What to watch as US-Pacific island nations summit begins – The Diplomat
As huge swaths of the Pacific islands suffer a crippling crisis Drought, the region has received a veritable deluge of attention from the US government in recent weeks. This attention is part of the preparation for the first United States-Pacific Island Countries Summit will take place on September 28 and 29 to the White House. The summit will be both a symbolic occasion indicating both the extent of the United States’ history with the Pacific Islands and its recent re-engagement. It will also be a time of hard work and unveiling a map ahead for the US engagement which has been growing at “lightning speed” since March of this year. That month, the scale of China’s influence campaign in the Pacific became alarming when the Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands signed a far-reaching security agreement with China, an agreement that everything changes.
United States Government civil servants promised major companies will be announced at the summit. Prior to that, the United States had many opportunities to meet with Pacific leaders and develop plans. On September 13-14, Under Secretary of State Wendy Sherman led the U.S. representation at the Pacific Islands Leaders Conference, held in Honolulu. This regional gathering has met 12 times since its inception in 1980. This year, the United States assured the region that it had Washington’s attention going forward and also underscored the extent of US involvement in the region in an effort to blunt the narrative that the United States has been largely absent. The United States has long been engaged in the Pacific in many ways, but they have been unevenly distributed, and American efforts have not kept pace with those of China. Hence the huge surge of US efforts in 2022.
After the leaders’ meeting in Honolulu, the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) provided the United States with additional opportunities to develop its Pacific agenda ahead of the White House summit. One of the primary means by which he has done this has been to create the alliance of nations with which he will work on these pledged commitments. When announced in June, the Blue Pacific Partners was a group of five democracies: the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. At a meeting on the sidelines of the UNGA, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced that two other partners, Germany and Canada, had signaled their “intends to join the Blue Pacific Partners.”
Germany has a long history in the Pacific dating back to the 19th century with its huge plantation economy that spanned Micronesia, New Guinea and Samoa. Germany’s imperial possessions were stripped of them in 1914 when World War I broke out and its Pacific Empire was divided. Japan took control of the huge expanse of Micronesian islands, which set the stage for the Pacific War 28 years later. Canada, despite its vast Pacific coastline, does not have a significant history with the Pacific Islands. Unlike all the other partners, it is freed from the heavy colonial baggage that other nations have to deal with. However, the Canadian government’s involvement in the Pacific at this time comes as Canadian companies lead deep divider deep sea mining efforts. Navigating this path while being a positive presence in the region will have its challenges.
Despite the tone of friendship and shared common cause that was expressed in the lead-up to the summit, many controversies simmer below the surface. The first is that the United States did not initially invite all members of the Pacific Islands Forum to the summit, leaving out the Cook Islands and French territories. Protests by forum members, who place great importance on regional unity, caused a reversal, but oblivion fueled skepticism on the ability of the United States to meet Pacific nations on its terms. Other detractors have claimed that the Partners in the Blue Pacific concept “trampling on established regional processesand wondered if the Pacific Islands were “partners or pawnsin American strategy.
More important to the success of the summit is the refusal of the Republic of the Marshall Islands regarding the terms of its Covenant of Free Association with the United States. On September 24, the Marshall Islands announced that they do not send its compact negotiation team in Washington because the United States had not yet guaranteed that the next agreement would contain measures to deal with the lingering effects of the US nuclear test program. Marshall Islands President David Kabua made a powerful statement on the matter, noting that the US tests took place while the Marshall Islands was a United Nations Trust Territory, as well as the urgency of climate action. , in his address at the UNGA on September 20.
The United States has not been the only Blue Pacific partner having to respond to the people of the Pacific Islands in recent days. Japan was challenged by President David Panuelo of the Federated States of Micronesia in his address to the UNGA for dumping contaminated water from the Fukushima reactor into the Pacific Ocean. Meanwhile, Vanuatu Prime Minister Bob Loughman has boosted his country’s innovative climate action, following his plea for an advisory opinion on climate change from the International Court of Justice, issuing a challenge to the world. Loughman asked a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, the first nation to launch this challenge to the world. All partners will find this challenge challenging, especially the United States, although it has recently been adopted. climate legislation move it in the right direction.
Australia’s new government has also passed monumental climate legislation in recent weeks that will transformer and slowly wean Australia from its dependence on fossil fuels and reduce its climate impacts on the Pacific islands. But this week, Australia also had to respond in new ways to island communities within its own borders. On September 26, a group of Torres Strait Islanders won a historic decision based on the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights that “by failing to act on climate change, the Australian government has violated our rights as Torres Strait Islanders”. Accordingly, it is incumbent upon the current Australian Government to compensate the Torres Strait Islanders for the acts of its predecessors.
While Australia will be an observer at this week’s US-Pacific Islands summit, the UN decision on the Torres Strait will cloud the talks as it is another clear indication of a changing landscape. in the long and arduous struggle the Pacific has been waging for decades of climate action. China will also follow the talks. Few could refute the claim that China’s deep forays into the Pacific were the trigger for the summit in the first place. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare who gave a fiery defense at the UN of his government’s game-changing attitude towards China in April this year will be closely watched. It will be the same for the president. Taneti Mamau from Kiribati which pulled its nation out of the Pacific Islands Forum in June and is also clearly moving its nation much deeper into China’s fold. Behind the hopes and pageantry of the summit, there will be many challenges to overcome.
