Ireland knows the "islandism" feeling. But consider Australia: one nation occupying over two million square miles with a coastline of 22,500 miles. A former defence minister, Mr Jim Killen, made waves about 20 years ago with his comment that the military might of his country at that time was probably insufficient to defend even the cove that is the birthplace of white settlement, Botany Bay.
Australia, a sprawling son-of-white giant awash in an Asian-Pacific milieu, has been feeling the stress of its position lately. Racism, immigration, treatment of aborigines and relations with its nearest neighbours have all been top of the list for legislators, activists and the media. But the inherent contradictions in this misplaced Anglo-Celt's situation, so often suppressed, burst forth to embarrassing effect last month when a "confidential" document was made public.
The briefing paper contained a number of slighting references to leaders of Australia's (nearest) Melanesian neighbours. In an oddly archaic phrase the acting foreign minister of Papua New Guinea was described as a "lickspittle" to the elder PNG statesman, Sir Julius Chan.
Much damage limitation ensued, with semi-suppressed background mumblings about identification and incarceration of whoever was responsible for this unfortunate lapse. The Australian Treasurer (Finance Minister), Mr Peter Costello, earnestly intoned: "It's important that our friends in the Pacific know the document is not the government's view."
Not its view, perhaps but an opinion prepared by Australia's elite intelligence outfit, the Office of National Assessments. With the end of the Cold War and the diminution in strategic importance of friendly staging-posts in big unaligned areas such as the South Pacific, the superpowers lost what little interest they had in places like Kiribati and Fiji, in the days when bases such as the one at Diego Garcia were a cause celebre. Australia now finds itself not only economically tied to these places (some of which were once dependencies) but also the region's benevolent Big Brother.
The Prime Minister, Mr John Winston Howard - whose image is very much an Australian of the old, Anglophile model - might have gone gently on his nation's regional supremacy at the first Asia-Pacific meeting he attended after his election nearly 18 months ago, saying modestly "I'm really the new kid on the block".
But the aw-shucks approach masks the reality that Australia's population, industry and exports dwarf those of all its Pacific neighbours. To 18 million in Australia there are four million each of New Guineans and New Zealanders, then the numbers dwindle down to around 700,000 in Fiji, 275,000 in the Solomon Islands, and so on.
In decades past it was usual for Australia's rulers to look, as it were, over the heads of their nearest neighbours (including the teeming Indonesians and Malaysians directly to the north), peering up to Blighty and the basis of nationhood. One could ruminate for hours on the difference this long and longing looking afar made to the infant nation as opposed to the Bolshie hands-off attitude of the American colonies which led them to seek independence after barely a century, and proceed to build a nation mightier than all others.
Australia never had anything like a generous invitation to the "huddled masses", but an official White Australia policy in the first half of the 20th century. That has all gone now, of course, and any liberal Australian or Department of Immigration spokesman will tell you that Australia is a pluralistic multicultural society - just look at the restaurants.
But have things really changed? For what has made the leak of the Pacific Forum document all the more embarrassing is the emergence of the One Nation Party, which seeks to marginalise, if not simply toss out, anyone who isn't a good, decent, white, Christian, English-speaking Aussie. One Nation is led by the redoubtable Ms Pauline Hanson, one of those extreme and committed individuals thrown up when a group in society, even the most dominant group, feels itself threatened. A familiar concept to Irish readers?
Ms Hanson has no bowler hat, but she has a steely gaze and impeccable make-up. She also has a cause which disgusts many of her compatriots. But it pleased enough of them to get her elected to represent the federal seat of Oxley in Queensland in 1996.
Pauline Hanson has greatly embarrassed the political establishment with her trenchant attacks on immigrants and native title, or on aboriginal land rights. But it took the Prime Minister a long time to distance himself from her radical views, even though she had been dumped as the candidate for his Liberal (conservative) Party before the 1996 elections.
THERE is also a groundswell of popular antipathy to her. Melbourne, historically the most cosmopolitan city in Australia, has held two rallies against "Hansonism", the more recent last Sunday. The organiser, Ms Diane Fisely, of the state Equal Opportunities Commission, says the majority of Australians are totally opposed to Ms Hanson's views, but there is danger in the publicity which has surrounded her. "Prejudice and stereotypes exist, and they always have," she says. "But people have now been seen to have licence to speak up with racist sentiments, and that has to be rebutted vigorously."
Ms Fisely speaks of the "moral repugnance" with which most people view Ms Hanson's racism. The same wording appears in the Australian government's first official response to the racist stirrings of the past year, which was published this week.
"Racial discrimination is not only morally repugnant, it repudiates Australia's best interests," a paper, called In The National Interest, said. "The rejection of racial discrimination is not only a moral issue, it is fundamental to our acceptance by, and engagement with, the region where our vital security and economic interests lie." A senior official said the government hoped Asia would read the comments as a direct rebuttal of Ms Hanson.
Canberra has already had some good signs on that score. The deputy prime minister of Malaysia, Mr Anwar Ibrahim, told the Australian Foreign Minister, Mr Alexander Downer, that Ms Hanson's importance had been blown out of proportion by the Australian press.
Still, it is unfortunate in the light of all the fuss surrounding the maverick Hanson and the "leaked" document that the Australian government has decided to slash the resources of a great bridge-builder between the island continent and its island neighbours - Radio Australia. The South Pacific equivalent of the BBC World Service, this arm of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation has just had its staff cut by 50 per cent and its main transmitter in the north of the country turned off.
The Minister for Asian Relations in the Northern Territory, Mr Eric Poole, decried the move at a time, he said, when the federal government should be "trying to combat some of the poor vibes coming out of Australia because of Hanson". It's not easy being the big, rich, clumsy kid on the block.