The Asia Pacific industry has ‘changed up gears’ in providing solutions to counter UAS threats. The proliferation of affordable and readily available small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), commonly called drones, has presented significant challenges for military and homeland security organisations in the Asia Pacific region to overcome in recent years. Such low and slow-flying devices […]
The Anglo ruling classes have gone into a state of frenzy over a recently-signed security agreement between the People’s Republic of China and the Solomon Islands. Various people who had barely heard of the Solomon Islands just a few weeks ago are now expressing grave concern that this small sovereign nation could be used as a pawn by an aggressive and expansionist China in its bid for world domination.
The deal itself appears to be entirely ordinary, allowing for China to “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in the Solomon Islands,” in addition to providing the Solomon Islands police with training and – on invitation – support. Indeed, the Solomon Islands already has similar security cooperation arrangements with Australia, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand and Fiji; as such, the deal with China simply represents a desire to “seek greater security partnership with other partners and neighbours.”
China’s ambassador to the UN, Zhang Jun, told a UN Security Council meeting on the war in Ukraine Thursday that NATO’s eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War has “sowed the seeds of conflict.”
Zhang’s comments came as Beijing commemorates the anniversary of the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade on May 7, 1999, during the NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia.
“NATO’s repeated eastward expansion after the Cold War has not only failed to make Europe any safer, but also sowed the seeds of conflict,” Zhang said. “Contrary to its claim to be an organization defensive in nature, NATO has wantonly launched wars against sovereign countries, causing colossal casualties and humanitarian disasters.”
Russia’s war on Ukraine both reflects and deepens a global split that should remind us of Karl Marx’s famous remark: “No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces, for which there is room in it, have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society.” The United Kingdom already lost its particular social order—its empire—while the United States is now losing its.
Despite differences, both of these social orders shared a mostly private form of capitalist relations of production (the organization of enterprises centered around private employers and employees). That social order has given way to a different, mostly public form of capitalist relations of production where state officials are major employers. The latter form of capitalism is developing most dramatically in China.
In 1999, the United States and the 56 other participating states of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) signed a charter in Istanbul that is another intentionally ignored key to understanding the war in Ukraine.
The OSCE is the world’s largest regional security organization . It claims to engage in political dialogue – that is, a forum for political dialogue on a wide range of security issues. There are 57 OSCE member states that cover three continents – North America, Europe and Asia. The policies the OSCE deliberates over include security issues such as arms control, terrorism, good governance, energy security, human trafficking, democratization, media freedom, and the rights of national minorities that affect more than a billion people. This is what they say they do, anyway.
But the 1999 Istanbul Charter signed by all the member states says that countries should be free to choose their own security arrangements and alliances but specifies that, in doing so, countries “will not strengthen their security at the expense of the security of other states.”
Anthony Albanese was missing from the election campaign for one week, and didn’t the media have a field day. Unfortunately, the media has it in for Albanese, and instead of the predicted nightmare disaster that was meant to be caused by their leader’s absence, Labor managed to highlight key members from their frontbench – the differences between the two sides of politics could not be more stark.
Perhaps it might have been better to focus on all the occasions Scott Morrison has been absent over the past three years?
Climate change also entered the campaign, but Labor didn’t really need to make too many announcements on this issue. The King of Coal, Matt Canavan, suggested the net zero by 2050 target for the Liberal–National Coalition was “dead” and was never going to happen and, as a result of his statements, the eternal colour of happiness is teal. Candidates from the Voices Of group of independents could barely conceal their delight and the stupidity of Canavan and Colin Boyce in voicing their opinions so stridently. As Napoleon Bonaparte suggested, never interfere when your enemy is making all mistakes.
ANZAC Day was held during the week, and what better way for a politician to show disrespect and disdain for those people who died in Australian wars, by talking up a war with China, or driving mobile Liberal Party billboards during an ANZAC Day service in Geelong.
Really, we have to start questioning the sanity of leaders such as Peter Dutton and Morrison, because it’s these types of foolish leaders who sacrifice the lives of young soldiers, while hiding in their coward’s castles, far away from any mortal danger.
And this foolishness was also on display in the Solomon Islands, where Australia threw away high level hard and soft diplomacy measures and allowed China extend its sphere of influence into the Pacific. The Prime Minister has really found himself on the sticky end of a fried dough stick.
It’s also becoming more apparent this foolishness in Canberra is about to end, with all opinion polls predicting a Labor victory on election day – 21 May – they also predicted a Labor victory in 2019 but, this time around, it’s hard to see where Scott Morrison’s victory is going to come from. It really is.
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US and Australia react negatively to China signing a security pact with the Solomon Islands; China’s younger generation had greater confidence; Chinese female directors are having box office successes.
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.
Britain has always hated bullies. China must do what Britain says. Russia squandered a chance to reform when the Soviet Union ended. Yes, Liz Truss has given another major foreign policy speech and it’s an absolute masterclass of the Liz Truss speech form.
Her address took place at the Lord Mayor’s 2022 Easter Banquet on 27 April. And not even the complexities of actual real-world history and politics were going to hold her back. We examine some of her major clangers here.
The Free World?
Truss’ schtick is a ‘free world’ composed of like-minded democratic nations. In one passage she describes a ‘network of liberty’. In this analysis, capitalism equals freedom. For example:
Free trade and free markets are the most powerful engine of human progress. We will always champion economic freedom.
Elsewhere Truss goes even further, equating capitalism with peace and security itself:
So let’s work together. Let’s forge deeper bonds. Let’s be better traders, investors, and partners than the aggressors.
It’s even less convincing in the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia is, of course, itself a capitalist country – contrary to the fantasies of the New Cold Warriors like Truss.
Naughty China
Truss also takes aim at China. Membership of the global capitalist economy, she insists, must be earned. Beijing, Truss said, “has not condemned Russian aggression or its war crimes”:
But China is not impervious. By talking about the rise of China as inevitable we are doing China’s work for it. In fact, their rise isn’t inevitable. They will not continue to rise if they don’t play by the rules.
China, she went on, “needs trade with the G7”:
We represent half of the global economy. And we have choices. We have shown with Russia the kind of choices we’re prepared to make when international rules are violated. And we’ve shown that we’re prepared to prioritise security and respect for sovereignty over short-term economic gain. Not least because we know that the cost of not acting is higher.
The first, and most obvious, issue here is that the second largest economy on Earth may not actually care what Liz Truss thinks. More broadly, it is no simple matter to compel the Chinese state. Especially if you are the UK, whose economy is deeply intertwined with that of China.
It would not be feasible to go into some old, outdated, cold war with China
In this light, Truss’s comments look like fairly empty rhetoric.
Britain hates bullies?
But Truss made an even more outlandish claim in her speech in the section on Ukraine and Russia:
Britain has always stood up to bullies.
This definitely needs to be unpacked. The hard part is where to begin. The obvious choice is Britain’s now-departed global empire built on invasion, slavery, exploitation, famine, and violence. Sadly, we don’t have time to write an entire book, so let’s turn to recent recent events.
We could talk about Iraq, where the UK threw its lot in with an illegal US invasion. The results? A million deaths, according to some figures, as well as the rise of ISIS.
Or Afghanistan, one of the poorest countries in the world, where a resurgent Taliban recently ejected the US-led occupation. A country teetering on the edge of famine while our chief ally, the US, has doled out the country’s stolen wealth to the 9/11 families.
Or maybe Libya, where the UK took part in a war which saw the country disintegrate into chaos. Where rival fighters are still squaring off as they vie to fill the 11-year-old power vacuum.
Not exactly the conduct of a nation which opposes bullies on the international stage.
Little Britain
It’s hard to see what Truss is trying to achieve, given that many of her major arguments can be easily dismissed. Maybe she’s playing to the Tory base of people who believe they died in both world wars despite being born long after they’d ended. Or maybe this is just posturing to deflect from the Tories’ internal crises, such as Partygate.
Perhaps most terrifyingly of all, Truss might actually believe that the likes of Russia and China actually shape their policies based on what she has to say about global affairs.
We cannot know. But what we can say is that if a British government wants a more peaceful and secure world, where international laws are respected, it needs to look a lot closer to home than Beijing.
Oiwan Lam on 26 April 2022 reported that Hong Kong’s Foreign Correspondents’ Club has canceled its Human Rights Awards for fear of “legal risks”
Image created by Oiwan Lam.
The Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Hong Kong (FCC HK), a press freedom watchdog, announced they would cancel their 2022 Human Rights Press Awards (HRPA) on April 25. Eight members of the Club’s Press Freedom Committee have resigned in protest over the decision.
Many foreign correspondents were shocked by the decision. Launched in 1995, the HRPA has been one of the most important platforms to celebrate and honour human rights journalism from around Asia. The Club normally announces the winners on May 3, World Press Freedom Day.
Hong Kong Free Press (HKFP) quoted sources from FCC HK that the cancellation was related to the legal risks in presenting awards to the now-defunct Stand News. Two former senior staff members of the independent news outlet have been charged with conspiring to publish “seditious publications” pending trial.
Stand News was forced to shut down last December after security police raided its office. The police authorities accused the news site of publishing “seditious materials” with the intent to cause hatred towards the government and the judiciary.
An FCC member told the HKFP that Stand News would receive four awards and five merits in this year’s award, but “certain items” would pose a legal risk.
In a letter to the Club’s members, the president of FCC HK Keith Richburg said the decision was made in the organization’s board meeting on April 23:
Over the last two years, journalists in Hong Kong have been operating under new “red lines” on what is and is not permissible, but there remain significant areas of uncertainty and we do not wish unintentionally to violate the law. This is the context in which we decided to suspend the Awards.
The letter also says that “recent developments might also require changes to our [FCC HK’s] approach” in the promotion of press freedom.
As the city’s incoming Chief Executive John Lee has vowed to apply the “strictest measures” to clamp down on “anyone who tries to use journalistic work as a shield to engage in crimes endangering national security” in response to the crackdown on Apple Daily, FCC HK’s anticipation of legal risks is valid.
Yet, as a press freedom watchdog, many see the choice to ax the awards as an act of self-censorship antithetical to the organization’s purpose, as independent journalist Ilaria Maria Sala wrote on Twitter:
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives, has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.
Russia Turns to the East – China Provides an Alternative Economic Powerhouse
The second pivotal event of 2014 was less noticed and, in fact, rarely mentioned in the Western mainstream media. In November of that year according to the IMF, China’s GDP surpassed that of the U.S. in purchasing power parity terms (PPP GDP). (This measure of GDP is calculated and published by the IMF, World Bank and even the CIA. Students of international relations like economics Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, Graham Allison and many others consider this metric the best measure of a nation’s comparative economic power.) One person who took note and who often mentions China’s standing in the PPP-GDP ranking is none other than Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
From one point of view, the Russian action in Ukraine represents a decisive turn away from the hostile West to the more dynamic East and the Global South. This follows decades of importuning the West for a peaceful relationship since the Cold War’s end. As Russia makes its Pivot to the East, it is doing its best to ensure that its Western border with Ukraine is secured.
Following the Russian action in Ukraine, the inevitable U.S. sanctions poured onto Russia. China refused to join them and refused to condemn Russia. This was no surprise; after all Putin’s Russia and Xi’s China had been drawing ever closer for years, most notably with trade denominated in ruble-renminbi exchange, thus moving toward independence from the West’s dollar dominated trade regime.
The World Majority Refuses to Back U.S. Sanctions
But then a big surprise. India joined China in refusing to honor the US sanctions regime. And India kept to its resolve despite enormous pressure including calls from Biden to Modi and a train of high level US, UK and EU officials trekking off to India to bully, threaten and otherwise attempting to intimidate India. India would face “consequences,” the tired US threat went up. India did not budge.
India’s close military and diplomatic ties with Russia were forged during the anti-colonial struggles of the Soviet era. India’s economic interests in Russian exports could not be countermanded by U.S. threats. India and Russia are now working on trade via ruble-rupee exchange. In fact, Russia has turned out to be a factor that put India and China on the same side, pursuing their own interests and independence in the face of U.S. diktat. Moreover with trade in ruble-renminbi exchange already a reality and with ruble-rupee exchange in the offing, are we about to witness a Renminbi-Ruble-Rupee world of trade – a “3R” alternative to the Dollar-Euro monopoly? Is the world’s second most important political relationship, that between India and China, about to take a more peaceful direction? What’s the world’s first most important relationship?
India is but one example of the shift in power. Out of 195 countries, only 30 have honored the US sanctions on Russia. That means about 165 countries in the world have refused to join the sanctions. Those countries represent by far the majority of the world’s population. Most of Africa, Latin America (including Mexico and Brazil), East Asia (excepting Japan, South Korea, both occupied by U.S. troops and hence not sovereign, Singapore and the renegade Chinese Province of Taiwan) have refused. (India and China alone represent 35% of humanity.)
Add to that fact that 40 different countries are now the targets of US sanctions and there is a powerful constituency to oppose the thuggish economic tactics of the U.S.
Finally, at the recent G-20 Summit a walkout led by the US when the Russia delegate spoke was joined by the representatives of only 3 other G-20 countries, with 80% of these leading financial nations refusing to join! Similarly, a US attempt to bar a Russian delegate from a G-20 meeting later in the year in Bali was rebuffed by Indonesia which currently holds the G-20 Presidency.
Nations Taking Russia’s side are no longer poor as in Cold War 1.0.
These dissenting countries of the Global South are no longer as poor as they were during the Cold War. Of the top 10 countries in PPP-GDP, 5 do not support the sanctions. And these include China (number one) and India (number 3). So the first and third most powerful economies stand against the US on this matter. (Russia is number 6 on that list about equal to Germany, number 5, the two being close to equal, belying the idea that Russia’s economy is negligible.)
These stands are vastly more significant than any UN vote. Such votes can be coerced by a great power and little attention is paid to them in the world. But the economic interests of a nation and its view of the main danger in the world are important determinants of how it reacts economically – for example, to sanctions. A “no” to US sanctions is putting one’s money where one’s mouth is.
We in the West hear that Russia is “isolated in the world” as a result of the crisis in Ukraine. If one is speaking about the Eurovassal states and the Anglosphere, that is true. But considering humanity as a whole and among the rising economies of the world, it is the US that stands isolated. And even in Europe, cracks are emerging. Hungary and Serbia have not joined the sanctions regime and, of course, most European countries will not and indeed cannot turn away from Russian energy imports crucial to their economies. It appears that the grand scheme of U.S. global hegemony to be brought about by the US move to WWII Redux, both Cold and Hot, has hit a mighty snag.
For those who look forward to a multipolar world, this is a welcome turn of events emerging out of the cruel tragedy of the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. The possibility of a saner, more prosperous multipolar world lies ahead – if we can get there.
A landmark case in Fiji today at the High Court in the capital Suva issued what is the country’s first environmental crime sentence.
Controversial Chinese resort development company Freesoul Limited was fined FJ$1 million for breaching two counts of Fiji’s Environmental Management Act.
The company is developing a resort on Malolo Island in the popular tourist hotspot, the Mamanuca Islands.
The company was issued a prohibition notice in June 2018 after neighbours and indigenous landowners shed light on extensive environmental damage it was causing on the coast at Malolo Island.
According to court documents, the company was issued with a prohibition notice by the Department of Environment after landowners and neighbours alerted authorities of extensive coral and mangrove damage.
The company had dug an extensive sea channel and removed local marine life to gain direct access to the resort development.
The DOE had authorised only land works because an Environmental Impact Assessment had not been done on marine works.
Freesoul denied responsibility
When charged for unauthorised development, Freesoul denied responsibility but the Magistrate Seini Puamau, who heard the initial case, was not satisfied, given DOE evidence produced in court showing Freesoul apologising for the damage.
The case was referred to High Court judge Justice Daniel Gounder who ordered Freesoul pay the DOE FJ$1 million for the rehabilitation of the marine environment damage.
Chinese resort developer Freesoul fined $650,000 for damaging Fijian mangroves and reef https://t.co/7cGoUadaoy
The United States and its Pacific allies have sounded alarm bells over a security cooperation deal signed between Solomon Islands and China, with threats directed at China. On Sunday, April 24, the Chinese embassy in Solomon Islands hit back at the comments made by the US delegation that visited the Pacific nation last week, calling it a “blatant threat.”
The Chinese embassy’s spokesperson stated that the comments “again exposed the hegemony mindset and bullying behavior,” reported Global Times.
Remote weapons are increasing in calibre as the ability to link them with a greater range of sensors and systems increases. Naval remote weapon stations (RWS) are becoming increasingly popular among navies as they seek to install them on both large and small warships to improve their firepower. This is important for the Indo-Pacific region […]
Michelle Bacheletdue to visit Uyghur region in May after United Nations long pushed China for ‘unfettered, meaningful’ access
A United Nations team is in China ahead of a visit to Xinjiang, in preparation for the human rights commissioner’s long sought inspection expected next month.
The delegation was quarantining in Guangzhou, the South China Morning Post reported, before heading to Xinjiang. The five-member team was there “at the invitation of the [Chinese] government” said Liz Throssell, UN human rights spokesperson, the Post reported.
A spectre is haunting the Pacific. It is focused on Solomon Islands today, but has eyes everywhere and might pounce anywhere next.
No, I’m not talking about China. I am talking about us.
More specifically, I’m talking about a particular type of Western security pundit, who hypes danger and itches for confrontation. And I am talking about the way our politicians behave when they strive to win votes by stoking fear of the world outside our borders.
The saga of China’s “military base” in Solomon Islands demonstrates how unhelpful such behaviour is, both to our own interests, and to the people of the Pacific.
If you had the good fortune of missing the last few weeks, here’s what happened.
In late March, journalists revealed that China and Solomon Islands had signed a policing agreement. Someone from within the Solomon Islands government also leaked a broader draft security agreement with China.
Ship visits and stopover
Solomons can ask China to provide police and military assistance. If, and only if, the Solomon Islands government of the day consents, China can “make ship visits to, carry out logistical replenishment in, and have stopover and transition in Solomon Islands, and relevant forces of China can be used to protect the safety of Chinese personnel and major projects in Solomon Islands.”
Permanent bases are not mentioned.
This, however, didn’t stop antipodean pundits from racing to hype the threat of a Chinese base. To be fair, few went as far as David Llewellyn-Smith, who demanded that Australia preemptively invade Solomons.
He was an outlier (although it didn’t stop him from being uncritically quoted in the Courier-Mail). But all spoke of a base as a near certainty.
Then politicians piled on. Penny Wong, who normally displays an impressive understanding of aid and the Pacific, decried the agreement as the “worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War II”.
Peter Dutton warned that Australia could now expect “the Chinese to do all they can”. (Although he added optimistically they were unlikely to do so before the election.)
Barnaby Joyce fretted about Solomons becoming a, “little Cuba off our coast”. (Solomons is more than 1500km from Australia; Cuba is about 200km from the US.)
Australian agreement similar
Amidst the racket, much was lost. Australia has its own security agreement with Solomon Islands. It’s more carefully worded, but it affords Australia similar powers to China.
And China already has a security agreement with Fiji. Indeed, there was real talk of a base when that agreement was signed, but no base materialised, and the agreement has had no effect on regional security.
And as Scott Morrison pointed out, Manasseh Sogavare, the Solomon Islands Prime Minister, has explicitly ruled out a Chinese base.
True, Sogavare is a political maneuverer who can’t be taken at his word. But a Chinese base in Solomons serves neither his interest, nor that of the Chinese.
It doesn’t serve Sogavare’s interests because it won’t give him what he wants — a stronger hold on power. Seen as the embodiment of a corrupt elite, he’s unpopular in Honiara. His election brought riots.
As did his standoff with Malaitan Premier Daniel Suidani. So he wants Chinese police training and maybe military assistance in times of instability. But a base won’t help.
Solomons is a Sinophobic country and the obvious presence of a base will increase Sogavare’s unpopularity. It would also jeopardise the security support he gets from Australia, as well as Australian aid. (By my best estimate, based on Chinese promises, which are likely to be overstatements, Australia gave more than 2.5 times as much aid to Solomons in 2019, the most recent year with data.)
Base isn’t in China’s interest
I’m not defending Sogavare. I’d rather Chinese police weren’t helping him. But a base isn’t in his interest. And he’s no fool.
A base isn’t in China’s interests either. I don’t like China’s repressive political leaders. But their military ambitions are limited to places they view as part of China. What they’ve done, or want to do, in Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan is odious.
But Australia isn’t next on their list. Outside of their immediate sphere of influence they want trade. They need trade, and the wealth it brings, to sustain the political settlement that keeps them prosperous and in power. Any war that saw China menace Australia from Solomon Islands would bring ruinous sanctions in its wake. (US bases in Guam and Okinawa would be a headache too, I’d imagine.)
The broader security agreement is helpful to China: it gives them the ability to protect Chinese nationals and Chinese business interests if riots break out.
But they don’t need a base for that. A base would be costly, hard to establish in a country with little available land, and quite possibly useless next time the Solomons government changes.
I’m not a supporter of the security agreement. But it’s not a base. And it’s not a catastrophe.
Our behaving like it’s a catastrophe is harmful though.
Harmful to Australia and NZ
It’s harmful to countries like Australia and New Zealand, because the main advantage we have over China in the Pacific is soft power. Thanks to anti-Chinese racism and a healthy wariness of China’s authoritarian government, most people in Pacific countries, including political elites, are more hesitant in dealing with China than with us.
Sure, money talks, and China can procure influence, but we are a little better liked. And that helps. Yet we lose this advantage every time we talk of invading Pacific countries, or call the region our “backyard”, or roughly twist the arms of Pacific politicians.
The Pacific is not some rogue part of Tasmania. It’s an ocean of independent countries. That means diplomacy is needed, and temper tantrums are unhelpful.
Worse still, our propensity to view the Pacific as a geostrategic chessboard has consequences for the region’s people. Geopolitical aid is too-often transactional and poorly focused on what people need. It is less likely to promote development.
There’s an alternative: to choose realism over hype in our collective commentary. And to earn soft power by being a respectful and reliable partner. It’s not always easy. But it’s not impossible. Yet it has completely escaped us in the shambles of the last few weeks.
Dr Terence Wood is a research fellow at the Development Policy Centre, Crawford School of Public Policy, Australian National University. His research focuses on political governance in Western Melanesia, and Australian and New Zealand aid. Republished with permission.
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More than 88,000 Hongkongers have come to the UK under a new visa scheme after a harsh crackdown on civil liberties in the city. How are they coping? What are they doing? And do they think they will return?
Thousands of Hongkongers escaping from China’s increasingly authoritarian grip on the city have settled in Britain over the past year in search of a new life. This fresh start comes via the British national (overseas) visa scheme.
More than 88,000 Hongkongers applied for the BNO visa, launched last January, in its first eight months, according to Home Office figures. It allows them to live, study and work in Britain for five years. Once that time is up, BNO holders can apply to stay permanently. The government is expecting about 300,000 people to use this new route to citizenship in the next five years.
Visits to Honiara, part plea, part threat. Delegations equipped with a note of harassment. That was the initial Australian effort to convince the Solomon Islands that the decision to make a security pact with Beijing was simply not appropriate in the lotus land of Washington’s Pacific empire.
Despite an election campaign warming up, Senator Zed Seselja found time to tell Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare that Australia remained dedicated to supporting the security needs of the Solomon Islands, and would do so “swiftly, transparently and with full respect for its sovereignty”. The Pacific country remained a friend, part of the “Pacific family”. He went on to “respectfully” urge the Solomon Islands to reject the security pact with China and “consult the Pacific family in the spirit of regional openness and transparency, consistent with our region’s security frameworks.”
Having not convinced Honiara to change course, a range of reactions are being registered. David Llewellyn-Smith, former owner of the Asia Pacific foreign affairs journal The Diplomat, took leave of his senses by suggesting that a Chinese naval base in the Solomons would see “the effective end of our sovereignty and democracy”. In a spray of hysteria, he suggested that this was “Australia’s Cuban missile crisis”.
The Labor opposition, desperate to win office on May 21, are calling this one of the greatest intelligence failures since the Second World War, which perhaps shows their somewhat tenuous command of history. Their leader, Anthony Albanese, seeking some safe mooring in a campaign that has lacked lustre, was particularly strident. It was a chance to show that Labor was not shaky or wobbly on national security. “The security agreement between China and the Solomons is a massive failure of our foreign policy,” stated the opposition leader as he campaigned in Bomaderry in southern New South Wales. “We are closer here today to the Solomon Islands than we are to Perth. That shows how strategic they are to Australia.”
This belligerent, simple note might have been stronger were it not for the fact that his deputy, Richard Marles, had previously made the unpopular suggestion that the Pacific islands were somehow sovereign entities who needed to be treated as such while China, in providing development assistance to them, should be “welcome” in offering it. The goons of the Rupert Murdoch roundtable capitalised, hoping to find a Chinese Red under Marles’s bed.
Scratching for electoral gains, Labor thought that it was inappropriate to have sent the junior minister, as if that would have made much of a difference. Foreign Minister Marise Payne, it was said, should have been flown in to bully those misguided savages into submission.
In Australia, the message being fanned is that the deputy – in this case, Canberra – failed in the task, leaving it to the United States to come in and hold up what seemed like a sinking ship of strategy. “The United States very much relies upon Australia and sees Australia as playing that key role in the Indo-Pacific,” lamented Albanese. “Australia and Scott Morrison have gone missing.”
The Morrison government poured water on such criticism by suggesting a fair share of oriental deviousness at play. Not only had the likes of Defence Minister Peter Dutton been advised by the intelligence fraternity to keep matters tame in terms of attacking the security pact; the agreement was the product of bribery. On radio, Dutton responded to a question from 3AW host Neil Mitchell about the suggestion. “You asked the question about bribery and corruption – we don’t pay off, we don’t bribe people, and the Chinese certainly do.”
This clean linen view of Australian conduct is fabulously ignorant, ignoring such inglorious chapters as the oil-for-food scandal which saw the Australian Wheat Board pay $300 million in kickbacks between 1999 and 2004 to the Iraq regime via Alia, a Jordanian trucking company. These bribing arrangements, which breached UN Security Council sanctions imposed after Baghdad’s invasion of Kuwait in 1991, were unmasked in 2005.
With Australia failing to change minds, the paladins of the US imperium prepared to badger and bore Honiara. On the list: President Joe Biden’s National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan; Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink; and National Security Affairs Indo-Pacific chief Kurt Campbell. It seemed like an absurd gathering of heft for a small Pacific Island state.
The theme was unmistakable. A bullying tone was struck in a message from National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson, who seemed to forget the Solomons was not some ramshackle protectorate of the Five Eyes. Officials from the US, Japan, New Zealand and Australia had “shared concerns about [the] proposed security framework between the Solomon Islands and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and its serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific.”
At the Washington Post, Henry Olsen was trying to speak home truths about an empire facing rust and decline. The unipolar world that came into being after the demise of the Soviet Union had ended. “Our adversaries can fight back, and they are increasingly using every means at their disposal to push back against American influence.”
He went on to put focus upon the thin stretch of territory in the Pacific that has exercised so many in Washington and Canberra. “Lose too many places such as the Solomon Islands, and the threat will start to get uncomfortably close to home.” It was more prudent “to spend big and push outward now rather than to be boxed into a corner later.” In other words, more bribery, the very thing tut-tutted by Dutton, was needed.
As for the Solomon Islands itself, divided, fragmented and vulnerable to internal dissent and disagreement, Sogavare is unrepentant. “When a helpless mouse is cornered by vicious cats it will do anything to survive.” He has already told his country’s parliament that there is no intention “to ask China to build a military base in Solomon Islands.” He felt “insulted” by such suggestions and felt that there was only one side to pick: “our national security interest.”
His confidant and former prime minister Danny Philip also reminded critics barking about the lack of transparency over the Sino-Solomon Islands deal that they should know better. “People in Australia know very little about Pine Gap in the middle of the desert, the military base of the United States.” There were “agreements that open up all major ports in Australia that are not being seen by all the citizens of that country.”
Unfortunately for the government in Honiara, thoughts of invasion and pre-emptive action on the part of Australia, possibly with aid from the United States, cannot be ruled out. Instead of being parked in an asylum of inoffensive obscurity, pundits such as Llewellyn-Smith are encouraging invasion and conquest. Australia, he advocates in a refreshing burst of honest blood-filled jingoism, “should invade and capture Guadalcanal such that we engineer regime change in Honiara.”
Sovereignty for the Pacific was always a qualified concept for those exercising true naval power, and US-Australian conduct in recent weeks has made an utter nonsense of it. At least some cavalier types are willing to own up to it.
The hyperbolic language westerners use to describe fairly normal modern warfare in Ukraine suggests they’ve invested exactly zero thought in what their own governments have been doing in the middle east for the last two decades.
It’s like, yes, killing, violence and destruction is what war looks like. You’re describing the thing that war is. It’s creepy that you’re only just discovering this now. What did you think your government has been using to conduct its wars this whole time? Dank memes?
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Before the Ukraine war I would’ve told you it’s impossible for me to despise shitlibs any more than I already do and impossible for me to have less respect for their foam-brained worldview. But I would have been wrong. Very, very wrong.
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If your understanding of world events doesn’t account for the easily quantifiable fact that the US is the most tyrannical regime on earth by a massive margin, nothing else in your understanding of world events will be fact-based.
There’s only one government that is circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, continually working to destroy any nation who disobeys it, and has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions. It isn’t Russia. It isn’t China. One must account for this reality.
That’s tyranny. That is the thing that tyranny is. If it isn’t tyranny to bully and brutalize the entire world into obedience by any degree of violence necessary, then tyranny is a meaningless concept. The US just happens to export the majority of its tyranny outside its borders.
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The RAND Corporation has responded to the way people have been highlighting its Pentagon-funded 2019 report on strategies for crippling Russia by attaching an editor's note declaring that people who do this are Russian propagandists.https://t.co/a4h0AhM5GXpic.twitter.com/o7QkfPkRc3
The fact that CNN+ couldn’t even get 10k people to pay for its content shows why Silicon Valley needs to tilt its algorithms to boost mainstream media content while hiding indie media: people only look at that bullshit when they’re forced to. If it wasn’t for Silicon Valley algorithm manipulation outlets like CNN would have died years ago.
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Journalism would greatly benefit from its practitioners becoming far more disdainful of the approval of their peers, rather than seeking that approval like crack fiends. In journalism when you were respected by all the other journos it used to mean you were probably doing something right; now it’s a sure sign you are doing something wrong.
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Can’t shake how weird it is that we’re hurtling toward nuclear annihilation and we’re still all babbling about Will Smith and face masks.
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Future generations, if there are future generations, will look back in horror at the fact that we just let billionaire corporations not only profit from war but actively lobby for more war via think tanks, campaign funding and other influence ops.
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The Pentagon has said the agreement could cause the Pentagon to destabilize the region. https://t.co/dviWPPSb6i
The fact that Australians are being pummeled with war propaganda about China combined with the freakishly hawkish alarmism about the Chinese security pact with the Solomon Islands should make all conscious Australians a bit nervous. If you don’t think the US empire would happily sacrifice Australia in a proxy war against a major rival, I suggest you take a closer look at Ukraine. Will Australians be sending our kids off to die fighting China over the Solomon Islands, or will it be over Taiwan? Find out in the next thrilling episode of Empire Management!
It doesn’t need to be this way. There’s no legitimate reason major powers need to compete with each other and wave armageddon weapons at each other and try to dominate each other. We can just all collaborate toward the greater good of everyone. This is all absolute madness.
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I do hope those of you who hate China but started following my work because you like my Russia/Ukraine takes are not under the illusion that we are friends. We are enemies and I deeply despise you. When things heat up with Beijing I’m going to spend every waking hour trying to make you rage-cry.
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When the ecosystem is dying because of economic systems which depend on infinite growth on a finite world, your choices are either (A) abandon those systems or (B) pray that sociopathic oligarchs somehow get us into space in the next few years. Guess which one we’re going with.
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When empire managers say "the spread of disinformation" they always mean "the spread of unauthorized information". https://t.co/Q8gLmURXBr
Humanity’s major problems arise from the impulse to control. Ecocide arises from the impulse to control nature. Empire arises from the impulse to control civilizations. Oligarchy arises from the impulse to control political outcomes. Ego arises from the impulse to control life.
A healthy humanity would be free of the impulse to manipulate and exert control: over life, over people, over nature. But it would be so different from the humanity we know now that falling into that way of functioning would be a kind of death. And it would feel like a death.
Sometimes it seems like people want the world to end, want humanity to go extinct. I’d suggest that this may be a confused expression of an intuited truth: that there’s something good on the other side of ending all this. But it’s the end of our dysfunction, not of our species.
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My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here.
Former Solomon Islands Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo says the country needs an economic solution to its instability problems, not a security solution.
Lilo said he could not understand how current Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare could justify signing a security cooperation agreement with China to quell public discontent in his government’s handling of national affairs.
Lilo was supporting calls for the document to be made public in the interest of transparency and accountability.
“The best thing to help our people … to understand better on government is for government to take responsibility to manage our economy,” Lilo said.
“Create more employment, create more investment, that to me is a better way of securing a better society for our country, than to militarise this country,” he said.
Lilo served as prime minister of Solomon Islands from 2011 to 2014.
‘Beggars have no choice’
Meanwhile, another former prime minister, Danny Philip, who is now a backbencher in the Sogavare government, said Solomon Islands was “open to all sorts of things” because “beggars do not have a choice”.
He said Solomon Islands was mindful of the interplay between the superpowers in the Pacific, but the country did not want to be drawn into geopolitical battles.
“Yes, the US has always been there. But for the first time ever in 80 years they’ve sent very high officials to the Solomon Islands at the moment,” he said.
“We have with arrangements with Australia, which is very much US-mandated agreement. Australia is referred to by President Bush, I think as the as the ‘deputy sheriff’ of the United States in the Pacific.”
Solomon Islanders treated with ‘disrespect‘
A senior journalist in Honiara said Solomon Islanders were being treated disrespectfully and kept in the dark over the government’s security pact with China.
Speaking at a panel on the contentious treaty, Dorothy Wickham said most of the news coverage on the security arrangement had been focused on Australia and America’s positions.
“The government’s handling of the way it went about handling this treaty shows disrespect … to Solomon Islanders that there was no discussion, no consultation,” she said.
“Even a press release on the eve of the signing would have been a standard procedure and until today we have not had a press briefing or a press statement for a press briefing from the Prime Minister’s Office,” Wickham added.
She said the government had not meaningfully engaged with journalists to ensure that they could inform Solomon Islanders about what the security deal meant for them.
Wickham said local media had been struggling to refocus the narrative so that it was about Solomon Islands.
Pacific Islands Forum best place to discuss contentious security pact Meanwhile, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta said discussions on the security agreement signed between China and Solomon Islands needed to be inclusive of other Pacific nations.
Mahuta said the Pacific Islands Forum was the best platform for discussing regional security concerns.
“I have concerns that based on a number of representations to ensure that this is fully discussed because of the regional implications that this has not been given priority, certainly by Solomon Islands, they have given us assurances, we must take them at their word, respecting their sovereignty,” Mahuta said.
“However, regional security issues, regional sovereignty issues are a matter of a broader forum. We see the Pacific Islands Forum as the best place for this.”
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
An article written by authors John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge for Bloomberg on March 24 sounded the alarm to announce the end of “the second great age of globalization.” The Western trade war and sanctions against China that predated the pandemic have now been joined by the stiff Western sanctions imposed against Russia after it invaded Ukraine. These sanctions are like an iron curtain being built by the United States and its allies around Eurasia. But according to Micklethwait and Wooldridge, this iron curtain will not only descend around China and Russia but will also have far-reaching consequences across the world.
Shengtian Zheng and Jinbo Sun, Winds of Fusang, 2017.
‘Fusang’ is an ancient Chinese word referring to what some believe to be the shores of Mexico. The work is an homage to Latin America’s influence on China, particularly that of Mexican artists on the development of modern Chinese art.
In early March, Argentina’s government came to an agreement with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) on a $45 billion deal to shore up its shaky finances. This deal was motivated by the government’s need to pay a $2.8 billion instalment on a $57 billion IMF stand-by loan taken out under former President Mauricio Macri in 2018. This loan – the largest loan in the financial institution’s history – sharpened divides in Argentinian society. The following year, the Macri administration was ousted in elections by the centre-left Frente de Todos coalition which campaigned on a sharp anti-austerity, anti-IMF programme.
When President Alberto Fernández took office in December 2019, he refused the final $13 billion tranche of the IMF’s loan package, a move applauded by large sections of Argentinian society. The next year, Fernández’s government was able to restructure the $66 billion debt held by wealthy bondholders and open discussions with the IMF to delay repayment of the debt incurred by Macri’s government. But the IMF was rigid – it insisted on repayment. Neither the Macri loan nor the new deal under President Fernández settles Argentina’s long-term struggle with its public finances.
Carlos Alonso (Argentina), La oreja, 1972.
The term ‘odious debt’ is used to describe the money owed by societies whose governments have been undemocratic. The concept was crafted by Alexander Nahum Sack in his book The Effects of State Transformations on Their Public Debts and Other Financial Obligations (1927). ‘If a despotic power incurs a debt not for the needs or in the interests of the State, but to strengthen its despotic regime, to repress its population that fights against it, etc.’, Sack wrote, ‘this debt is odious for the population of the State’. When that despotic regime falls, then the debt falls.
When Argentina’s military ruled the country (1976–83), the IMF generously lent it money, ballooning the country’s debt from $7 billion at the time the military took power to $42 billion when the military was ousted. Plainly, the IMF’s provision of funds to the Argentinian military junta – which killed, tortured, and disappeared 30,000 people – set in motion the ugly cycle of debt and despair that continues till today. That those ‘odious debts’ were not annulled – just as the apartheid debt was not annulled in South Africa – tells us a great deal about the ugly reality of international finance.
Gracia Barrios (Chile), Desaparecidos, 1973.
The deal cut by the IMF with the Fernández government is exactly like other deals that the IMF has made with fragile countries. During the pandemic, 85% of the IMF’s loans to developing countries came with austerity conditions that sharpened their social crises. Three of the most common conditions of these IMF loans are cuts and freezes to public sector wages, the increase and introduction of value-added taxes, and deep cuts to public expenditure (notably for consumer subsidies). Through its new deal with Argentina, the IMF will inspect the operations of the government four times per year, effectively becoming an overseer of the Argentinian economy. The government has agreed to reduce the budget deficit from 3% (2021) to 0.9% (2024) to 0% (2025); to accomplish this, it will have to cut large areas of social spending, including subsidies for a range of consumer goods.
After reaching the agreement, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva pointed out the great difficulties faced by Argentina, though these difficulties will not be ameliorated by the IMF plan. ‘Argentina continues to face exceptional economic and social challenges, including depressed per capita income, elevated poverty levels, persistent high inflation, a heavy debt burden, and low external buffers’, she said. Consequently, Georgieva noted, ‘Risks to the program are exceptionally high’, meaning that further default is all but certain.
Shengtian Zheng and Jinbo Sun, Winds of Fusang (close up), 2017.
A few weeks before Argentina came to terms with the IMF, President Fernández and China’s President Xi Jinping held a bilateral meeting in Beijing at which Argentina signed onto the Chinese-led Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Argentina is the twenty-first country from Latin America to join the BRI. It is also the largest economy from the region to join, pending applications from Brazil and Mexico. Expectations rose amongst sections in Argentina that the BRI would provide a pathway to exit the grip of the IMF. This remains a possibility even as President Fernández returned to the IMF.
Our team in Buenos Aires has been looking carefully at China’s growing ties with the Caribbean and Latin America. These studies resulted in our most recent dossier no. 51, Looking Towards China: Multipolarity as an Opportunity for the Latin American People (April 2022). The main argument of the dossier is that the emergence of programmes such as the BRI offers countries such as Argentina choices for development finance. If Argentina has more latitude in choosing its avenues for finance, then it will be better positioned to reject harsh offers of stand-by assistance from the IMF which come with conditions of austerity. The possibility of these choices opens the door for countries such as Argentina to develop an authentic national and regional development strategy that is not written by the IMF staff in Washington, DC.
The dossier is quite clear that the mere entry of the BRI into the Caribbean and Latin America is not sufficient. Deeper projects are necessary:
It is possible for Chinese integration to further the ‘development of underdevelopment’ if the Latin American state projects produce a new relationship of dependency on China by merely exporting primary products. On the other hand, it will be far better for the region’s peoples if the relationship is based on equality (multipolarity) as well as the transfer of technology, the upscaling of production processes, and regional integration (national and regional sovereignty).
The BRI’s annual disbursement of funds is around $50 billion, with projections suggesting that, by 2027, total BRI spending will be about $1.3 trillion. These capital flows primarily focus on long-term investments in infrastructure rather than short-term bailouts, although new studies suggest that China has offered short-term liquidity to several countries. Between 2009 and 2020, the People’s Bank of China entered into bilateral currency swap arrangements with at least 41 countries. These currency swaps take place between the local currency (the Argentinian peso, for instance) and China’s renminbi (RMB), with the local currency as collateral and the RMB used either to buy goods or to acquire dollars. The combination of BRI investments and RMB currency swaps provide countries with immediate alternatives to the IMF and its austerity demands. In January 2022, Argentina’s government asked China to increase its 130-billion-yuan swap ($20.6 billion) by an additional 20 billion yuan ($3.14 billion) to cover the IMF payment. A few weeks later, the People’s Bank of China provided the necessary swap to Argentina’s Central Bank. Despite this infusion of cash, Argentina still went to the IMF.
The answer to why Argentina took that decision can perhaps be found in the letter written by Martín Guzman (minister of the economy) and Miguel Pesce (president of the Central Bank) to the IMF’s Georgieva on 3 March 2022. In the communication, Argentina promises to ‘improve public finances’ and to restrain inflation, which are straightforward orthodox positions. But then there is an interesting obligation: that Argentina will expand exports and draw in foreign direct investment to ‘pave the way to an eventual re-entry into international capital markets’. Rather than use the opportunity afforded by BRI-currency swaps to develop its own national and regional agenda, the government seems eager to use whatever platform possible to return to the status quo of integration into the capitalist marketplace for finance dominated by Wall Street and the City of London.
On 12 April 2022, the Committee of Creditors of Internal Debt (CADI) announced that the people of Argentina refuse to shoulder the burden of the IMF debt. The people should not pay a single peso: those who squirrelled away the billions that Macri borrowed from the IMF should be the ones who pay the price. Banking secrecy laws need to be suspended in order to draw up a list of those who took that money and hid it in tax havens. The hashtag of CADI’s campaign is #LaDeudaEsConElPueblo – the debt is with the people. It should be paid to the people, not drawn from them.
As the Argentinian poet Juan Gelman (1930–2014) wrote during the reign of the military junta, these are ‘dark times, filled with light’. This phrase resonates even now:
dark times/filled with light/the sun/
pours sunlight onto the city/ torn
by sudden sirens/the police on the hunt/night falls and we/ make love under this roof
Gelman, a communist, fought the dictatorship, which killed his son and daughter-in-law and damaged the spine of his country. Even the dark times, he wrote, echoing Brecht, are filled with light. These are tough moments in world history, but even now there remain possibilities, there remain people gathered on the streets of Buenos Aires and Rosario, La Plata and Córdoba. Their slogan is clear: no to the pact with the IMF. But theirs is not only a politics of ‘no’. It is also a politics of ‘yes’. Yes to taking advantage of the new openings to shape an agenda for the well-being of the Argentinian people. Yes, also yes.
A new indigenous medium-lift helicopter being developed by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) has achieved a key developmental milestone with the successful static load test of the rotorcraft’s rear airframe and tail boom modules. AVIC’s China Helicopter Research and Development Institute (CHRDI) announced in mid-April that the test validated the design’s ability […]
If the coming election goes to Australia’s Labor party, Penny Wong is very likely to become Foreign Minister. So when she speaks, people across the region prick up their ears.
Without the least disrespect to her recent forebears, she could be one of the most acute, incisive and insightful FMs in recent history.
Whether she’ll be any more effective than them is another matter.
Australia has a long tradition of placing prominent front-benchers into the role, and then pointedly ignoring their efforts, their advice and their warnings. It’s as if government leaders find their greatest rival and send them trotting off around the globe, more to keep them from making mischief at home than to achieve anything noteworthy while they’re gone.
In Australia, it seems, foreign policy is domestic policy done outdoors.
If she achieves nothing more, Wong would be well served to look closely at the people supporting her, and to spend considerable effort re-organising and in fact re-inventing DFAT.
Its disconnection from other departments, especially Defence and PMO, has created an internal culture that spends more time feeding on itself than actually helping produce a persuasive or coherent foreign policy.
Ensuring foreign policy’s primacy at the cabinet table is a big ask, but it will be for naught if the department can’t deliver. There are significant structural matters to be dealt with.
‘Worst failure of foreign policy in the Pacific’: Labor launches scathing attack on government over Solomon Islands-China pact https://t.co/efbU2tM6Iu
Rolling development and aid into the department was a significant regression that hampered both sides. Volumes can be written about the need to distinguish development assistance from foreign policy, and many of them could be focused on the Pacific islands region.
The two are mostly complementary (mostly), but they must also be discrete from one another.
It’s far more complicated than this, but suffice it to say that development aid prioritises the recipient’s needs, while foreign relations generally prioritise national concerns. The moment you invert either side of that equation, you lose.
Exempli gratia: Solomon Islands.
It’s well known that Australia spent billions shoring up Solomon Islands’ security and administrative capacity. Surely after all that aid, they can expect the government to stay onside in geopolitical matters?
Applying the admittedly simplistic filter from the para above, the answer is an obvious no.
Aid is not a substitute for actual foreign relations, and foreign relations is definitely not just aid.
So is Penny Wong correct when she calls the CN/SI defence agreement a massive strategic setback? Sure.
Is she right to call Pacific Affairs Minister Zed Seselja “a junior woodchuck”, sent in a last minute attempt to dissuade Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare from signing the agreement?
The idea of a minister responsible for the complex, wildly diverse patchwork of nations spanning such a vast space has value. But in terms of resources and policy heft, Seselja rides at the back of the posse on a mule.
There are good reasons to devote an entire office to Pacific affairs. There are also blindingly good reasons to keep the Foreign Minister as the primary point of contact on matters of foreign policy.
That means the role—and yes, the existence—of the Pacific Affairs ministry needs a ground-up reconsideration. Notionally, it fulfills a critical role. But how?
It’s fair to say that Wong is more insightful than those who describe Solomon Islands as a fly-speck in the Pacific, or a Little Cuba (whatever the F that means). But in the past, Labor’s shown little insight into the actual value and purpose of foreign policy.
For the better part of four decades, neither Australian party was fussed at all about the fact that there had been few if any official visits between leaders. Prime Ministers regularly blew off Pacific Islands Forum meetings.
In Vanuatu’s case, the first ever prime ministerial visit to Canberra was in 2018. Why aren’t such meetings annual events?
Australia is rightly proud of its pre-eminence in development assistance in the Pacific islands. But that never was, and never will be, a substitute for diplomatic engagement. And you can’t have that without a functioning diplomatic corps whose presence is felt equally in Canberra and in foreign capitals.
But even that’s not enough. Penny Wong has yet to show in concrete terms how she plans to address what could accurately be called the greatest strategic foreign policy failure since WWII: Leaving Australia alone to guard the shop.
In 2003, George W. Bush was rightly vilified for characterising Australia’s role in the region as America’s Sheriff.
But the Americans weren’t the only ones who walked away, leaving Australia alone to engage with the region. The UK and the EU (minus France in their patch) rolled back their diplomatic presence substantially.
Even New Zealand agreed to restrict its engagement in large areas in deference to its neighbour. The most enduring presence was provided by organisations without any meaningful foreign policy role: UN development agencies and multilateral financial institutions.
Since the beginning of the War on Terror, there has been a consistent and often deliberate draw-down on the capital provided by democratic institutions, multilateral foreign policy, and indeed any collective course-setting among nations.
Post Cold-War democratic momentum has been squandered on an increasingly transactional approach to engagement that’s begun to look alarmingly like the spheres of influence that appeal so much to Putin and Xi.
This hasn’t happened in the Pacific islands alone. The UN has become an appendix in the global body politic, one cut away from complete irrelevance. ASEAN and APEC are struggling just as hard to find relevance, let alone purpose, as the Pacific Islands Forum or the Melanesian Spearhead Group.
Australia has “led” in the Pacific islands region by being the largest aid donor, blithely assuming that all the other kids in the region want to be like it. But that “leadership” masks a massive gap in actual influence in shaping the agenda in a region that’s larger and more diverse than any other in the world.
The data’s there if people want it. This isn’t a particularly contentious… er, contention, if you’re among the far-too-small group of people who actually live in and care about the future of the region.
In a regional dynamic defined and dominated by transactional bilateralism, China holds all the aces. The only hope anyone has of slowing its growth in the region is through meaningful multilateralism that treats Pacific island countries as actual nations with national pride and individual priorities. Instead of silencing them, their voices should be amplified and defended, not by Australia alone, but by every other democratic nation with the means and the will to do so.
If we can’t respect the equal standing of nations, we can’t protect their integrity.
Scott Morrison may indeed be one of the worst exemplars of this blithe disregard for actual foreign policy engagement. He’s certainly won few friends with his world-class foot-dragging on climate change. America’s suddenly renewed interest in the region is an indication that they’ve woken up to the Bush administration’s mistakes.
It’s also clear they don’t trust Australia to play Sheriff any more. Kurt Campbell’s upcoming visit to the region is just the latest in a series of increasingly high profile tours of the region.
So yes, Penny Wong is justified in saying that China’s advances in the Pacific derive at least in part from Australia’s lack of a coherent and effective foreign policy.
But foreign policy is not made at home. It’s not Australia’s interests alone that matter. And subjugating Pacific nations in compacts of free association isn’t a substitute for actual policy making.
Pacific island nations will not defend Australia’s national interests unless they share those interests. The only way that Australia—and the world—can be assured they do is by actively listening, and by incorporating Pacific voices into the fabric of a renewed and revitalised global family.
Dan McGarry was previously media director at Vanuatu Daily Post/Buzz FM96. The Village Explainer is his semi-regular newsletter containing analysis and insight focusing on under-reported aspects of Pacific societies, politics and economics. His articles are republished by Asia Pacific Report with permission.
The Solomon Islands prime minister is adamant a security co-operation agreement his government has signed with China will not undermine regional security.
In Parliament yesterday, Manasseh Sogavare confirmed the controversial security agreement with China had been signed despite strong opposition to the deal from the other side of the house.
The pact, a draft of which was first leaked online last month, raised domestic and regional anxieties about Beijing’s increasing influence in the South Pacific.
It is feared that it could open the door to China’s military presence in Honiara — a claim rejected both by China and Solomon Islands.
Sogavare has defended the intention behind the move, saying its aim is for the nation to diversify its security ties “to improve the quality of lives” of its people and to “address soft and hard security threats facing the country”.
“I ask all our neighbours, friends and partners to respect the sovereign interests of Solomon Islands on the assurance that the decision will not adversely impact or undermine the peace and harmony of our region,” Sogavare said.
In response, opposition leader Matthew Wale called on Sogavare to make the signed document public “to allay any regional fears of any hidden parts of it”.
‘Disclosure of the agreement’
“And now that the agreement has been signed whether the Prime Minister will allow a disclosure of the agreement so that members may have a perusal of it,” Wale said.
Opposition leader Matthew Wale … call to make the signed document public “to allay any regional fears of any hidden parts of it”. Image: RNZ
Wale’s sentiments were echoed by another opposition MP, the chairman of the foreign relations committee, Peter Kenilorea Jr.
Kenilorea Jr said Sogavare’s decision to strike a military cooperation deal with China lacked transparency and he believed whatever efforts partners were putting in from the region were not going to make a difference.
But he also expressed concern, now that the two countries have made the agreement official, that it could become the source for domestic tensions.
“It will just further inflame emotions and tensions and again underscores the mistrust that people have on the government,” Peter Kenilorea Jr said.
“It is cause for concern for many Solomon Islanders, but definitely a certain segment of the society will now feel even more concerned and might want to start to take certain action which is not in the best interest of Solomon Islands in our own unity as a country.”
NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern … “serious concerns” about the security pact. Photo: Image Robert Kitchin/Stuff/Pool/RNZ
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern had raised “serious concerns” about the security pact when the news initially broke two weeks ago.
‘No need’, says Ardern
And following the announcement on Wednesday that the deal was done, Ardern reiterated her concerns.
“We see no need for this agreement,” Ardern said.
“We’re concerned about the militarisation of the Pacific and we continue to call on the Solomons to work with the Pacific with any concerns around their security they may have.”
The Solomon Islands prime minister is adamant a security cooperation agreement his government has signed with China will not undermine regional security. https://t.co/SxP21e1lKu
RNZ Pacific’s Honiara-based correspondent Georgina Kekea said the issue had divided public opinion in the country.
Kekea said people were already anticipating the signing of the pact.
“From what we’ve seen there are some who are with the signing, there some who are not. Some who are a bit sceptical about what the future will be like in the Solomon Islands with such an agreement being signed with China,” she said.
“So, there’s mixed feelings I would say on the ground, especially with the signing.”
US officials confer with Honiara
Meanwhile, senior US officials are meeting with Solomon Islands government this week with the security deal expected to be a major point of discussions.
Writing on his Village Explainer website in an article entitled “Pacific stuff up?”, Vanuatu columnist Dan McGarry writes that “if the coming election goes to Australia’s Labor party, Penny Wong is very likely to become Foreign Minister. So when she speaks, people across the region prick up their ears.
“Without the least disrespect to her recent forebears, she could be one of the most acute, incisive and insightful FMs in recent history.
“Whether she’ll be any more effective than them is another matter.”
The main port in Honiara … fears of a door opening to a Chinese military presence in Solomon Islands. Image: Solomon Islands Ports Authority
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
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There are regional concerns the deal could open the door for Beijing to base its military in Honiara, but Prime Minister Manasseh Sovagare denies that that is the purpose of the security pact.
Solomon Islands parliamentarian and chair of the Foreign Relations Committee Peter Kenilorea Jr said Sogavare’s decision to seal the deal — despite significant opposition — could lead to domestic ramifications.
He said certain sections of the nation’s population have been strongly against China since the diplomatic switch from Taiwan in 2019.
Kenilorea said some people would not take this lightly and it was going to cause further tensions that were already at play locally.
“It will just further inflame emotions and tensions. And again underscores the mistrust that people have in the government,” he said.
‘A cause for concern’
“And it is cause for concern for many Solomon Islanders, but definitely a certain segment of the society will now feel even more concerned and might want to start to take certain action which is not in the best interest of Solomon Islands in our own unity as a country.”
Solomon Islands PM Manasseh Sogavare … defied Australian, NZ and Pacific pressure over the security pact. Image: SIG news/RNZ
Kenilorea said the government needed to make the security document signed with China available to the public.
“It is that important that it should be made public. We have a security treaty with Australia, and that can be accessed online.
“So why couldn’t this be and I will be calling for that signed copy to be made available so that all Solomon Islanders as well as a region can see what is in there,” he said.
Opposition Leader Matthew Wale made that a formal request in Parliament “to allay any regional fears” and received a non-commital response from Sogavare.
Australia’s disappointment with Honiara The Australian federal government has declared it is “deeply disappointed” that Solomon Islands has pressed ahead and signed the security pact with China.
The announcement came just days after Australia’s Minister for the Pacific Zed Seselja travelled to Honiara and met Sogavare in a last-ditch effort to dissuade him from going ahead with the deal.
Senator Seselja and Foreign Minister Marise Payne said the government was “disappointed” by the agreement and that it was not reached in a transparent way.
“Ultimately, this is a sovereign decision of the government of Solomon Islands and we absolutely recognise that, but … declarations and these engagements on security issues have been dealt with in a Pacific-wide manner,” Payne said.
“That is the traditional approach for these issues and it’s why some Pacific partners have also raised concerns.”
Senator Payne said the government’s position was still that Pacific neighbours were the best to delivery security in the region and said it was an “unfair characterisation” to say the region had become less secure while Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been in power.
The ministers said while Solomon Islands had the right to make sovereign decisions about national security, Australia still believed the “Pacific family” was best placed to provide security guarantees.
In Washington, the White House, which is sending a high-level US delegation to Honiara this week, said it was concerned about “the lack of transparency and unspecified nature” of the pact.
This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.
