The United States on Monday signed a military deal with the Marshall Islands. The Biden administration last month recognized the Cook Islands and Niue as “sovereign and independent states” and promised to open diplomatic relations. The United States opened a new embassy in the Solomon Islands in January and another in Tonga in May. A U.S. Embassy is promised for Vanuatu next year. Peace Corps volunteers are returning to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.
On top of all that, the administration is seeking some $40 million from Congress for infrastructure development in the South Pacific, along with other new investments.
That’s an awful lot of sudden diplomatic attention to a remote grouping of 14 sparsely populated island nations whose combined economies are about that of Vermont. Tiny Niue has fewer than 2,000 people. The Solomon Islands is a relative giant with around 750,000 inhabitants.
What’s behind this sudden flurry of activity in a faraway, largely forgotten expanse of the Pacific Ocean?
The obvious answer is China, which has been making its own recent moves to step up its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific islands. China’s efforts appeared successful last year, when Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. The announcement of that accord blindsided the United States, as well as its two key allies in the region, Australia and New Zealand, who feared China might be about to establish a military base in the area.
Despite the United States offering some ritualistic, mostly rhetorical nods to the islands’ strategic importance and their historical resonance — the bloody battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands marked a major engagement for U.S. forces during World War II — administrations of both parties in recent decades have treated the islands mostly with indifference.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Fiji last year, it was the first such high-level visit to that island nation in 36 years. Blinken held a video meeting with other Pacific island leaders. But he was outdone a few months later by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited eight Pacific island nations — Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor.
Biden had hoped to be the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Pacific islands last May, but he was forced to cancel his planned trip to deal with an unnecessary debt ceiling standoff in Washington. Chinese President Xi Jinping, facing no such domestic constraints, has made two extended trips to the region, in 2014 and again in 2018.
China can boast of more than $2.7 billion of investment in Pacific island nations, including projects from its Belt and Road Initiative. The country also assisted the region with vaccines and medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. But aside from the Solomon Islands, Beijing’s efforts appear to have stalled. The Pacific islands declined to sign a regional security pact with China. They actually prefer Washington’s embrace — if the United States would only pay them some attention.
The island nations could provide a potentially reliable bloc of votes in China’s favor in the U.N. General Assembly. Also, China is constantly on the lookout for new diplomatic allies in its ongoing competition with the self-ruled island of Taiwan. In 2019, two of the countries, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing.
But the Pacific island nations don’t want to be seen as anyone’s pawns on a strategic chessboard, including Washington’s. Their top concern is dealing with the impacts of global climate change, because they are quite literally on the front lines. The low-lying islands are already experiencing rising sea levels, coastal erosion and storm surges. Some are in danger of disappearing.
So the Biden administration is correct in devoting a large portion of its promised assistance to technology, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to build more rapid communications and early warning systems, and to improve disaster preparedness for typhoons, tsunamis and other severe weather events.
Predictably, China, through its state-controlled media outlets, has criticized the latest U.S. initiatives in the Pacific. “This is entirely an act of hegemonism,” the Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times wrote in an unsigned opinion piece.
But the administration’s efforts in the Pacific are better late than not at all. The priorities seem right — infrastructure and combating the effects of climate change. A planned follow-up visit to the region next month by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will help convince Pacific islanders that this newfound attention is more than fleeting.
The broader lesson should be that in the global competition with a more assertive China, neglect of any country or region is not an option. It’s a lesson that should be carried to Africa, South America and other too-often-ignored corners of the world.
