs.
David Wright-Neville, senior lecturer in politics at Monash University in south-west Australia, says: "It is the possibility that political destabilization in the lead up to the [Philippines] next presidential elections [in which Arroyo is not a candidate] could allow the terrorist networks to regroup in the Philippines. That is likely to most worry Manila's regional partners."
In comparison to the possibility of international terror campaigns, the Solomons may seem trivial. However, the significant risk in this case is that of casualties among Australian peace-keepers. These are part of an intervention force Australia is leading to restore order in the scattered archipelago, terrorized by warring factions.
Australian relations with Indonesia have substantially recovered from Canberra's role in leading the 1999 UN intervention in East Timor. However continued Indonesian brutality against separatist movements in Aceh province and West Papua have forced it to tread a fine line.
While intervention in East Timor was justified because it had been invaded and repressed by Jakarta, the rising death toll elsewhere is taking place in provinces that have been part of the republic since its inception.
Also, the alleged massacre of American workers at the Freeport high altitude copper and gold mine by government special forces unit Kompasus in West Papua last year reminded Canberra that Jakarta sometimes exercises only marginal control over parts of its military.
Like the Solomons, Fiji represents another headache as problems there also raise the possibility for future Australian peace-keeping involvement with the related risks of servicemen being sent home in body bags.
Despite, the leader of the failed 2000 coup, George Speight, currently on his prison island offshore from the capital Suva, Fijian politics remains polarized along ethnic lines. Traditional Fijians feel they are in a constant struggle with the Indian community, which has now largely taken control of the unions, commerce, medical services and the public bureaucracy.
In the aftermath of Speight overthrowing Fiji's first ethnic Indian prime minister Mahendra Chaudry, a new Fijian dominated coalition government lead by Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase has recently suffered an unresolved legal setback.
Fiji's Supreme Court has ordered it to reshuffle its Cabinet to include members of Chaudry's Labor party, as required under a constitutional power sharing arrangement. However Qarase's coalition depends on the support of the racist Conservative Alliance party which regards Speight as its role model. And so, once again the "friendly islands" are braced for the possibility of ethnic and political turmoil as Qarase struggles to find away of obeying the law and keeping office.
China, North Korea, Indonesia, East Timor, the Solomon Islands, Fiji and now the Philippines. The mutiny in Manila may have been short-lived but it added to the list of Australia's concerns in the region.
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