Why Beijing’s security pact with Solomons has been a huge blunder
- Islands provide perfect example of ‘China threat’ for US and its allies as they then turn central and south Pacific into their sphere of influence
When China announced in April last year that it had signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands, an archipelago of about 1,000 tropical islands and atolls, it sounded like it had achieved a diplomatic and strategic breakthrough in the South Pacific.
Australia and the United States were alarmed. Washington sent a high-power delegation to convince Honiara, unsuccessfully, to scrap the deal. Pundits and politicians in Australia reacted in hysteria, with one even threatening to bomb the Solomons into submission.
As it turns out, the security deal has been a diplomatic gift that keeps on giving – to the Western alliance. By providing the perfect excuse and political cover, the US has quickly, if quietly, turned the central and south Pacific into effectively a sphere of influence. Beginning with the Aukus security pact with Britain and Australia, it is fully integrating both regions into its diplomatic, military and strategic orbit.
The Solomons has become the odd man out, and the perfect bogeyman to point to as an example of the allegedly omnipresent “China threat” whenever there is a Western military or strategic expansion in the region, however outlandish or egregious.
Meanwhile, the Solomons deal hasn’t been the diplomatic or security breakthrough Beijing thought it was in a region that has long been out of bounds for the Chinese. Rather than being a foothold or a beachhead, it has become effectively a self-voluntary encirclement by more than a dozen island nations alongside Australia and New Zealand under the US imperium.
This week, Washington is celebrating with leaders of the Pacific island nations in a high-profile summit at the White House. President Joe Biden has gloated that America is “back in force” in the Pacific. Indeed.
The Cook Islands, Micronesia, Fiji, French Polynesia, Kiribati, Nauru, New Caledonia, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands, Samoa, Tonga, and Tuvalu are in the bag. Cook Islands and Niue will each get a US embassy.
Micronesia and Palau will get new deals in services and subsidies in exchange for turning over all their territories, including extended maritime zones – land, sea and airspace – into one big military and spying hub for the US; likewise the Marshall Islands, which is demanding a sweetened deal for its past suffering as the site of nuclear bomb tests.
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To get a sense of the massive military and spying assets attached by Washington to these tiny island states, the congressional testimony of US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence Siddharth Mohandas in July is quite illuminating.
The three states, collectively known as the freely associated states (FAS), he said, “support the readiness of the joint force … to exercise alongside allies and partners – including critical Allies like Australia and Japan”; “Palau’s support to multinational forces, enabling intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance, and tactical airlift operations”; the [FAS pacts] “enable key defence posture initiatives in the Indo-Pacific region …”; “the Marshall Islands hosts the Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defence Test Site … to provide … protection of key space assets supporting three Geographic Combatant Commands [and for] observation of foreign missile launches and facilitates advanced technology testing to provide … a cutting-edge advantage”; “Micronesia will facilitate Agile Combat Employment for the US Air Force. The highly anticipated Tactical Multi-Mission Over-the-Horizon Radar in Palau will provide … an unprecedented level of situational awareness of the maritime domain in the Indo-Pacific region”; “a US$30M undersea cable project for Palau – the Coral Sea Cable – to minimise the risk of espionage and telecommunications interceptions by Chinese adversaries”; “a regional surveillance capability and infrastructure upgrades to the FAS … [and for] training, infrastructure, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance.” Boy, it’s a very long list for warring and spying!
The conventional Western narrative is still along the lines of “countering China’s growing regional clout is an uphill battle”, and Washington’s “latest effort may be too little, too late.” Are the Anglo-American media just daft – or too complicit?
