Amid concern about China’s base ambitions, White House adviser warns US may be in for a ‘strategic surprise’ in the Pacific

US Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell told a CSIS panel that the US has ‘enormous interests’ in the region, but isn’t doing enough to help it

He said Australia had privately urged the US to up its game in the Pacific, as concerns mount about China’s possible ambitions to establish military bases

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Pacific island nations’ flags are seen at a Pacific Islands Forum summit in 2018. Photo: AFP

Reutersin Washington

Published: 11:43am, 11 Jan 2022Updated: 3:45pm, 11 Jan 2022

The Pacific may well be the part of the world most likely to see “strategic surprise”, the US Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said, in comments apparently referring to possible Chinese ambitions to establish Pacific-island bases.

Campbell told Washington’s Centre for Strategic and International Studies on Monday that the United States has “enormous moral, strategic, historical interests” in the Pacific, but had not done enough to assist the region, unlike countries such as Australia and New Zealand.

“If you look and if you ask me, where are the places where we are most likely to see certain kinds of strategic surprise – basing or certain kinds of agreements or arrangements, it may well be in the Pacific,” he told an Australia-focused panel.

Only four sovereign Pacific nations continue to recognise Taiwan, which the US supports even as it maintains a one-China policy. The rest have thrown their diplomatic support behind Beijing, which sees the self-ruled island as a breakaway province. Image: SCMP

Campbell called it the issue he was “most concerned about over the next year or two”, adding: “And we have a very short amount of time, working with partners like Australia, like New Zealand, like Japan, like France, who have an interest in the Pacific, to step up our game across the board.”

Campbell did not elaborate on what he had based his reference, but lawmakers from the Pacific island republic of Kiribati said last year that China had drawn up plans to upgrade an airstrip and bridge on one its remote islands about 3,000km (1,860 miles) southwest of the US state of Hawaii.

Construction on the tiny island of Kanton would offer China a foothold deep in territory that had been firmly aligned to the US and its allies since World War Two.

Kiribati said in May the China-backed plans were a non-military project designed to improve transport links and bolster tourism.