Pacific Islands Forum beset by problematic scenarios.

Written by: (Contributed) on 3 September 2024

The officially stated agenda of the Pacific Island Forum (PIF), 2024, hosted by Tonga, was couched in various criteria and concerns relevant for their eighteen member countries. Other US-led considerations were not, however, openly publicised, and subject to official diplomatic silence.

Specific issues arising from a US-led agenda, nevertheless, proved difficult for them to hide amidst their regional Indo-Pacific defence and security provision and escalating diplomatic hostilities with China.

The 2024 PIF took place during the last week of August in a region racked with US-led diplomatic hostilities toward China. The influential Pacific body, nevertheless, issued briefly stated agenda items couched in language designed specifically to not create division within the organisation and a regional environment fraught with problems. (1) Recent developments have been important: the Pacific, historically, was regarded by the US as a backwater; a multitude of small islands and countries with low levels of economic development that did not attract much diplomatic attention from Washington and the Pentagon. (2) There was not much of an assessed threat to 'US interests' and hegemony.

The rise of China as a serious regional and global competitor to traditional US hegemonic positions, however, has resulted in the US increasing their defence and security provision following revelations from a US Congress commission in 2019, 'that the US is no longer clearly superior to the threats it faces around the world … and the US … would struggle to win a conflict against China'. (3)

The enlarged Indo-Pacific region has also been subdivided by the US into island chains planned to restrict China's access and egress across the wider region, with newer plans in place to add fourth and fifth chains across the vast Indian Ocean.

The issue of Taiwan and its recognition by some PIF member countries has also remained a pressing and divisive consideration. Three Micronesian countries, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Palau, officially recognise Taiwan, with full diplomatic links. Other PIF member countries across Polynesia and the South Pacific recognise China.

An attempt by the Solomon Islands to exclude Taiwan proved unsuccessful, although revealed deep divisions inside the PIF, which also have direct bearing upon US Island Chain Theory. Taiwan, which hosts a large clandestine US diplomatic presence, marks a central position with the first and second chains, restricting China's ability to openly access and have egress with Oceania. (4) The fact Oceania includes Australia and New Zealand, two member countries of the elite Five Eyes intelligence-sharing network, reveals the importance of ICT for the Pentagon's military planning.

Moves by the US to push the Philippines into a central role with hostilities toward China in the South China Seas, likewise, has some direct bearing upon the PIF. (5) About twenty per cent of Palau's tiny population are ethnic Filipinos. (6) Elsewhere, across the PIF member countries, large number of Philippine guest workers provide essential services. All PIF member countries have large Chinese ethnic minorities, some with several centuries of standing; the US-led Cold War has had serious implications for the Pacific.

The 2024 PIF, therefore, has taken place in a regional environment which can best be described as problematic. PIF member countries, for example, acknowledge climate change is an issue of central importance, and the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres attended the forum 'to demand fresh efforts by the world's biggest carbon emitters to phase out fossil fuels … with outcomes including … extreme weather events from raging tropical cyclones to record ocean heat-waves'. (7) Guterres, in fact, used the PIF opening ceremony to propose a ' fossil fuel-free Pacific … as a … blue-print for the world. (8)

A diplomatic statement issued by Fiji in June contained a warning for PIF member countries with 'poly-crisis in which climate change, human security, trans-national crime, and geopolitical competition were reinforcing and exacerbating one another'. (9)

The US, meanwhile, represented by Kurt Campbell, Deputy Secretary of State and well-known China hawk, did not even bother to openly discuss the PIF diplomatic statements; the US had other agenda considerations, 'as Washington moves to strengthen engagement with Pacific nations'. (10) While the US placed great emphasis upon diplomatic recognition of 'the centrality of the grouping to the region's future in recent AUSMIN talks in Washington'; the US position can hardly be regarded as diplomacy in good faith. (11) It is little other than an attempt by Washington and the Pentagon to maintain the Pacific as a region of 'US interests', marked by political interference and neo-colonial economic relations. The region is rich in natural resources and mineral deposits, including rare earths.

It is, however, the manner in which the US has pushed its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) into the Pacific that has become a major diplomatic issue for PIF member countries. Silence has prevailed. The moves, however, have been accompanied by a massive US-led upgrade and build-up of their presence in northern Australia. 'Australia … it has been officially announced in Washington … has become the central base of operations for America's military … a recently announced boost to US bomber deployments to Australia's Top End bases would enable America to project power across the region'. (12) The moves have also been accompanied by proposals to upgrade US troop rotations in northern Australia from the existing 2,500 a year, to a 'full expeditionary force of 16,000 personnel'. (13)

Marked by the elevation of Japan as a major global US alliance partner, the IPS rests upon the so-called 'Quad', consisting of the US, Japan, Australia and India; China has been effectively hemmed in from all sides. (14) The recent incorporation of the Philippines into the IPS on the basis of a lower-level partner was marked by references to military-to-military engagement and a 'defensive web of partners and allies'. (15)

PIF member countries have been watching these developments with a sense of unease; they stand to be drawn into escalating US-led diplomatic rivalries with China, which remains their largest and most important trading partner.

Recent developments in Palau, for example, reveal just how high the stakes have become for the US in the Pacific.

Palau, with a population of 18,000 spread across five hundred small islands and atolls, is directly linked into US diplomacy through the Compact of Free Association (CFA) together with the Marshal Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. Palau has huge strategic significance for the Philippines, marking the boundaries of the Philippine Sea which are contested by China and patrolled by US marine forces responsible for security provision.

A recent decision by the US to use Palau for an 'over the horizon' radar system designed to be fully operational in 2026, has been accompanied by the upgrading of local airfields across the Pacific. (16) The $120 million system is composed of Receiver and Transmitter terminals, based in the northern part of Palau in Babeldaos and in the south at Angaur, at opposite ends of strategic island chains.(17)

The new Palau radar system also forms part of a matrix linked to Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, two hubs for 'US interests'. The former is then linked directly to US intelligence facilities based in Pine Gap, Central Australia which swings on an arc to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean; Guam and Diego Garcia have been upgraded as hubs for military operations, Darwen, in northern Australia, is the support centre. (18)

All US defence and security 'hubs' are correspondingly linked to 'spokes', their formation extending the power of the US deeper into the Pacific and Indian Ocean, enhancing their IPS. (19) There is little ambiguity about the role of the IPS facilities based in Palau; it has already been noted it has been designed to boost the US role in the Pacific. (20)

While it has been noted there has been political opposition to the new US facilities in Palau, it is also important to note Australia has provided a significant role for the establishment of US-led regionally controlled intelligence facilities, including the IPS:

We need an independent foreign policy!

1. See Website: Pacific Islands Forum, Release: 12 April 2024, Joint Media Release: Tonga, 10 April 2024; and, China proxy pushes Taiwan ban, Australian, 26 August 2024.
2. See: Pacific Forum, The US Indo-Pacific Strategy, 23 February 2021.
3. Study: US no longer dominant power in the Pacific, Information Clearing House, 22 August 2019.
4. See: Beijing keeps a wary eye on new US Taipei outpost, Australian, 18 June 2018.
5. South China Sea raises fear of a super-power war, Australian, 21 August 2024.
6. Philippines vows to resolve maritime dispute with Palau, The Philippine Star, 24 September 2021.
7. Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
8. ALP gas plan irks Pacific leaders, Australian, 28 August 2024.
9. Australian, op.cit., 26 August 2024.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Deterrence starts at the Top (End), The Weekend Australian, 17-18 August 2024.
13. Call to boost US marines' presence in Top End, Australian, 7 August 2024.
14. See: The reasons behind Washington's push for GSOMIA., Hankyoreh, 12 November 2019.
15. Manila adds to its security network, Australian, 26 July 2024.
16. See: US missile defence proposal, Reuters, 21 December 2023; and, US plans, RFA., 1 November 2023.
17. A new radar installation in the Pacific, Popular Science, 5 January 2023; and, RFA., ibid., 1 November 2023.
18. See: Peters Projection, World Map, Actual Size; and, US intensifies military presence in the Indo-Pacific, The Global Times (Beijing), 24 July 2018.
19. Palau-based radar, Geo-Indo-Pacific, 27 July 2024.
20. Reuters, ibid., 21 December 2023.