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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken greets visiting dignitaries on the first day of the US-Pacific Island Nations in Washington on Wednesday. Photo: Reuters

With Pacific Island Nations summit, US hopes to restore influence in region eroded by China

  • To address issues of greatest concern to Pacific Islanders, the US says it is focusing on climate change, education, investment, trade and recovery from Covid-19
  • The Pacific Island nations are in a relatively enviable position of being courted by two superpowers and should take advantage of it, analyst says

The US has pledged to roll out a strategic plan and “big dollar” assistance at a two-day Pacific Island Nations summit that opened on Wednesday amid hopes that the pomp and “deliverables” of a state visit in Washington will prove a match for China’s growing clout and presence in the Indo-Pacific.

The region has emerged as a high-profile wrestling pit between the US and China. But critics say the US took the small but strategically important Pacific Island nations for granted until China established diplomatic ties with the Solomon Islands in 2019. Washington hopes to change that perception this week.

“Every nation, no matter how big, no matter how small, has the right to its own path,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told leaders from a dozen Pacific Island nations and lower-level representatives from four other countries at a lunch on Wednesday. “The United States shares your vision and we are committed to help realise it.”

In an effort to address issues of greatest concern to the region and otherwise “meet Pacific Islanders where they live”, the US is focused on climate change, education, investment, trade and recovery from Covid-19, a senior official said.

But two days of meals and meetings with the US State, Commerce and Defence departments, Congress and the US Coast Guard are also expected to include an ample dose of US geostrategic messaging.

Washington’s priorities include ensuring that more nations do not follow the Solomon Islands’ and Kiribati’s tilt toward Beijing; that expanded internet undersea cables are free of Chinese technology; and that monitoring vast swathes of ocean is intensified to check China’s military presence and rogue fishing fleets.

The US, along with allies Australia and New Zealand, were jarred in April when Beijing signed a secret security agreement with the Solomon Islands, fuelling fears that it could lead to a Chinese military base. More alarm bells rang in August when the Solomon Islands refused to let a US Coast Guard vessel enter its port and announced a moratorium on foreign military visits, helping spur this week’s summit.

“It was all pretty hurried,” said Sourabh Gupta, a fellow at the Institute for China-America Studies in Washington.

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There are suggestions that the Pacific Island leaders may not be able to agree on a joint declaration this week after the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday that the Solomon Islands is balking.

But China’s bid to press its early advantage by signing a security pact with several Pacific island nations wobbled after regional leaders voiced concern about becoming pawns in US-China power games.

US officials said Washington would take several concrete steps to improve ties. These include plans to increase US Pacific Island diplomatic missions to nine from six; to strengthen its diplomatic presence more broadly; to re-establish a US Agency for International Development mission in Fiji; to increase the US Coast Guard presence in the region; and to return Peace Corps volunteers to several islands.

Blinken said on Wednesday that the US would also contribute US$4.8 million to a “Resilient Blue Economies” initiative to bolster fishing and tourism.

In February, he became the first US secretary of state in 37 years to visit Fiji.

Washington has also leaned on allies to do more, including Germany, South Korea and Australia, which recently offered a new coastguard patrol vessel to Samoa to replace one that ran aground.

Participating in the summit are leaders from Fiji, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Cook Islands, French Polynesia and New Caledonia. Vanuatu and Nauru sent lower-level representatives, while Australia, New Zealand and the secretary general of the Pacific Island Forum sent observers, the White House said.

Experts said the gathering was a high-profile event for leaders who have too often felt ignored that will play well back home. But some questioned how substantive it would prove.

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“A lot of Pacific islanders are sick of getting together and talking about what’s happening and not seeing real change,” said Angela Robinson, an assistant professor specialising in climate change and native Pacific studies at the University of Utah. “It’s been decades, and now you’re only concerned because of China? It feels really insincere.”

The administration has stressed Washington’s “shared history, values and people-to-people ties” with the islands. But Robinson said the US needs to demonstrate this by stepping up the fight against climate change, an existential issue for many low-lying islands.

“That’s where China is smart. It knows it’s about pragmatic concerns,” she said. “It’s great when the US says countries don’t have to choose between the US and China. Bit we won’t if they don’t have some material solutions.”

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Another concern hardly unique to the Pacific Islands is whether Washington – even if it does follow through on climate change and other issues – will return to the “America first” approach of president Donald Trump’s administration after 2024.

“Our system does not allow us to make fundamental commitments for the next administration,” the White House’s coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, Kurt Campbell, said last week. “I would say, at a general level, the Indo-Pacific is one region in which you have substantial [bipartisan] alignment.”

Pacific Island nations are in a relatively enviable position of being courted by two superpowers and should take advantage of it, Gupta said. They should get the best deal they can out of President Joe Biden’s administration while they can, work with both China and the US on non-security issues and avoid adding bases or making big shifts in security policy, he said.

“And they should avoid getting too greedy,” he added.

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