Pacific nations disenchanted with Australia, China cautiously welcome US re-engagement

When US Secretary of State Antony Blinken pledged to expand Washington's presence in the Pacific nations last week, he was quick to stress that this move was not fuelled by security concerns.

Rather, the United States sees its "long-term future in the Indo-Pacific", Blinken said during a stop in Fiji after his visit to Australia, underscoring the push by the Biden administration to strengthen alliances and build a stronger presence in the region to counter China's growing regional and global footprint.

Blinken, the first US secretary of state to visit Fiji in almost four decades, said Washington would support climate change efforts and expand Covid-19 vaccine access in the region, which consists of 15 independent island nations spread across Hawaii, Asia and Australia, in addition to tens of thousands of islands, islets and atolls.

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The US will also open an embassy in the Solomon Islands, one of 18 members of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) whose members Blinken met on Saturday, during which the official reinforced America's commitment to the region and the PIF's "critical role in driving regional action".

A dialogue partner, China has also engaged with the PIF, having provided US$1.08 million in cooperation funds to the forum secretariat and pledged to work with the private sector to promote business in the region by facilitating export opportunities and attracting investments.

But even after the visit, doubts remain over whether Washington will be a long-term partner for a region grappling with climate change issues ranging from rising sea levels and coastal flooding and erosion to overfishing and failure of subsistence crops that pose threats to their economies.

In recent years, the sparsely-populated region has found itself propelled into the middle of growing geopolitical rivalry between the US and its allies on one hand, and China on the other.

Cleo Paskal, an associate fellow at Chatham House, said that for a long time, Pacific Island leaders had little choice for a larger partner outside Australia and New Zealand, and these relationships were unsatisfactory due to the perception that Pacific countries were viewed as "almost colonies".

So when China came knocking, it seemed to offer more options, but what many islands are discovering is that engagement coming from Beijing, such as in the Solomon Islands, "can be seriously economically and socially destabilising".

"Political and business leaders may be personally benefiting, but the general population isn't, and the leaders are becoming more authoritarian," Paskal said, adding that these countries did not necessarily want to turn back to Australia or New Zealand. "(This is) why more US interest is welcome, as is more engagement from Japan and others."

In the aftermath of the November riots blamed in part on discontent with China, Beijing sent anti-riot equipment such as shields, helmets, batons and other 'non-lethal' equipment to the Solomon Islands.

The unrest erupted after Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare was accused of using Chinese money in a national development fund to sway the votes of members of parliament.

According to the Lowy Institute, the two top donors of overseas development assistance to Pacific Island countries in 2019 were Australia at US$864 million, and New Zealand at US$254 million.

In recent years, China has emerged as an important market for exports from the Pacific islands, including fisheries, wood products and mineral commodities, and it has also provided grants and concessional loans worth about US$200 million per year.

Alan Tidwell, director of the Centre for Australian, New Zealand and Pacific Studies at Georgetown University, said that US attention on the Pacific islands would also be focused on obtaining renewed defence funding for the Federated States of Micronesia, Republic of the Marshall Islands and Palau.

Under The Compact of Free Association (COFA), which will expire in 2023 in the two states and 2024 in Palau, the US is responsible for the external security and defence of the three countries.

"Negotiations on renewed funding for the three compacts are set to be restarted soon," Tidwell said, even though Covid travel restrictions and the change of US administrations have slowed discussions.

Paskal from Chatham House said as China focuses on gaining influence in the countries and the longer the US takes in the COFA renewals, "the more ammunition China has to shoot holes in the US-COFAs relationship and build up relationships of their own with local leaders who may be willing to walk away from Washington".

Paskal added that Blinken should have visited one of the COFA states instead of Fiji during his one Pacific island stop, as doing so "would have been a serious signal to the countries and to his own bureaucracy that concluding the negotiations is a priority for the (US) administration".

Hideyuki Shiozawa, a senior programme officer at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation's Pacific Island nations programme noted that besides dispatching more Peace Corps Volunteers, the US will also reinforce its cooperation with the PIF.

Founded in 1971, the PIF comprises 18 members, from Australia and the Cook Islands, to New Zealand, Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu.

Pointing out that "the stability and prosperity of the region is based on the rule of law, freedom and democracy", Shiozawa said that the US would not turn a blind eye "if any countries try to challenge and transform" those values.

Tess Newton Cain, project lead for the Pacific Hub at Griffith Asia Institute, said that while Blinken was at pains to stress that America's interest in the region was not just about security, Pacific island leaders possessed "a degree of healthy scepticism about how deep or long-term this resurgent interest by the US and others will be".

"There are a range of views, but it is not uncommon to hear people express the opinion that what we are seeing from the US and others is reactive; a response to China's growing influence in the region," said Cain.

"It will take more than a few hours in Nadi to persuade them that there is more to it than that," she added, referring to the largest city in Fiji.

It was a point that Global Times, a tabloid affiliated with China's Communist Party, highlighted in an editorial published on Sunday.

"[The] US was void of steady interest in Pacific island countries, and it will only look down and notice the region whenever there is a strategic need," it said, adding that Washington only intended to return to the Pacific without establishing what the island nations really needed.

Analysts said Washington could show its sincerity by also addressing issues that those in the region still found disconcerting. One example would be the nuclear legacy.

"There is a degree of nervousness about increased militarisation of the region and, in particular, about anything that might dilute or impinge upon the nuclear free zone," Cain said.

From 1946 to 1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, forcing local residents to relocate and spawning a legacy of stillborn babies, birth defects, cancer and other health maladies.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

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