Soon after Australia signed the Falepili union agreement with Tuvalu at the Pacific Islands Forum Leaders meeting in December, there was chatter that Nauru was next on the list for a similar deal with the Australians.
But then, the players hopped to different chairs. In mid-January, two days after Taiwan’s presidential election, Nauru announced it was going the One-China way “in the best interests of the Republic and people of Nauru,” scrapping its association with Taiwan since 1980 (with a brief, three-year
switch to China from 2002 to 2005).
In the era of growing Sino-US competition over the Pacific, the move set off a flurry of speculation since it leaves the Marshall Islands, Palau, and Tuvalu as Taiwan’s only allies in the Pacific. New Zealand Foreign Minister, Winston Peters’ tour of the South Pacific at around the same time further stirred the geopolitical cauldron after an earlier indication from Australia that New Zealand was considering an invitation from the
United States to join the non-nuclear Pillar Two of AUKUS – the trilateral security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States.
It came as Papua New Guinea Foreign Minister Justin Tkatchenko, ahead of Prime Minister, James Marape’s historic address to the Australian Federal Parliament, issued PNG’s first direct statement on long-running speculation about a possible security agreement with China.
“I want to make this very clear – we are not pressing forward with any security pact or agreement with China and look forward to implementing the bilateral security arrangement with Australia,” he told the ABC. “There’s been no revolt from China because we’re not supporting their policing policy – they understand clearly where we stand on security in the region and that is with our close traditional partners.”
Australia and PNG sealed a security pact during Marape’s visit to Australia in December. Asked whether his trip was an attempt to get Pacific leaders’ backing of New Zealand joining AUKUS, Peters said the there
had been no movement since the US invited New Zealand to participate in AUKUS last year.
Commenting on these geopolitical developments, Pacific Network on Globalisation (PANG) coordinator, Maureen Penjueli, said instead of dismissing Nauru’s decision as “purely China’s win”, it should be viewed as a growing confidence and level of sophistication among Pacific Island countries to drive their development agenda through their geopolitical positioning.
“For too long, Australia, New Zealand, EU, Japan and the US by extension and its allies occupied privileged positions as partners of choice for our island countries. They remain partners of choice but the recent switches demand mutual respect, [to] at least heed island countries’ foreign policies and their choices. Developed partners must focus on the development needs of island countries otherwise these switches back and forth will continue to occur.”
Penjueli says despite Nauru hosting Australia’s refugee camps to the detriment of its international standing, its basic health, education, access to clean water and electricity infrastructure remain extremely poor. Since 2012, more than 4000 asylum seekers have passed through the Nauru centre, at a cost to the Australian government of approximately A$350 million per year. The centre has been critical to Nauru’s economic base, although there have been consistent reports in Australia that local politicians have personally gained from their operation. Taiwan linked Nauru’s switch to the winding down of the country’s offshore immigration detention arrangements with Australia.
Taiwan’s Central News Agency reported that Nauru had asked Taiwan for US$81.5 million to “cover a financial shortfall left by the temporary closure” of the immigration detention centre. The Australian government insisted the centre has not closed and that funding arrangements with Nauru were still in place. Australia’s Minister for the Pacific, Pat Conroy, said Nauru notified the government in advance about the announcement.
Anna Powles, Associate Professor at Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, said that the likelihood that Nauru would switch recognition from Taiwan to China “has been on the cards for awhile; the speed with which Australia pursued the Falepili Agreement with Tuvalu last year reflected concerns that Tuvalu was under pressure to switch recognition to China – these concerns extended to
Nauru.”
Asked whether Australia had dropped the ball on Nauru, Griffith University Associate Professor and project lead for the Griffith Pacific Hub, Tess Newton Cain told Islands Business that the economic situation in Nauru was said to be ‘desperate’ since the de-facto closure of the Regional Processing Centre there.
“Whilst the Australian government is paying a ‘retainer’ to keep the centre available if needed, the overall economic benefits (jobs, procurement, visa fees) are seriously reduced. Where I think Australia ‘dropped the ball’ is in not prioritising a legacy plan for economic activity in Nauru post-RPC,” said Cain.
Within days of Nauru’s announcement, Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) Foreign Minister Kalani Kaneko reiterated that his country “values the strong relationship with Republic of China (Taiwan) as an indispensable partner in promotion of democratic principles. The RMI pledges its diplomatic allegiance with Taiwan and will continue to stand in solidarity with the government and people of Taiwan.”
Tuvalu’s waiting game
Tuvalu is still to choose a Prime Minister following its elections in late January. It was seen as significant that pro-Taiwan incumbent Prime Minister, Kausea Natano, lost his seat, while former Finance Minister Seve Paeniu — one of the top PM hopefuls, pledged that he would review Tuvalu’s ties with Taipei.
Another candidate for the top job, Enele Sopoaga, who was PM from 2013 to 2019, does not want change. “I will not make any slightest change. There is no need to even look at that issue right now,” he told the Central News Agency. Tuvalu does not have political parties. The elected lawmakers will engage in direct talks, with the biggest group to emerge forming government.
While Palau and the Marshall Islands’ compact arrangements with the United States puts them in a different category, “we have seen very recently that the leaders of these countries (and FSM, which aligns with the PRC) have expressed strong concerns about Congress delaying the approval of the renewed compact funding and that this is emboldening other actors (i.e., China) to push for a shift in diplomatic
arrangements,” says Cain.
While that may add to the fluidity of northern Pacific geopolitics, Penjueli says the new right wing New Zealand government’s moves towards AUKUS is unsurprising and “represents the consolidation of the metropolitan powers in the South Pacific [around] regional institutions such as the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat (PIFS) on two fronts – firstly the 2050 Strategy and in particular the funding of the implementation of the 2050 Strategy and secondly, on the review of the regional architecture. It was therefore not surprising that one of Deputy PM Winston Peters’ first visits was to Fiji and to PIFS.”
“On the regional architecture, we know that at SPC (Pacific Community), all the former colonial powers (UK, EU (Germany, France), Australia, NZ) are all deeply integrated into the structure of SPC, particularly its governance structures. We are seeing the same kinds of geopolitical posturing in our other technical organisations – Forum Fisheries Agency, even SPREP (Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environment Programme).
“On the political front, at PIFS, we are likely to see the contest in terms of “security narratives” – with Pacific Islands long asserting that climate change remains the single greatest security threat for the region, whilst the metropolitan partners continue to advance a traditional security narrative rammed through AUKUS. At PIFS level, we will have to see how [Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni] Rabuka’s ‘Zone of Peace’ will play out as it increasingly becomes clear that AUKUS will implicate the Rarotonga Treaty in several ways.
“The upcoming Solomon Islands election will be watched closely as well as the formation of the new government in Tuvalu and policy orientation of Marshall Islands’ new government, to see how the geopolitics will continue to play out in 2024. But the key place to watch will be PIFS.”
Cain sees the NZ/AUKUS development as “part of a wider escalation.”
“In the future, we will see the tempo of bilateral engagements maintained and probably increased. This places significant transaction costs on small bureaucracies, but it will be challenging to convince partners to ‘walk the talk’ when it comes to PIF centrality. The twin narratives of climate change and traditional ‘security’ will become further enmeshed.”
Massey University’s Powles highlighted another equally significant implication for the Pacific Islands Forum. “The incoming Pacific Islands Forum Secretary-General, Baron Waqa, is the former President of Nauru and this may weaken the Forum’s ability to withstand pressure to adopt the One-China Policy.”
Waqa has had a reputation for standing up to Chinese diplomats in Nauru.
Says Cain: “I don’t know that Baron Waqa’s personal proclivities will be particularly prominent or problematic but we will have to see how that goes once he is settled into the job and we get a sense of how ‘hands on’ he plans to be.
“More significant is that if Tuvalu and Palau were to switch, then I would expect that the PRC government will make another, likely more assertive, push for the PIF to endorse the ‘One-China’ principle.”
