Biden’s damaging Pacific no-shows

Biden’s damaging Pacific no-shows      

https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/biden-s-damaging-pacific-no-shows

2023-05-22

SYDNEY – When Mr Joe Biden cancelled his plan to travel to the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea (PNG) last Monday, it was not merely a terrible disappointment for a country that has long awaited its first visit by a United States president. The decision has also delivered a blow to Washington’s bid to compete with Beijing in an intense battle for influence across the Pacific.

For months, PNG had been preparing to welcome Mr Biden. In anticipation, the PNG government had declared a public holiday across the capital on Monday – even though Mr Biden was due to visit for only three hours – and imposed a week-long liquor ban. When Mr Biden’s advance security team flew in early last week, it made front-page news.

Yet, just hours after PNG’s government confirmed that a public holiday had been gazetted, the White House revealed that the trip had been cancelled. Mr Biden still attended a Group of Seven summit in Japan, but abandoned his plan to travel on to PNG and then to Australia for a meeting of leaders of the Quad, a grouping which comprises the US, Australia, India and Japan. Instead, Mr Biden returned to Washington to deal with a dispute over the US debt ceiling.

The cancellation was embarrassing for PNG’s Prime Minister James Marape and Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, both of whom were caught by surprise. Indeed, late last Tuesday night, Mr Albanese’s office released confirmation that Mr Biden would address a joint sitting of Parliament in Canberra, the first US president to do so since Mr Barack Obama in 2011. Yet, shortly before 6am the next day, Mr Biden called Mr Albanese to cancel.

More than just embarrassing

This last-minute decision by Mr Biden had deeper consequences than depriving PNG and Australia of an opportunity to rub shoulders with a US president. The cancellation has dealt a significant setback to efforts by Washington to try to improve its standing in the Pacific and to counter China’s growing reach in a region that is sparsely populated but covers a vast expanse of the Pacific Ocean.

Indeed, the climax of Mr Biden’s visit to PNG was supposed to be the signing of a landmark Defence Cooperation Agreement between the two countries. The agreement, finalised several weeks ago, was expected to grant the US military access to a range of airports and ports across the country.

A leaked draft indicated that the US could deploy aircraft, vehicles and vessels, along with personnel, for visits, exercises, manoeuvres, refuelling, as well as intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance activities. A separate agreement was expected to allow the US Coast Guard to patrol PNG’s vast exclusive economic zone, along with PNG officials on board.

These wide-ranging pacts are still likely to go ahead. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit PNG on Monday and attend a planned meeting between the US and leaders from across the Pacific, said the US State Department. He is also expected to sign the defence agreement.

But the deal will no longer be accompanied by the theatrics of a US presidential visit – an event that would have shored up political and public support for the deal in PNG, as well as delivered an unmistakable message to Washington’s rivals, particularly China, that the US remains committed to a strong diplomatic and military presence in the region.

In recent years, the Pacific has been at the centre of growing geopolitical rivalry as the US, Australia and New Zealand have become increasingly concerned about China’s ties in the region and the prospect of it setting up a military base in the Pacific.

Australia, in particular, has long harboured fears of a rival power gaining a military foothold in the waters to its north. These fears were heightened in 2018 when media reports in Australia suggested that China had approached the island nation of Vanuatu about establishing a navy base there. The claim, which was denied by China and Vanuatu, triggered a frenzied effort by Canberra to bolster ties with Pacific states. Canberra launched a “Pacific step-up”, which included boosting aid and trips by then Prime Minister Scott Morrison to Vanuatu and Fiji, which were the first bilateral visits by an Australian leader in decades.

But China, which has strong commercial ties with the Pacific and has offered large loans to Pacific governments, continued to expand its outreach in the region. Steadily, Beijing’s efforts appeared to be succeeding. In September 2019, the Solomon Islands revealed it was switching diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. Days later, Kiribati followed. And then, in April 2022, came the bombshell revelation that the Solomon Islands had signed a secret security pact with China.

A leaked draft showed that the deal allowed Beijing to deploy police and military personnel to the Solomon Islands and to send naval ships for stopovers to ports in the island nation, less than 2,000km from the Australian coast. Analysts in Australia warned that the deal would allow China to set up a military base – a claim that Beijing and Honiara both denied.

Buoyed by the deal, Beijing attempted to sign a regionwide deal covering security, trade and fisheries with the 10 Pacific countries that recognise it. As Australia’s newly elected Labor government dispatched Foreign Minister Penny Wong to lobby against the agreement, the Pacific states politely declined Beijing’s offer, saying they had not had enough time to consider it. But the proposed pact – and the possibility of a new multilateral China-Pacific pact – caused further shudders in Washington, Canberra and Wellington.

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In the past year, though, the pendulum has been swinging back towards the US and its ally Australia in their battle for influence in the Pacific. 

Most Pacific states have historically had good relations with Canberra and Washington. Australia is, by far, the largest aid donor in the region. But the Pacific states have made it clear that they do not want to be caught up in a geopolitical great game, and that their overriding strategic concern is to persuade the international community to back stronger action on climate change. Pacific states have largely welcomed growing trade with China.

Since Australia’s Labor government was elected in May 2022, Ms Wong and other senior ministers have made visits across the region to shore up ties. Labor, which has promised more ambitious action on climate change than the previous Liberal-National Coalition government, has been able to persuade low-lying Pacific nations that it shares their concerns. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare visited Mr Albanese in Canberra in October 2022, and insisted that Australia remained its security partner of choice, noting that the two countries shared democratic values.

Australia has also moved to allay anxieties in the region about its plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines as part of its Aukus security deal with the United Kingdom and the US. The Pacific was the site of nuclear testing by the US, the UK and France, which has led to lingering concerns about the environmental risks of nuclear power. Fiji has publicly signalled it accepted Canberra’s assurances, though critics in the region have warned that the Aukus deal risks triggering an arms race.

The US, too, has expanded its Pacific outreach – moves that have been warmly welcomed. In September 2022, Mr Biden welcomed 14 Pacific leaders to the White House for the first-ever such summit. Significantly, the Pacific nations signed up to a wide-ranging partnership – the sort of arrangement that Beijing tried but failed to secure. In February, Washington reopened its embassy in the Solomon Islands, which had been closed in 1993. And, on May 9, the US opened an embassy in Tonga. Plans are also under way to open embassies in Kiribati and Vanuatu.

Clearly, both Canberra and Washington have realised that they cannot compete with Chinese diplomacy unless they match Beijing’s willingness to set up postings and conduct high-level visits to remote island nations.

These US efforts were bolstered by the election in Fiji in 2022. New Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka has moved to abandon some of his predecessor’s shifts towards China, including a policing deal with Beijing.

ST ILLUSTRATION: MIEL

Mr Biden’s visit to PNG would have helped to cap off these efforts to limit Chinese influence in the region. PNG, which has a land border with Indonesia, has a population of 9.8 million as well as plentiful natural resources and strategically valuable islands that stretch into the South Pacific. It is a poor nation – about 40 per cent of residents live below the poverty line – but it is strategically located, with a population that far exceeds those in the island states.

Notably, Chinese President Xi Jinping spent two days in PNG in 2018, ahead of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) leaders’ meeting in the capital Port Moresby. Months earlier, PNG signed on to China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In contrast, former US president Donald Trump skipped the Apec meeting. Instead, the US was represented by then Vice-President Mike Pence, who stayed in Australia and flew into Port Moresby for the day.

Pacific leaders rarely have the opportunity to receive counterparts from global players. This is why such visits can pay diplomatic dividends, and why promising to attend but then cancelling is viewed as a damaging reflection of a leader’s reliability and commitment.

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Missed opportunities

Professor Anne-Marie Brady, an expert on China-Pacific politics from the University of Canterbury, told SBS News last week: “Even though it is just one visit, it is part of the pattern that will cause a little bit of annoyance with Pacific leaders.”

She added: “It shows they (the US) are not putting the degree of importance on the region as China does.”

In Australia, commentators condemned Mr Biden for failing to bolster ties in the Pacific, as well as for the missed opportunity to elevate the status of the Quad.

“Biden’s disappointing decision... robs Australia of a historic opportunity to send a clear message to China about the commitment of the key Indo-Pacific democracies to stand up to its military adventurism and economic coercion,” wrote commentator Cameron Stewart in The Australian newspaper. “Nothing would have underscored that joint commitment more than the sight of Biden standing alongside Anthony Albanese, India’s Narendra Modi and Japan’s Fumio Kishida in front of the Sydney Opera House.”

In PNG, commentators were equally critical. “We even declared a national public holiday for Biden’s historic visit, only to be thrown under the bus by the US,” PNG blogger and activist Martyn Namorong wrote on Twitter. “The US keeps shooting itself in the foot as it stumbles to maintain its grip in the region.”

Mr Biden phoned Mr Marape on May 18 to explain why he would be unable to travel to PNG. He also emphasised “continued US commitment to the renewed partnership with the Pacific Islands”. Mr Marape told the media that Mr Biden had also apologised to him, and that he had invited the US President to schedule another visit.

But the opportunity to openly deepen Washington’s ties in the Pacific has been lost, and the diplomatic damage has been done.

PNG’s government did not cancel the public holiday on Monday – perhaps it sensed that there is unlikely to be an opportunity to celebrate a presidential visit any time soon.

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