Opinion | The great contest for the Pacific
By Tom Fowdy
China's foreign minister Wang Yi is pursuing a diplomatic blitz on the island nations of the Pacific. These archipelagos, consisting of him some of the smallest and least populated nations in the world, have been increasingly courting China as a partner for their own development. Over the past few days, this has involved a visit to the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Fiji amongst others. Of course, this hasn't been without "controversy", much has been made in the western press of China's recently signed "Security Deal" with the Solomon Islands, as well as proposals to initiate a "policing" deal throughout 8 Pacific Island nations as a whole.
The governments of the United States and Australia in particular have met these developments, not as bilateral partnerships between the countries in question and China, but have sought to spin them very aggressively in the discourse of a "China threat". Beijing is accused of seeking to develop a military base in the Solomon Islands, without substantiative evidence, and articles in Australia's press even touted the idea of regime change. But why is this in fact so controversial?
The reason is because Australia and the United States deem these countries to be a "strategic backyard", holding a condescending, paternalistic and elitist attitude towards the Polynesian and Melanesian peoples, and subsequently envisioning it as a frontier of their confrontation with China. Beginning in the 19th century, American foreign policy has pursued a goal of sustaining hegemony over the entire Pacific, of which it sees dominance as crucial to its economic, strategic and political interests. The ocean constitutes a critical juncture between the "East" and "Western" hemispheres, and it is judged by America that if its influence is not moving across the ocean unfettered, then that of rival powers is in fact coming the other way.
As a result, the United States aggressively annexed territory throughout the region in order to garnish military supremacy. This has included Hawaii, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, the Marshall Islands, and until after World War II, the Philippines. The war itself also saw an effective struggle for hegemony over that region, with the United States prevailing over the Empire of Japan in the "island-hopping" race. The conflict also cemented Australia as America's primary military vanguard in that region, transitioning from the British Empire to the new US hegemonic order. Thus, the United States had built an entire network of states and clients in order to contain the USSR and protect the American homeland.
Now, the pendulum is switching to China. Again, the United States sees militarily containing Beijing in the first and second island chains as its overwhelming strategic priority, core to what it now calls the "Indo-Pacific" initiative. To this end, the US has sought to create "minilateral" projects such as the AUKUS alliance to try and project military power throughout the region. But the world is also different, and China is a much more formidable competitor than the USSR that has incredible economic clout, which serves the interests of the small Pacific Island nations who with tiny populations, see enormous benefits in China's world-leading markets, as well as its infrastructure projects. This has unleashed not just a military competition, but an economic one too.
As a result, the US and its allies are panicking as China takes the diplomatic initiative throughout these countries, offering tangible benefits along the way and rocking a status quo which was once completely dominated by Canberra and Washington. The flipping of the Solomon Islands and Kiribati from Taiwan region to China in 2019 was the first turning point which triggered alarm, and many attempts have been made to interfere in the politics of the former including exploiting its ethnic and regional divisions. This provoked anti-China riots and a botched attempt to dismiss the government in 2021, which subsequently led to the widely attacked policing deal. China has since announced removal of tariffs upon 98% of the island's exports to it.
Wave after wave of US and Australian diplomats, as well as intelligence officials, visiting the Solomon Islands, were not able to deter them otherwise, and the primary reason being is that Washington and its allies have long "taken them for granted" in retrospect to their own development interests, believing that they have a right to dominate them, but less so to help them. Of course, it is also misleading to say that these nations are "allying" with China so to speak, the correct word may be "hedging", the act of playing between several major powers in order to better attain one's strategic independence. Some of them continue to otherwise lean towards the US, if they are already not quasi-controlled such as American-Samoa. Yet it cannot be disputed otherwise that the great contest for the Pacific is well underway, a Cold War which will primarily consist of the US and Australia, and to a lesser extent New Zealand, against the influence of Beijing.
The author is a well-seasoned writer and analyst with a large portfolio related to China topics, especially in the field of politics, international relations and more. He graduated with an Msc. in Chinese Studies from Oxford University in 2018.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
Read more articles by Tom Fowdy:
Opinion | It's the US living dangerously over Taiwan, not China
Opinion | The US 'Indo-Pacific' Framework will fail: Here's why
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