Biden Picks Up Where Obama Left Off in the Southwest Pacific

US weakness in the Southwest Pacific invites aggressive Chinese actions

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare inspect honor guards during a welcome ceremony at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on Oct. 9, 2019. (Wang Zhao/AFP via Getty Images)

Commentary

Guadalcanal, Henderson Field, the Tenaru River, Sgt. John Basilone. These are places and names that are baked into the collective consciousness of the U.S. Marine Corps and a grateful nation (at least some of us, anyway).

Over a six-month campaign from Aug. 7, 1942, to Feb. 9, 1943, 1,592 American troops were killed in action, and 4,183 were wounded in capturing Guadalcanal Island, which is roughly 1,100 miles northeast of Townsville, Australia, across the Coral Sea. Guadalcanal marked the first large-scale U.S. amphibious landing in the Pacific War, with the battle becoming part of Marine folklore (rightfully so!) and the first step on the long and bloody road to Tokyo.

Fast-forward to March 31, 2022, when the Solomon Islands “inked a wide-ranging security pact with Beijing, an agreement Western allies fear will pave the way for a first Chinese military foothold in the South Pacific,” according to The Straits Times.

Will the Chinese People’s Liberation Army militarize Henderson Field (now Honiara International Airport) over the protests of the ghosts of the U.S. Marines who died there almost 80 years ago?

Will the Solomons host PLA Navy ships and submarines or even provide them with a “home port away from home” in the near future?

Chalk this up to another “gift to communist China,” as this agreement has come a long way. In September 2019, the Solomons ended its 36-year relationship with Taiwan and officially recognized Beijing as the “official government of China.” The payoff was a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI, also known as “One Belt, One Road”) agreement and a Chinese promise to build a multi-million-dollar stadium in the country.

The deal was not consummated without controversy, as there were several accusations that the Chinese bribed provincial politicians to support Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s diplomatic switcheroo. This is a standard Chinese Communist Party (CCP) tactic used in pursuing geopolitical and economic objectives around the world.

Perhaps signaling China’s real intention to acquire and control land, a Chinese company, China Sam Enterprise Group, immediately tried to lease Tulagi Island from the Solomons’ Central Province. Still, that agreement was shot down by the central government.

The switch to Beijing was not welcomed by all Solomon Islanders, who feared potential Chinese religious and minority population persecution. Malaita Province, in particular, has maintained informal relations with Taiwan and refused to recognize the Beijing government, with its premier personally accepting Taiwanese medical treatment for a brain tumor in 2021. Political leaders in Malaita are concerned that Chinese corruption is turning the Solomons into a “puppet state of China,” as reported in The Sydney Morning Herald.

Solomon Islanders in the construction industry are incensed that contracts for building a new international airport, the stadium for the 2023 Pacific Games, and other government infrastructure projects have been given to Chinese companies instead of Solomon Islander-owned enterprises. Like many countries, the Solomons are learning about the downside of the BRI!

A burnt-out truck sits in the Chinatown district of Honiara on the Solomon Islands on Nov. 26, 2021. (Charley Piringi/AFP via Getty Images)

Tensions led to violent anti-Chinese protests last November in the capital city of Honiara in the Chinatown district and then outside the Chinese Embassy, as reported by Australia’s ABC News and Taipei Times. But that instability didn’t stop the Sogavare government from concluding the security pact with Beijing.

The weak U.S. policy of relying on Australia and New Zealand to manage the Chinese encroachment in the Solomons without visible U.S. commitment and presence did not work. In conjunction with support from allies in the region, direct U.S. involvement was likely the only way to reduce Chinese influence and stabilize the situation. Still, there was no concrete policy to engage all parties.

In a reactive action, the United States is belatedly planning to upgrade the U.S. Consulate in Honiara to embassy status.

The Solomons and Scarborough Shoal

The U.S. retreat in the Solomons is a continuation of a similarly weak Obama administration policy that handed de facto control of Scarborough Shoal to communist China in 2012. The Shoal, about 130 miles from Luzon Island, is claimed by China and the Philippines.

On April 12, 2012, the Philippine Navy’s BRP Gregorio Del Pilar attempted to apprehend a dozen Chinese fishing vessels near the Shoal. The prompt arrival of two civilian Chinese marine surveillance vessels stopped the arrest. The Philippines tried to deescalate the situation, but the Chinese sent additional patrol ships to confront a single Philippine Coast Guard ship that was on station.

The Chinese eventually constructed a chain barrier across the mouth of the Shoal, which essentially gave China de facto control.

China Coast Guard vessels patrol past Philippine fishing boats at the disputed Scarborough Shoal on April 5, 2017. (Erik De Castro/Reuters)

To defuse the situation, the United States helped to broker an agreement in which China and the Philippines promised to withdraw their forces from the Shoal until a deal over its ownership could be reached at a future date. Although Filipino ships were withdrawn, China did not abide by the agreement and maintained a physical presence at the Shoal.

The Obama administration did nothing in response to the blatant Chinese violation. However, in 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague invalidated Beijing’s territorial claims in the area. It ruled in favor of the Philippines that the waters surrounding the Shoal were traditional fishing grounds that several countries should share in the region.

The Chinese regime refused to abide by the Permanent Court ruling and continues to dispute control of Scarborough Shoal to this very day. There have been four close encounters between Chinese Coast Guard vessels and Filipino patrol ships near the disputed Shoal over the last year, with the latest “near collision” incident on March 2.

Subsequently, according to a report in The Star on March 30, “China has warned the Philippines against ‘interfering’ with its patrols at Bajo de Masinloc [Scarborough], saying the shoal and its waters are part of Chinese territory.”

The Philippine government’s response was a reassertion of full Filipino sovereignty over the Shoal and its territorial sea in accordance with the Permanent Court ruling.

Concluding Thoughts

The weak U.S. response to the Solomon Islands–China security pact is of a piece with the weak U.S. actions associated with the Scarborough Shoal incident. Both represent a retreat in the face of Chinese aggression and belligerence and an abandonment of U.S. allies.

Although appalling, especially considering the expenditure of American blood and treasure at Guadalcanal and other islands in the Solomon Islands chain during World War II, this should not be a surprise to careful observers, as the Biden State Department includes a number of Obama administration retreads.

For example, Biden’s “Asia czar” Kurt Campbell was an enthusiastic supporter of cooperation and engagement with China during the Obama administration. He served as President Barack Obama’s assistant secretary for the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, who mediated the toothless Scarborough Shoals agreement in 2012 that China ignored.

Campbell once occupied the “Kissinger Chair for National Security” at the Center for Strategic and International Relations, and has been opining on U.S.-China relations for decades (see example here).

Under Biden, however, Campbell “converted” to support the president’s “extreme competition” policy in defining U.S. interactions with communist China, as he expressed in May 2021, as noted here.

One wonders whether this was a genuine conversion (which is recognizing that the previous four-decade Kissingerian policy of engagement with China has been an abject failure). Or did public pressure build up during the Trump years and the subsequent passage of the Strategic Competition Act (focused on China) by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee on a 21–1 vote “encourage” Biden to toughen his China policy, with Campbell and others tasked with implementation?

After all, Biden was a senator throughout the entire period of the “Kissingerian engagement policy” while serving on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee beginning in 1997, as well as spearheading U.S.-China foreign policy as Obama’s vice president.

For example, as noted in The New York Times: “In 2000, he voted to grant China permanent normal trading relations, which paved the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and deeper global economic ties.”

Those actions are at the heart of the decades-long “China engagement policy.” Somehow, in an apparent reversal, “extreme competition” entered Biden’s foreign policy repertoire and lexicon when he ran for president in 2020.

With Chinese aggression continuing in the East China Sea and South Pacific region, what could go wrong?

Campbell is being sent to the Solomons later this month. But with the horse already being out of the barn concerning the Solomons-China security agreement having been consummated, is this trip merely window-dressing after the fact for domestic U.S. consumption?

The outcome bears close watching to discern if any concrete actions will be taken to counter China’s moves in the Southwest Pacific. Since “personnel is policy,” we can expect similar weak—and late—responses to communist Chinese actions from the Biden State Department in the future.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.