Biden Loses to China Again in the South Pacific

As Biden Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin traveled to Papua New Guinea this week to discuss a new security agreement with the island nation, it was in the shadow of Chinese expansionism in the region that has left the U.S. in a precarious position.

Just days before Austin met with Prime Minister James Marape in the capital of Port Moresby, the government of the Solomon Islands signed an agreement with China on “law enforcement and security matters” – part of a decades-long effort to bring the strategically located island chain within Beijing’s sphere of influence.

Located at a critical juncture several hundred miles off the east coast of Papua New Guinea, some experts have called the Solomons the “gateway to Australia.”

Beijing has been particularly interested in Guadalcanal, the same island that U.S. Marines bravely fought on to drive out its Japanese defenders during World War II, at the cost of 7,100 dead and nearly 8,000 wounded. At about 2,000 square miles, Guadalcanal is the largest of the Solomon Islands and is home to the capital of Honiara.

After the war, the democratic West led by the United States, Australia, and New Zealand forged ties with the Solomon Islands and other South Pacific states to ensure that they would become allies, rather than fall under the influence of Soviet Russia or communist China. Due to its geographic isolation, Australia has long relied on good relations with its neighbors like the Solomons to keep trade routes open and ensure economic cooperation.

This strategy was largely successful in the latter half of the 20th century, as small Indo-Pacific island nations worked with the region’s democracies – including a rebuilding Japan – to become more developed and prosperous.

But now, Communist China seems to be deploying a strategy in the Indo-Pacific that is eerily similar to the one pursued by Imperialist Japan a century ago. However, while Japan used military might, China mostly uses economic and diplomatic pressure to forcefully dictate others’ choices (although Beijing has also been willing to flaunt the strength of its military as an intimidation tactic).

The clearest evidence of this is with Taiwan, but now the Solomon Islands are also being subject to China’s pressure campaign – and seem to be open to further cooperation with Beijing. As a sign of things to come, back in 2019, the Solomons government severed ties with Taiwan, a major sign of capitulation to Beijing.

Along with the law enforcement and security agreement earlier this month, the Solomon Islands also opened an embassy in China, and has been growing more distant from Australia and the United States.

But perhaps the most alarming development came last April, when the Solomons and China inked a secret security pact which sent leaders in Washington and Canberra into a frenzy. A leaked draft of the document, which included provisions like allowing China to dock vessels in local ports at will, and allowing Beijing to dispatch police to the Solomons to “maintain social order,” seemed to imply the Solomons were ceding much of their sovereignty to Beijing.

News of the pact broke just as the Australian Conservative government was in the latter stages of its election campaign. Conservative politicians were then bombarded with severe false media accusations favoring the opposition.

Many senior Australian government figures saw the timing of China’s announcement as a clear attempt to influence the outcome of the election. Outgoing defense minister Peter Dutton called it “obviously provocative.”

These developments have been alarming for other countries in the region as well. One former Japanese government official told this author on the condition of anonymity that when the Solomons surprised everyone with their split from Taiwan, there was “a great deal of fear” in Japan and elsewhere that “more dominoes would fall.”

But he also said he believed that this fear had been worsened by the Biden administration’s approach to the region, which differed from Trump’s four pillars of respect for every nation, reciprocal trade, peaceful conflict solving, and the rule of law. Comparing the relationship between Japan, Australia, the Solomons, and the United States to an “engine,” he said Beijing could not stop it, but would make an attempt.

However, Solomon Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s recent interview with a Chinese television network leaves no doubt that he has completely sold out to Beijing. During the twenty-minute appearance, Sogavare praised Xi Jinping as “an esteemed man of ideas” and bragged that he owned all four volumes of Xi’s “thoughts.”

Courtship of the Solomons appears to only be the first step in Xi’s ambitions for the Indo-Pacific. Fiji’s prime minister was also scheduled for a trip to China this week, but abruptly canceled due to an injury.

For Biden, the apparent loss of the Solomons is yet another foreign policy failure – one that leaves America and its allies at even more of a disadvantage in the ongoing great power competition with China.

Ben Solis is the pen name of an international affairs journalist, historian, and researcher.