As the United States of America’s westernmost territory, Guam employs the unofficial but frequently used motto, “Where America’s Day Begins”, referring to the island’s proximity to the International Date Line.
A strategic point of interest in the United States’ Indo-Pacific military layout, Guam is also the first US line of defence against all threats from Asia. The territory’s geostrategic potential is rooted in its proximity to China and is cited in a Stanford University paper as representing “the westernmost location from which the U.S. can project power, manage logistics, and establish command and control.”
Which has led to development of what’s described in military circles as the ‘Guam killer’ – the DF-26, China’s first conventionally armed missile capable of striking Guam. Tested for the first time in 2019, the weapon has a range of 4500 kilometres, and can carry both conventional and nuclear warheads.
“We live under the notion that in any kind of conflict between China and the United States, Guam will be the first strike,” says Professor Robert Underwood, a former Member of the US Congress (1993-2003) with years of experience of sitting on the Congressional House Armed Services Committee.
“This competition is seen by both the United States and China as critical to their future, their dominance, their presence in the Pacific Ocean. They look at the Pacific as an area where there are resources about which they can compete … as a place they can penetrate economically,” he said.
Speaking in Fiji earlier this year, Underwood said the Pacific was facing “a two-headed challenge … the geopolitical strategic competition, as well as the existential threat of climate change, and to see how those are connected.”
Balance of Aid
Those connections are spread across a complicated network of intertwined development assistance and security arrangements that are fast evolving via this growing competition over the Pacific.
In a May 2023 article for the International Relations of the Asia-Pacific Journal titled ‘Security cooperation in the Pacific Islands: architecture, complex, community, or something else?’, the authors find that the region is “neither a security complex nor a community, due to the extensive involvement of metropolitan powers and external partners.” Instead, “security cooperation in the Pacific Islands is best described as a patchwork of bilateral, minilateral, and multilateral, formal and informal agencies, agreements, and arrangements, across local, national, regional, and international levels,” they write.
According to The Lowy Institute’s sixth annual Pacific Aid Map released last month, geopolitical dynamics and competition for influence have contributed to a surge in development financing in the Pacific.
The Map shows Australia is the region’s largest development partner, with China reducing overall support to the region whilst increasing the “politically targeted nature” of its aid. Australia disbursed US$17 billion between 2008 and 2021, making up nearly 40% of the region’s overseas development financing, while leading in grant financing as well.
Alexandre Dayant, Deputy Director of the Lowy Institute’s Indo Pacific Development Centre, says that since the onset of the pandemic, there has been “surprisingly little new Chinese financing in the region.”
China’s total development finance disbursements fell to just US$241 million in 2021, below its pre-pandemic historical average of $285 million per year. This year, Beijing’s Official Development Finance (ODF) commitments were a quarter that of its historical average. From “loud and brash”, China’s regional development financing has gone to a downsized envelope of funds, more strategically targeted at the most China-friendly Pacific Island states, Dayant observes.
“China’s decreasing ODF engagement should not be seen as a wholesale departure from the region. Instead, it reflects a strategic shift to reduce risk, cement political ties, and enhance capital returns. For instance, China increased aid to Solomon Islands and Kiribati after their diplomatic switch from Taiwan in 2019,” says Dayant.
Militarisation
The Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) notes that the US’s Indo-Pacific strategy—and by extension its investments in the region — demonstrates the entanglement of the economic and military in the US’s approach.
Similarly, “Australia’s commitment to “securing” the Indo-Pacific in concert with the US and other regional powers is directly contributing to the militarisation of the Pacific Islands region. Under the rhetoric of maintaining a “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” Australia and the US are prioritising military concerns and military solutions to those concerns,” says PANG’s co-deputy coordinator, Adam Wolfenden.
PANG’s position is that “it is crucial to oppose imperialistic actions and militarisation in the Pacific Islands region, regardless their source. A preoccupation with China as the most significant security threat to the region problematically naturalises and legitimises US military colonialism and US-Australian military ambitions in the region.”
Pointing to Australia’s willingness to support Pacific governments who are interested in setting up national militaries, and strengthening existing ones, Wolfenden says they are concerned that “the growing military presence in the region raises the stakes in a possible future conflict. While this is most acute for the heavily militarised US territories in the Northern Pacific, it is also true of PNG and other states being draw into the Australian and US Indo-Pacific gambit.”
Pacific Island researchers such as Jope Tarai believe Australia’s military strategy can only have negative impacts on countries such as Fiji, that are struggling with weak democracies.
Having completed a Master’s in Regionalism, Tarai is pursuing a Ph.D. in Digital Politics at the Australian National University in Canberra.
He believes the so-called Chinese ‘threat’ in the southern part of the Pacific is more a construct of Australian defence and security officials’ alignment to the traditional Australian-New Zealand-United States (ANZUS) security alliance. And therefore, nothing more than a perception.
“If you look in the north, Micronesia [is] basically a northern US base. When North Korea makes a threat, if it doesn’t threaten Washington, it threatens our north Micronesian family. In the south, it’s all Australian bases. The securitisation pact is all in the hands of the West. There is no incentive for China to try and break [in] because there’s nothing to be gained from having to push that. And who wants to fight over a whole bunch of small islands.”
On the contrary, argues Tarai, “If [China] were to escalate security tensions here [in the South Pacific], it would cost [them] more to facilitate a full-blown operation because that would drain [their] resources. The United States tried to position themselves militarily all over the world, and it’s created a weakened internal economy. [The] military interest of the United States is consistently consuming to sustain that.”
Instead, he believes the fallout from the Australian security strategy in the South Pacific will hit countries such as Fiji, where the military is already woven into the political fabric.
“The legacy of human rights abuses, the legacy of curtailing of civil liberties in this country is being compounded by the overall securitisation of the region. And when this [securitisation] escalates, it will necessitate the growth and expansion of militarisation in Fiji. And the role of the military.”
Which he says will only add to the struggle of breaking free from Fiji’s military-oriented past.
“We haven’t even broached the discussion of demilitarising our Constitution, demilitarising our media … the whole civilian politics. When you look at the climate adaptation plans, the key stakeholder there is not a government ministry. It’s the military. The [Australian aid] money is coming into the military for rehabilitation purposes, for climate disaster relief, resilience, and so forth. That’s good for climate resilience [and] adaptation [but] in the long run, it empowers the military. They’re going to have more power to wield within our civilian politics. So, we’re going to have a compounded militarisation of our politics in the foreseeable future, which I would imagine would be the headache of any incoming Prime Minister.”
The climate factor
Says former Fiji Ambassador to the UN, Dr Satyendra Prasad: “When Pacific leaders are asked who they think is winning the contest between China and USA in the Pacific – they often reply that climate change is! Stated another way – both China and USA are losing.”
Similarly, the Pacific Elders Voice (PEV) group of former Pacific Island leaders recently stated that while, “We are the centre of strategic interests of larger countries who say we are a priority, but we have yet to see what that practically means for our people (especially in comparison to the costs of developing their war machines).”
PEV notes that “It is no secret that Australia continues to be one of the world’s biggest fossil fuel exporters and continues to have one of the world’s largest per capita carbon pollution footprints…We understand that Australia has failed to represent Pacific interests through its advocacy as a member of the Loss and Damage Transitional Committee, by its opposition to the fund being part of the UNFCCC (and arguing for the World Bank instead) as well as setting a financial goal for the fund. This goes against the Pacific interests, which is part of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), currently Chaired by Samoa. AOSIS has been clear that the fund must not be part of the World Bank.”
Griffith Asia Institute research fellow, Dr Wesley Morgan, also considers climate action as key to Australian and US strategy in the Pacific Islands.
“Strategic denial – limiting access to the region for other powers – is a longstanding policy goal for Australia in the Pacific,” Morgan told Islands Business.
“This is because a major power with a presence in the Pacific complicates security in the maritime approaches to Australia (especially in the event of conflict). Partly to limit China’s role in the region, Australia wants to be the Pacific’s security partner of choice. But they’re not taking adequate action on the Pacific’s key security threat.”
Says Morgan: “This federal government set a new national target to cut emissions by 2030 and that’s good. But we were just catching up on homework we hadn’t submitted previously.
“Our target to cut emissions by 43% by 2030 is still one of the weakest targets in the developed world.”
In Vanuatu in March this year, Pacific Island leaders launched the Port Vila Call for a Just Transition to a Fossil Fuel Free Pacific. Ministers from Fiji, Niue, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Vanuatu and Tuvalu signed the document, which provides a clear framework for a just transition in the Pacific, and the role of the international community in phasing out fossil fuels and providing the finance and support needed to support the transition.
“Australia will do everything they can to make sure that the Port Vila Call is not a robust discussion formally at the Pacific Islands Forum.”
Tzeporah Berman, Chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative
Island leaders are ramping up action, calling in the head of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, top Canadian environmentalist Tzeporah Berman, to help them push the Port Vila Call further at this month’s Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in the Cook Islands.
“Australia hasn’t joined any of the formal multilateral dialogues that have been hosted by Vanuatu or Tuvalu. Our expectation is that Australia will do everything they can to make sure that this is not a robust discussion formally at the Pacific Islands Forum,” Berman told Islands Business.
Morgan believes there are economic reasons for optimism about the chances of a transition, despite the powerful domestic economic interests that hold firm sway over Australia’s energy agenda.
“Australia can make a lot of money from a global clean energy transition. We were the world’s quarry for coal and gas and minerals. But even in the clean energy transition, we can be the world’s quarry for critical minerals that are important for electric vehicles, batteries, solar panels, wind turbines. We are already the world’s largest exporter of lithium, a key component in batteries. Recent estimates from Treasury in Australia suggest that our exports of lithium will be worth more than our exports of thermal coal by 2028. And that’s just one data point. But it speaks to a broader shift in our economic interests.”
Undue influence
Fiji’s Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka drew the ire of civil society from across the region when he suggested during a State visit to Australia last month that the Pacific take a ‘realistic’ approach towards Australian coal mining and gas production.
“It’s very clear that Australia is exerting undue influence and trying to weaken island nations’ positions on fossil fuels,” Berman told Islands Business in Suva. “And whether they’re successful in doing that remains to be seen. Who knows what was on the table for those discussions between Fiji and Australia. And that’s the problem. The fate of humanity should not be one of the many playing cards in a game of foreign diplomacy.
“When the Port Vila core resolution came to be, we were at each ministerial follow-up. As we started to get closer to the Island Leaders’ meeting with each ministerial [meeting], we started noticing Australians making attempts to water down the language of the Port Vila Call. The Call is a signal to these countries that change and a transition is coming and it’s inevitable. And I think those attempts at watering down the language have been a way to somehow slow it down.”
Morgan points to the leverage Pacific Islands now have because of the geostrategic competition between the superpowers, as the biggest pushback factor.
“You have these times when the Pacific works together to achieve their goals. And the Pacific was pretty important for the Paris Agreement in 2015,” says Morgan. “Will they actually shift Australia? I don’t know. But I know that the interest from China gives the Pacific geopolitical leverage they haven’t had for a generation. Certainly, if they act together, it does influence things in Canberra.”
He cites Labour’s argument following the Solomons-China security agreement last year, that the Scott Morrison-led Coalition had undermined regional security by being recalcitrant on the climate issue.
“They (Labour) themselves are making that argument and they see it as important to be taking action on climate to secure Australia’s place in the Pacific.”
Morgan says Australian policymakers will need to work with island nations to develop shared diplomatic strategy so they can reaffirm Australia’s place in the regional security order.
“Pacific island diplomats have shaped multilateral climate negotiations for decades, and they played a critically important role securing the Paris Agreement. Island leaders have huge moral authority in global discussions on climate change. By working with Pacific Island nations to co-host the UN climate talks, Australia could broker a new round of global ambition to cut emissions. Doing so would help cement Australia’s place as a security partner of choice for Pacific Island nations, and at the same time reassure Washington that the Australia-US Alliance continues to underpin the regional security order in the Pacific.”
On the Alliance’s reframing of Asia-Pacific as part of the US’s wider Indo-Pacific strategy to construct an “integrated security theatre” for a maritime “super-region” supposedly threatened by an increasingly assertive China, Wolfenden says it is far from inevitable that the Pacific Islands are simply swept along in the US-Australian military agenda of which AUKUS (trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) forms a crucial aspect.
“Australia and the US still require political legitimacy to pursue their ambitions in the region, both from Pacific governments and Pacific peoples. There are clear examples from both Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea in recent months that aggressive bilateral security engagements, especially those focused on military cooperation, do not have domestic political legitimacy.”
Dr Prasad notes that “Island states have said too many times they will not be timid agents and leave the space open for others to define and shape the region – they will do so themselves.” He believes at the Forum Island leaders meeting in Cook Islands, they will “take further steps in defining a Blue Pacific that is shaped by the region and not powers from outside the region.
“This is a powerful narrative from Pacific’s leaders. It shows the region coming of age; finding its voice; and being confident in the international arena,” he concludes.
