By Prof. Swaran Singh
Interactions at the Pacific Islands Summit this week revealed some of the deeper fears that explain perennial tensions in the region
The United States hosted its first ever Pacific Islands Summit in Washington this week. It was attended by heads of state or government of the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, New Caledonia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu, while the Republic of Nauru and Vanuatu were represented respectively by their local chargé d’affaires and ambassador in Washington.
No doubt, the summit finally managed to issue a detailed 2,375-word Declaration on US-Pacific Partnership, and the United States separately released its first ever Pacific Islands strategy titled Pacific Partnership Strategy. Yet interactions at the summit revealed some of the deeper fears that explain their perennial tensions. While China remained the elephant in the room, it also brought to light some deeper explanations.
On the eve of the summit, for example, the United States’ negotiations to renew its Compact of Free Association – the key US arrangement with its most trusted allies in the region, namely the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau – had broken off in Majuro, with local leaders citing their perennial grievances about the lingering impact of US nuclear testing of 1946-1958 in the region on Islanders’ health, environment and economy.
Heightened geopolitics
Other than these legacies of Cold War geopolitics, the summit proceedings also saw both sides sharing a sense of increasingly becoming victims to the emerging great powers’ geopolitics in the making.
Needless to say, China’s unprecedented economic rise and expanding presence in the Pacific Islands have lately begun to change regional equations. But the two sides seemed to present opposing explanations on what this implied, as well as presenting opposing strategies to redress the matter.
For instance, the United States’ just-released Pacific Partnership Strategy cites the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent of the Pacific Islands Forum expressing concerns about “heightened geopolitical competition” impacting their lives. But in the very next sentence it blames “economic coercion by the People’s Republic of China, which risks undermining the peace, prosperity, and security of the region, and by extension, of the United States.”
Likewise, China also accuses the United States and its allies of “organizing smearing” what it sees as growing acceptability in the region. Especially after the special security agreement that China signed with Solomon Islands this March, the United States’ regional allies Australia and New Zealand have been vocal about their China-driven anxieties, leading Pacific Islanders to read hyperactive re-engagement US President Joe Biden’s administration as driven by its desire to counter China.
This was witnessed on Thursday at the summit, for instance, when Biden announced that the US was reopening its embassy in Solomon Islands that was closed in 1993, or announced plans to open more embassies including in Tonga and Kiribati and to recognize the Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign states.
All of these Island nations have seen expanding presence of China and their growing friendship with Beijing.
Hectic re-engagement
The last five years have witnessed the United States’ hyper-engagement with this region.
It began with former vice-president Mike Pence attending the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Papua New Guinea in 2018.
This was followed by then-president Donald Trump hosting a summit with the Freely Associated States – the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Island and the Federated States of Micronesia, with the last one hosting then-secretary of state Mike Pompeo, which was the first such high-level US visit to that nation.
After the long interlude caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, this February saw Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Fiji – the first such visit in three decades. This was followed by the assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs, Daniel Kritenbrink, and National Security Council Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell visiting Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands, from where they went to join Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry, who was co-hosting the Our Ocean Conference in Palau in April.
July saw Vice-President Kamala Harris virtually addressing the Pacific Islands Forum, where she confessed that “the Pacific Islands may not have received the diplomatic attention and support that you deserve” and announced plans for greater US engagement with the region, including opening of new embassies, the return of the Peace Corps and an increase in funding for the Forum Fisheries Agency.
In August, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Ambassador to Australis Caroline Kennedy traveled to Solomon islands to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Guadalcanal Campaign of World War II.
Not all of this may have been driven by China’s expanding engagement and influence. Indeed, both China and the United States have reasons for engaging Pacific Islands other than simply undercutting each other. To that extent, their contestation may be seen as a byproduct rather than the sole driver of their increasing engagement with these Island nations.
Underlying factors
It is important, for example, to underline that the United States’ interests in the Pacific Islands region predate the US-China competition of recent times. The United States has sovereign territories – including its State of Hawaii, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana islands and Guam – that explain its concerns about China’s expanding outreach across the Pacific in general.
Second, the United States formerly administered the “Trust Territories” that now form the Freely Associated States of Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. This special relationship entails expectations and responsibilities that again explain the United States’ wariness about China’s expanding footprint in this region.
Third, it is equally important to underline how several Pacific Islands leaders have expressed discomfort with the United States engaging them to counter China, thus constraining the Biden administration to underplay geopolitics and focus on specifics of local livelihoods, education, training, overfishing and other pandemic- and climate-related existential challenges.
This explains why Biden’s Indo-Pacific Strategy released in February also indicated deeper engagement with Pacific Islands, underlining commitment to make the United States “an indispensable partner to Pacific Island Nations.”
Finally, the Pacific Islands – an “ocean continent” spanning 15% of the Earth’s surface – form an important subregion of the Indo-Pacific region.
Likewise, China needs these 14 Pacific Island nations to expand its support base at international forums, to find new partners for its Belt and Road Initiative as well as its newly launched Global Development and Global Security Initiatives.
Most of all, China needs them to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space further. After all, four of the 14 nations that recognize Taiwan as the Republic of China are the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Palau and Nauru. China’s growing presence among the Pacific Islands has directly resulted in Kiribati and Solomon Islands in 2019 switching diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing.
Even India has created a Forum for India-Pacific Islands Cooperation and held two summits with national leaders of the 14 Pacific Islands, in Suva, Fiji, and Jaipur, India, in 2014 and 2015 respectively, and hosted an India-Pacific Islands Sustainable Development Conference in New Delhi in May 2017.
Fiji, the second-largest of the Pacific Islands and with 38% of its population being Indo-Fijians, has had close bonds with India. But sensational speculations can often provide convincing outlines.
India has lately not been the most active player in the region, yet geopolitics-driven speculations can cause commentators to see the Indian foreign minister meeting last week in Washington with his counterpart from Papua New Guinea – the largest of the Pacific Islands – as India joining the US in reviving its engagement with the Islands to counter China.
How much of that is true will remain an enigma.
Originally published: Asia Times, September 30, 2022
Posted here with the authorization of the author.
Swaran Singh is Professor of Diplomacy and Disarmament at Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi) and currently visiting professor with University of British Columbia (Vancouver, Canada).