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FILE PHOTO: U.S. President Joe Biden poses with Federated States of Micronesia's President David Panuelo, Fiji's Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare and Papua New Guinea's Prime Minister James Marape and other leaders from the U.S.- Pacific Island Country Summit (not pictured), at the White House in Washington, U.S. September 29, 2022.
Biden piles on the charm in the South Pacific
Leaders of over 20 Pacific Island nations will arrive in Washington on Monday for a two-day US-Pacific Island Forum Summit, the second such gathering in two years.
While the meeting officially focuses on climate change, economic growth, and sustainable development, China’s growing clout in the region also looms large. The United States has been accused of abandoning the South Pacific since the end of the Cold War, creating a vacuum that China has aptly filled. As of 2021, Chinese trade with the region stood at $5.3 billion, up from just $153 million in 1992. China has built infrastructure and lent money to a number of Pacific nations, including to the small archipelago of Tonga, now in debt $286 million to China for a series of rebuilding projects.
But nowhere has China’s influence campaign been more successful than in the Solomon Islands. In April 2022 its President, Manesseh Sogavare, signed the first South Pacific security pact with China, authorizing Chinese navy ships to make routine port visits to the Solomons. In July 2023 Sogavare paid a state visit to Beijing, inking a two-year plan for police cooperation. Back home, Sogavare stands accused of using Chinese funds to buy political support and silence dissent; he will be notably absent at this week’s gathering in Washington.
In response, Biden is reopening the American embassy in the Solomons and also plans to establish diplomatic relations with the Cook Islands and Niue.
Why play tug-of-war over these small nations? Diplomatically, every South Pacific nation has an equal vote in forums like the United Nations. China has already convinced several to drop their recognition of Taiwan in favor of Beijing. Economically, they control access to fishing and seabed minerals over a vast territory. Militarily, they are strategically positioned and could be crucial launching pads in any future conflict over Taiwan. Micronesia, for example, lies within striking distance of the American military base in Guam.
But it’s not just the big powers who are jostling for power in the region: India, Indonesia and South Korea are also seeking influence to maintain access to global shipping channels.
The US-China fallout from Biden’s PNG no-show
On Monday, Joe Biden was scheduled to make a historic stopover in Papua New Guinea coming from the G-7 summit in Japan and on his way to the Quad huddle in Australia. It would have been the first visit by a sitting US president to a country that often flies under the radar yet has immense geopolitical significance.
But Biden decided to cut short his trip and return stateside after the G-7 to negotiate a debt ceiling deal with Republicans in Congress. This did not go down well in PNG.
“It is a disappointment,” says Patrick Kaiku, who teaches politics at the University of Papua New Guinea. “[Prime Minister] James Marape invested so much time and energy into this major event, anticipating it for his own standing in the region, and also as a reaffirmation of the US [prioritizing] the Pacific and PNG.”
What’s more, Biden didn't even get on the phone himself to inform Marape, unlike the US president did with Australian PM Anthony Albanese. (Although Biden belatedly called the PNG to smooth things over, a snub is a snub.)
First, what’s all the fuss about PNG? The island nation often gets a bad rap. The capital, Port Moresby, is considered one of the most dangerous cities in the world, especially for women, and in the countryside, an estimated 200 people are killed annually for being — yikes — "witches."
But PNG is also an anthropological gem as well as the world's most linguistically diverse country, with some 840 languages spoken by thousands of ethnic groups among its 9 million people.
Despite being rich in natural gas, timber, and minerals like copper and gold, PNG remains one of the world's most underdeveloped countries. Yet, in recent years it's become the big prize for two heavyweights jostling for power in the Pacific: the US and China.
Biden is wooing PNG to counter Beijing's growing clout in the region, where the Biden administration has been scrambling to regain a foothold since April 2022. That’s when China quietly inked a security agreement with the nearby Solomon Islands, raising the specter of a future Chinese military presence in a part of the world America had neglected for decades.
Xi Jinping then tried to sign up more Pacific countries, although US pressure convinced most of them to pass. Biden later hosted Pacific leaders at a White House summit and had planned to follow up by meeting them again in PNG.
Biden and Marape were going to sign a landmark defense cooperation and maritime surveillance pact, which must be ratified by parliament before it becomes law. Details were murky, but a leaked draft showed that the Americans would have broad autonomy to access PNG airspace and ports — presumably to snoop on Chinese navy patrols — in exchange for PNG getting US satellite data to track illegal fishing.
After Biden’s no-show, PNG could give the deal a second look. It "allows space for the domestic debate about this very unconstitutional and unusual agreement," Kaiku says. "PNG has literally conceded its sovereignty and allowed immunity to foreign powers."
If that happens, Xi might give Marape a call. But PNG — as any country caught in the zero-sum crossfire of US-China competition — would rather just get along with both Washington and Beijing.
One the one hand, China is by far PNG's largest trade partner. Chinese companies are hungry for raw materials from PNG, a member of China's Belt and Road Initiative to fund (badly needed) infrastructure development. On the other, PNG is also eager for US investment to move its economy beyond extracting natural resources, and for US military tech support to better police its territory and waters.
Still, PNG has little faith in rhetorical pledges of commitment from either side. The only major power with a long-term strategic interest in PNG is southern neighbor and US ally Australia, which is now negotiating a separate security gig with its former colony.
"The US is not going to be permanently engaged with PNG. It is China that has somehow gotten the US interested all of a sudden in the Pacific, [which] is not important strategically to America," says Kaiku. "Whether the US is trusted or not is irrelevant."
US-China competition expands to the Pacific Islands
Alarmed by China’s progress in extending its influence among a series of strategically located islands in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, this week President Joe Biden is hosting the first-ever US-Pacific Island Country Summit in Washington, DC. The White House has invited the leaders of 12 Pacific nations to discuss climate change, economic cooperation, and security ties. We asked Eurasia Group expert Peter Mumford to explain the importance of the event.
Why hold the summit now?
After taking office in early 2021, the Biden administration initially focused its Indo-Pacific diplomatic efforts on longstanding allies Japan and South Korea, as well as on wooing India and strengthening the Quad, a grouping of the US, Japan, India, and Australia. In the second half of the year, it ramped up its engagement with Southeast Asia.
Now it is turning its focus to the Pacific Islands, partly in response to increased Chinese assertiveness in the region and the warnings of a concerned Australia, a key US ally.
One recent development that set off alarm bells was a security pact between China and the Solomon Islands that entails broad police and military cooperation. Beijing this year also tried, unsuccessfully, to form a regional economic and security pact with ten Pacific countries.
Some Pacific countries say America has neglected them for a long time – is that true?
Broadly, yes. At the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in July, Vice President Kamala Harris took an important step toward healing wounded feelings. Speaking over a video link, she said: “We recognize that in recent years, the Pacific Islands may not have received the diplomatic attention and support that you deserve. So today I am here to tell you directly: We are going to change that.”
What do Pacific countries want from the US, and what is the US willing to offer them?
First and foremost, these countries want the US to show up and engage with them. To that end, the US is reopening its embassy in the Solomon Islands and plans to establish two new missions in the region, in Tonga and Kiribati; Washington will also, for the first time, appoint a US envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum.
Beyond that, Pacific countries want help mitigating the effects of climate change. Several nations lie just a few meters above sea level. Fiji Defense Minister Inia Seruiratu said at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in June: "In our Blue Pacific continent, machine guns, fighter jets, gray ships, and green battalions are not our primary security concern. The single greatest threat to our very existence is climate change."
In July, Harris said that US assistance to the region — to help strengthen climate resilience, improve marine planning and conversation, address illegal fishing, and enhance maritime security — would be tripled to $60 million per year for the next decade, subject to approval by Congress. The US Agency for International Development also plans to re-establish a regional mission in Suva, Fiji.
Why has China been expanding its own engagement with the region?
The Pacific Islands are composed of many small nations, each with a vote at the UN, providing an attractive opportunity for China to expand its international support.
Beijing is also seeking to further constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic space, given that the Pacific Islands are home to four of the remaining 14 nations that formally recognize Taiwan. China has already convinced several Pacific countries to switch their diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, most recently the Solomon Islands and Kiribati in 2019. That said, Taiwan’s four remaining allies — the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Palau, and Nauru — say they are standing firm.
The Pacific Islands region is also an important part of China’s goal to project naval power further afield by finding new friendly nations to offer safe harbor to Chinese military vessels.
Why does this outreach concern the US?
Beijing’s increasing engagement in the Pacific Islands poses a number of implications for US military interests, including the potential encirclement of allies Australia and New Zealand.
In addition, as China increases its economic engagement, including through the Belt and Road Initiative, Pacific Island countries may feel more beholden to Beijing and side with it at international fora. Washington is also concerned that China’s growing influence could weaken democracy and governance in the region.
Who is winning the scramble for the Pacific?
Until recently, it seemed China had the upper hand, with much more intense diplomatic and economic engagement. But Beijing has suffered several setbacks recently, such as the failure of the new economic and security pact, and rising apprehension over involvement in BRI projects worldwide.
Meanwhile, the US is re-engaging, and its support for regional identities strikes a chord in the region. Similarly, Australia has scored some success in its efforts to convince Pacific Island countries not to use the equipment of Chinese telecoms giant Huawei.
The challenge for the US, though, is to sustain engagement with a far-flung region at a time when it has many priorities to juggle, several of which are more pressing. China will always be able to devote more financial resources and deploy senior visitors to the region more often than the US can. Yet the US’s network of alliances and partnerships can compensate for this disadvantage. Especially important is the role played by Australia, which is by far the largest aid donor to the Pacific Islands, the Quad grouping, and the recently launched US-led Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative, which includes Australia, Japan, New Zealand, and the UK as well as other observer countries.
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The Pacific rebellion scaring Washington
The US is scrambling to step up its diplomatic game with Pacific Island leaders following a breakdown of unity at a regional summit this week that analysts warn could weaken resistance to China’s plans for controversial security alliances.
Vice President Kamala Harris addressed the Pacific Islands Forum on Tuesday, announcing that the US would open embassies in Kiribati and Tonga and appoint its first-ever regional envoy. Washington will triple its annual funding to help the Pacific Island nations combat climate change and illegal fishing to $60 million a year for a decade, she said.
The flurry of announcements followed a decision by Kiribati, a nation of 120,000 people, that it was withdrawing from the PIF — a grouping that normally includes 17 other countries — on the eve of the body’s annual summit this week. The Marshall Islands opted out of the meeting, with its leader saying that he wanted to attend but that his parliament forbade him from participating.
The leaders of Nauru and Cook Islands also didn’t attend, citing domestic political reasons and COVID-19.
For half a century, the forum has relied on strength in numbers to argue globally for the shared concerns — from climate change to nuclear non-proliferation — of what are mostly small nations, plus Australia and New Zealand. But in recent years, the region has increasingly become a theater of geopolitical competition between the West and Beijing, as China has emerged as a top lender: By 2021, it had loaned $1.34 billion to the region, second only to the Asian Development Bank.
Those tensions came to a head earlier this year, when China inked a security pact with the Solomon Islands, sparking fears in Washington and Canberra that it was eyeing a military presence in the Pacific. Beijing then tried to prod all 10 Pacific Island countries that recognize it (and not Taiwan) into signing a regional security agreement during a May visit by Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
Countries pushed back, demanding that China bring the draft deal before the PIF. But the newly fractured forum hobbles the group’s authority to repulse external pressures, according to Peter Kenilorea Jr., an opposition member of parliament in the Solomon Islands and a former UN official who’s critical of his country’s embrace of China.
“Our strength lies in acting together,” said Kenilorea Jr., whose father was the first prime minister of the Solomon Islands after independence in 1978. “The Pacific region must think of its security collectively. Individually, each of us is much weaker.”
Already, Beijing is renovating a World War II airstrip in Kiribati. China and Kiribati have insisted that it will only be used for civilian use. But the opacity of China’s hush-hush security deal with the Solomon Islands has raised questions over Beijing’s true intentions in the region. The details of that pact haven’t been made public — but a leaked draft said it would allow China to send warships to the Pacific Islands region.
Officially, Kiribati’s decision to walk out of the PIF has to do with regional politics rather than a global scramble for influence. The grouping’s top post has traditionally rotated between the three sets of islands in the region: Micronesia, Melanesia, and Polynesia. It was Micronesia’s turn to lead the PIF last year. After voting led to a Polynesian candidate winning, Kiribati and other Micronesian nations — Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Nauru — declared they would quit the organization.
But a meeting last month in Fiji appeared to have quelled that rebellion, with a written commitment that the next leader of the PIF would be Micronesian. For the moment, Kiribati’s refusal to accept that assurance — the reason it has cited for its pullout from the group — is unlikely to trigger an exodus of other nations, said Larissa Stünkel, a research fellow at the Stockholm-based Institute for Security & Development Policy’s China Center. Other Micronesian nations appear satisfied with the agreement they arrived at in June, she said — though the Marshall Islands’ status is unclear, with its government keen to stay in the PIF but its parliament insisting on a walkout. “I doubt that we will see more surprise departures from the PIF.”
What is clear, though, is that Kiribati’s exit from the group weakens the PIF, said experts. The biggest beneficiary? Beijing, which denies any role in causing the fissures within the bloc. “A weakened forum would open the door to more overt great power maneuvering, especially on China’s part,” said Marc Lanteigne, an associate professor of political science at the Arctic University of Norway, whose work focuses on the Indo-Pacific region.
Individually, small Pacific Island nations are more vulnerable to the economic allurements China promises — and that the West has failed to match. China’s loans indeed lead to unsustainable debts: Samoa owes Beijing an amount equivalent to 30% of its GDP, while Vanuatu’s debt to China is nearly a quarter of its GDP.
But Robert Sikol Bohn, a former member of Vanuatu’s parliament who now serves as an adviser to the country’s foreign ministry, said China’s money also results in visible infrastructure projects that local politicians can showcase to their electorate as achievements, whether it’s a soccer stadium in the Solomon Islands, an airstrip in Kiribati, or the Parliament building in Vanuatu. The Solomon Islands and Kiribati both dumped their recognition of Taiwan in 2019 to commit to ties with China instead.
“Australia and the U.S. focus their support on good governance and strengthening democracy,” said Bohn. “That’s just not as sexy for a politician to sell as ports, airfields, and buildings.”
The cracks in the PIF also threaten to undermine the region’s fight against climate change. The island nations face threats from illegal fishing by Chinese trawlers. But the West isn’t completely blameless either, said Stünkel, referring to former Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s support for coal. Bohn agreed. “Sometimes, I wonder about the West: Are they even listening to what we’re trying to tell them?” he asked.
It's a failing that Harris acknowledged in her address to the PIF. “We recognize that in recent years, the Pacific Islands may not have received the diplomatic attention and support that you deserve,” she said. “We are going to change that.”
This represents a shift away from Washington’s approach in recent years of letting Australia and New Zealand take the lead in managing the West’s ties with Pacific Island nations. There’s greater recognition that the U.S. needs to get more involved.
“Kiribati has served as a wakeup call for Washington,” Kenilorea Jr. said. “The big question is: How long will it stay awake?”
Charu Kasturi is a freelance writer specializing in foreign affairs. He is based in Bangalore, India, and often writes for outlets such as Al Jazeera and Foreign Policy.
What We’re Watching: Russia & Ukraine talk grain, US talks fish
Russia and Ukraine get granular, finally
The two countries at war on Wednesday agreed in principle to a UN-backed plan to resume exports of grain from Ukraine’s Black Sea ports. Before Russia’s invasion, Ukraine was one of the world’s largest exporters of wheat and cooking oils, but the war has crippled those shipments, inflaming food prices globally and undercutting food security in dozens of emerging market countries. Under the UN plan, Ukraine would clear mines from its ports, Russia would allow safe passage for grain boats, and Turkey would provide safe shipping corridors. But Kyiv is wary about Moscow using the de-mined sea lanes to launch a fresh naval offensive, and Moscow insists on the right to inspect any boats for weapons. The two sides and Turkey are set to ink an official deal next week. For complete coverage of the growing global food crisis, be sure to see our Hunger Pains project.
US fishes for friends in the Pacific
We’ve written about France and the UK fighting over fish(ing rights) in the English Channel. But what about using fish to reel in friends? That seems to be what US Vice President Kamala Harris tried to do this week with Pacific island leaders at a regional forum that, till now, had raised eyebrows mostly for Kiribati dropping out, allegedly at the behest of China. Via video link, Harris announced $60 million worth of American aid to help 14 Pacific countries catch more tuna. It may not sound like a lot of dough, but illegal fishing is a huge problem in this part of the world, where China's dark fleet has been accused of depleting fish stocks. The announcement comes weeks after China first signed a controversial security pact with the Solomon Islands that Western allies fear will allow Beijing to establish a military base there. Most Pacific countries notably turned down China's offer to make a similar region-wide deal. The Americans, along with the Aussies and Kiwis, have long neglected the remote and sparsely populated Pacific, but fears of China gaining a foothold have lured them back into action.China not seeking 'sphere of influence' in Pacific, Xi says
BEIJING (REUTERS) - China is not seeking a sphere of influence in Pacific Ocean island states, President Xi Jinping told the visiting prime minister of Vanuatu amid fears in Western capitals of China's growing role in the region.