US stepping up presence in the Pacific

So how can the Pacific Islands region benefit from all that’s going on in the larger Asia Pacific region? Especially so, when it has never been in the reckoning in any of the larger regional blocs…The key bargaining chip for the islands is their access to natural resources in their sovereign territories on land and in the water, and under the ocean floor.’

Events in the past couple of months have reinforced the prediction of the gurus of global economics that this century belongs to the Asia Pacific region. And if the Pacific Islands play their cards well, both individually and collectively as a region, they will have much to gain.

Clearly, the Asia Pacific is where all the exciting action is every country in the world has realised this. At the Commonwealth Business Forum, ahead of CHOGM in Perth in October, host state Western Australia’s leaders positioned the state as being “in the zone”. They meant the Asian-time zone the one that is common to China, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and India: the economies that have been driving global growth in the past decade or so.

Being in the time and geographic zone means it is that much easier to do business with the world’s fastest growing region. The blitzing pace at which Perth and Western Australia are growing is testimony to what can happen when a region couples its growth strategies with fast growing economies. Owing to mineral exports from the state’s mining giants, Perth is the fastest growing city in the region and the state of Western Australia is expected to continue to grow furiously for the next five decades.

In the past four years, especially during Barack Obama’s presidency, the United States has realised how close it had come to missing the Pacific boat because of its economically enervating and geopolitically rudderless, decade-long engagement in the Middle East. Sending in a procession of senior diplomats to the region including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the US has tried to step up its engagement.

During one of her visits, Clinton said rather ingenuously that the US “would not cede the Pacific” to anybody—as if the US owned the Pacific Ocean clearly jolted by the deep inroads China had made with its own model of aid and assistance, which the US sees as thinly disguised expansionism.
A year earlier, a senior US envoy visiting New Zealand told the then prime minister that the US needed “New Zealand’s eyes” to re-establish relations with the Pacific Islands region because of Wellington’s long and deep involvement in the region. And in the past couple of years, diplomatic relations between the US and New Zealand have improved greatly despite no change in the latter’s anti-nuclear stance.

Last month, President Obama all but raised China’s hackles following the announcement of the continuance of a defence pact between Australia and the US armed forces in the north of Australia. The fact that this means about 2500 US defence personnel would be stationed in the Darwin area has had China worried about the impact on the region’s geopolitics. It warned Australia it would be “caught in the crossfire” if the US used new Australia-based military forces to threaten its interests.

Though New Zealand is super sensitive to its relationship with China, when asked for his reaction to this development across the Tasman, Prime Minister John Key said the country would welcome an extension of that defence cooperation and joint exercises with New Zealand as long as it would not include visits by nuclear powered vessels into its waters.
Immediately after his visit to Australia, President Obama unreservedly praised China during the APEC forum in Hawaii for its role in helping keep the peace in the contentious and somewhat volatile South China Sea region. This was quite simply aimed at smoothing out the ruffled feathers of the Chinese establishment especially after it came under fire from several regional nations during the forum about its controversial handling of a series of incidents in the South China Sea.  

China knows the US is stepping up its presence in the Pacific. The relocation of the Okinawa military base to Guam, a US$15 billion project that will take the better part of this decade to complete; the scaling up of its embassies throughout the region, including a trade office in Papua New Guinea; the new diplomatic initiatives in New Zealand and Australia; and the new defence cooperation arrangements all allude to this.

So besides ritualistic sabre rattling and raising token objections, it knows it needs to make other strategic moves to keep the balance in the region. Small wonder, then, that it has suddenly cozied up to its big neighbour India, with which it has always really had a relationship tinged with mutual suspicion and distrust. The US has been steadily strengthening its relationship with India as a counter to China in the region but China’s new move adds an all-new dimension.

So how can the Pacific Islands region benefit from all that’s going on in the larger Asia Pacific region? Especially so, when it has never been in the reckoning in any of the larger regional blocs.

When one speaks of the Pacific Rim countries, the islands are excluded; neither are they included in the bloc of Asia Pacific nations as serious players. Why, even in the much-in-the-news TPP (Trans Pacific Partnership), an existing trade agreement between Brunei, Chile, New Zealand and Singapore, which Australia, Malaysia, Peru, the US and Vietnam wish to join, the Pacific Islands are excluded?
The key bargaining chip for the islands is their access to natural resources in their sovereign territories on land and in the water and under the ocean floor. PNG is already seeing the results of this.

At the APEC forum, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak assured PNG Prime Minister Peter O’Neill of scaling up energy and resources cooperation by employing South Korean technologies to PNG’s natural resources.
Granted that PNG in particular and the Melanesian bloc in general are far well endowed in land-based natural resources than the Micronesian and Polynesian Pacific Islands—but the latter are rich in marine as well as undersea resources, which they need to be mindful of and find ways and means of sustainably leveraging.
Moreover, these countries—tiny as they may be are eminently suited as attractive sites for both global businesses and countries with geopolitical ambitions. It is not for nothing that US leaders held talk sessions with a clutch of Pacific Islands leaders during last month’s APEC forum in Hawaii, discussing wide ranging issues concerning the region.


OP/ED ISLAND BUSINESS