Problems in Paradise: The New “Great Game” in Oceania

I’m fairly certain that if I asked the average Canadian why the United States (US) was planning to spend $400 million USD on expanding the runway on the island of Yap, they would look at me in a state of nervous perplexity and hurry off. That would be an entirely justifiable response since few Canadians have a detailed knowledge of contemporary developments in Oceania. And yet, as we speak, a complex, multi-layered geostrategic contest for dominance is unfolding in the vast island world of the Pacific; a world that most of us imagine, subconsciously at least, to be trouble free. After all, that’s where most of us think about going to escape from our problems.

The reality is very different. But in order to appreciate what is happening in paradise we need to pause for a moment and review the history of Oceania. By the end of the nineteenth century the great powers, the US, France, and Great Britain, had laid claim to most of the islands in the world’s largest ocean. The Germans were latecomers, but they did manage to acquire atolls in Micronesia (one of the three great island clusters in the Pacific) that lay between Hawaii and Taiwan. At the end of World War One, the Japanese, who had assisted the victors, seized the German possessions, and, following their attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, they struck south from Micronesia towards the Solomon Islands. 

The Solomons lie about 1200 miles northeast of Australia. They occupy a vital geostrategic position. If the Japanese were able to consolidate their hold over the islands, they could deploy their warships and fighters to interdict the supply lines from the US to Australia. Furthermore, they could use Guadalcanal, the main island in the group, as a point d’appui for attacks on other key islands in the region like Fiji and Papua New Guinea. The Americans, realizing the perilous state of affairs, landed on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. Three years later, on 6 August 1945, they dispatched a B-29 bomber, the Enola Gay, from Tinian (an island in northern Micronesia which will feature later in our story) to drop an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. It had taken them that long to fight their way across the Japanese-held islands. They took away two indelible lessons from that brutal campaign; first, that they would never allow themselves to be without aircraft carriers, and, second, that they would never allow another nation to control Micronesia because those islands and atolls served as the gateway to Asia.

The Pacific Islands and China’s Belt and Road Initiative 

So, what does all this have to do with the island nations of Oceania today? Well, in 2013, the newly installed president of the People’s Republic of China, Xi Jinping, announced a hugely ambitious national enterprise called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). What Xi had in mind, in the first instance, was two commercial routes; a maritime route connecting China, via the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean, to Europe, and a terrestrial route – encompassing roads, pipelines and railways – running across Eurasia to eastern Europe. China’s economy was buoyant and Xi saw his nation making strategic investments along those routes that would enhance China’s influence, utilize China’s excess construction capacity, and strengthen China’s national defence.

Initially, so far as we can tell, Xi did not focus his attention on Oceania, but as China’s arrogant and assertive foreign policy and the relentless build-up of the Chinese armed forces caused mounting alarm throughout the Indo Pacific region, multilateral security arrangements like the QUAD – India, the US, Australia, and Japan – began to emerge to counter China’s growing power. It was clear, from Beijing’s perspective, that Australia, which had embarked on the biggest defence revitalization programme since World War Two, was a central player in these regional defence initiatives. What is more, Australia had had the temerity, in Xi’s estimation, to query the Chinese origins of COVID 19, and this had led Beijing to initiate a trade war with Australia in 2020.

Xi decided to take a page from Japan’s World War Two playbook. Why not extend the BRI into the Pacific Islands and accomplish two goals at the same time? Broadly speaking, there was a division of labour in the South Pacific with Australia overseeing the well-being of the Melanesian island nations in the Southwest and New Zealand performing the same function in Polynesia in the Southeast. The Chinese had already persuaded the pro-Chinese prime minister of the Solomons, Manasseh Sogavare, to transfer official diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to the People’s Republic in 2019. That was their first objective. Their second took the form of secret security negotiations with the Sogavare government in March 2022. However, no sooner than drafted they were leaked. Washington, Wellington and Canberra were stunned to discover that the bilateral treaty would have allowed Chinese military personnel to guard Chinese projects in the Solomons and that there was a possibility that Chinese naval vessels might be able to use the anchorage at Tulagi, not far from the national capital, Honiara. Whatever the case, relations between Washington and Honiara became even more strained when the Sogavare government refused to allow a US Coast Guard cutter to refuel in the Solomons in August 2022.

Xi’s other target was a very different sort of island state, Kiribati (pronounced Kiribas). Unlike the Solomons, which were characterized by high, rugged, jungle clad profiles, Kiribati was a classic atoll where the highest point of land was not much more than a meter or two above sea level. But what Kiribati did have was location! It was located in the approaches to Kwajalein, another atoll which served as the down range interception base for American intercontinental ballistic missiles fired from California. And here again, the Chinese had a secondary objective; to wean the islanders off Taiwanese assistance and erode Taiwan’s diplomatic recognition still further.

From their beachhead in the Solomons the Chinese began to look toward the jewel in the crown; the island of Papua New Guinea. “PNG”, as it is known, lies almost within visual distance of northern Australia. Having occupied the Solomon Islands in 1942, the Japanese had directed their attention immediately to PNG, which constituted Australia’s Maginot Line. The initial Japanese invasion force was repulsed and subsequent Japanese army incursions were eventually defeated. The Chinese never got that far although they were increasingly aware of the build-up of military facilities in Australia’s Top End that would be available to the US armed forces. Initially, the Chinese set their sights on Lombrum naval base on Los Negros Island, part of the PNG archipelago. Like many of the bases in this story, Lombrum was a World War Two facility. The Americans, however, reacted swiftly to forestall Chinese ambitions. They entered into a Defense Cooperation Agreement with the PNG government in 2023, which gave them access to three airports, two ports (Port Moresby and Lae) and the naval base. Furthermore, the agreement empowered them to train, transit, and preposition equipment in PNG but not to station troops there permanently.

The other area of particular concern for Washington was Micronesia. In the decades after World War Two, the Americans had utilized various Micronesian atolls, like Bikini and Eniwetok, as atomic bomb test sites. These tests gave rise, directly and indirectly, to a host of ethical, practical, and financial issues in terms of the relationship between the US government and the islanders. Finally, after prolonged negotiations, that relationship was formalized in what came to be called the Compact of Free Association (COFA), which involved three “Freely Associated States (FAS)”; the island nation of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM), and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI). As noted earlier, Washington was determined to prevent any other power from exercising authority over these geostrategically important islands. At its simplest, the compact ensured that the US government would provide financial aid and services (education, postal, etc.) to the islanders and they, in turn, would be free to live and work in the US if they chose. For its part, the US government would be free to utilize the islands in any way required to bolster American security. 

While the COFA amounted to an American protectorate, the islands were still able to exercise a good deal of sovereign independence. Palau’s experience is salutary in this regard. Eager to wean the FAS from the US, the Chinese promoted direct flights from Macau to Palau. In 2008, just over 600 Chinese tourists had visited Palau. By 2015, that number had risen to 91,000. Then, having captured 54 percent of the market, the Chinese decided to “weaponize” it. In 2017, Beijing announced that it would terminate the flow of visitors unless Palau switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. The Palauans stood firm and eventually Chinese tourists began to return.

A Future Sino-American War?

Other concerns were also at play. The massive build-up of the Chinese Armed Forces has included the standing up of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force. The scope and immensity of the rocket force arsenal has led the Americans to reassess their posture in the western Pacific approaches to China. For many years they had placed great store by their island stronghold, Guam. Guam is home to American submarines, long-range bombers, and missile batteries. However, concerned that these assets might be crippled in the opening phases of a Sino-American war, the Pentagon decided that it needed to diversify its bases and this led American planners to revisit World War Two sites elsewhere in Oceania. 

Reference was made earlier to the airstrip on Yap in the Palau Archipelago. That was reanimated as were the runways on nearby Peleliu. Peleliu was the scene of the deadliest amphibious landing during World War Two and when US contractors returned almost eighty years later, they not only had to clear away all of the dense vegetation but to hunt for unexploded wartime ordinance. Tinian is another example. Late in the war the Americans occupied Tinian in northern Micronesia. It was close enough to the Japanese Home Islands that it was ideal for US bomber operations. Recently, the US government announced that $800 million USD worth of defence projects were planned for Tinian, including restoring a World War Two airfield to full operational status. 

Economics, Migration and Climate Change

It is vitally important to look at these events from another angle; from the perspective of the islanders. But before we do so it is worth reflecting on a few important features of the island world. First, most of the island nations have very modest land areas. Their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs), however, are vast. Thus, the Cook Islands, for example, have a land area of about ninety square miles while their oceanic EEZ is roughly 330,000 square miles–the size of western Europe. Second, these EEZs are major sources of fish, but they are so large that they are almost impossible to police adequately. Illegal, Unregulated, and Unreported (IUU) fishing by Chinese, Taiwanese, Okinawan and other fishers is rampant. At the same time – and third – the land-based economies are usually dependent on a small number of perishable agricultural products like bananas and coconuts. In fact, most of the islands trade in the same products. Fourth, there is always tourism, but, here again, the microstates are competing against one another and most of the destinations are well away from the major air and shipping routes. And fifth, a number of island groups have been almost denuded of working age men and women who have migrated temporarily to New Zealand, Australia, and the US in search of work. It will come as no surprise that the island nations of Oceania are probably the world’s most aid dependent and that the great power contest that is unfolding at present offers the islanders timely and useful leverage which enables them to extract financial support from the competitors.

It is also vitally important to realize that “security” has a quite different meaning for the islanders than for most metropolitan defence analysts. The residents of atoll nations like Kiribati and Tuvalu view security in existential terms. They realize that the relentless rise in sea levels is certain to render their homes uninhabitable within decades. In fact, the Australian authorities have offered the Tuvaluans refuge in that event. Almost all the islanders are looking for assistance in policing their EEZs and support with respect to education, health, telecommunications, and infrastructure development. 

To strengthen their hand, the islanders established the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) in 1971. The PIF, with 18 members across the Pacific Ocean, operates on the basis of “friends to all”, but that philosophy has not insulated the organization from internal tensions or from foreign interference. At a recent PIF meeting, for example, the Chinese observer managed to strong arm the principal players into deleting all reference to Taiwan from the final communique. The Japanese have been a good deal more adept at working their way around island sensitivities and their participation in the affairs of Oceania has strengthened the western agenda materially.

Chinese overtures to Pacific Island nations over the past six or seven years have sent alarm bells ringing in Washington, Wellington and Canberra. Eighteen western embassies have been established in the islands since 2017 and Australia has a resident diplomat in every sovereign nation in Oceania now. The Canadian Indo Pacific Strategy (released in November 2022) called for the establishment of an “embassy” (more properly a high commission) in Fiji, but so far, and given the passage of two-years, only two diplomats have been sent there. The western powers have won a few rounds and lost a few others. They succeeded in blunting the Chinese thrusts into the Solomons and PNG. However, they were not able to persuade the one-time phosphate rich island of Nauru to remain in the Taiwanese column (although Australia did manage to place restrictions on Chinese activities there). They did succeed in reversing Fiji’s pro-Chinese stance, an arrangement which, had it been allowed to stand, would have given the Chinese greater and greater access to and influence over the Fijian police and military. All of this effort has stemmed the flight of Taiwan’s Oceanic supporters and Palau, Tuvalu and the Republic of the Marshall Islands remain firmly in place. This, in turn, has enabled the US to continue reinforcing airfields and installations in Oceania in anticipation of hostilities with China. 

To misquote Leon Trotsky, the “Great Game” in Oceania has revealed, compellingly, that while “You may not be interested in geopolitics, geopolitics is certainly interested in you”.