Eyes are on the Solomon Islands, with Honiara denying access to a US Coast Guard vessel and agreeing to a US$66 million deal with Huawei Technologies Co. In 2019, there was even more of a stir among those who pay attention to such things, when the Solomon Islands cut diplomatic relations with Taiwan after 36 years, establishing official relations with China. Now, it is Australia’s turn to lose the Solomon Islands; Canberra just does not know it yet.
I am not suggesting that Australia has lost a possession, of course. Honiara makes sovereign decisions and Australia is not entitled to a leading role in its affairs by right. I mean that like the communist takeover of China in 1949 — when, according to its critics, the administration of then-US president Harry Truman “lost China” — there has been a fundamental shift in the Solomon Islands’ place in the world.
Correspondingly, Australia’s influence in Honiara has fallen off a cliff. This is not great for Australia obviously, but it is an even bigger problem for Solomon Islanders.
Late last year, Transform Aqorau, a respected source of knowledge on Pacific Island affairs from the Solomon Islands, cautioned that his country “has been drifting to self-destruction.”
In April he further warned: Unless a more pluralistic society that welcomes people’s views is promoted, and there are more inclusive political and economic institutions, the government will be forced to depend on regional troops to support it.
Anyone familiar with the nation’s 1998-2003 crisis and subsequent Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) intervention knows that such warnings must be taken seriously.
With the nation still volatile, the government of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare needs to return to power sharing. If it refuses, regional countries and Australia in particular must urgently apply what levers they have to try to make it do so. If this fails and a crisis develops, they should be ready to respond to minimize bloodshed.
With the 2003 armed intervention just the most dramatic example, this script of fragile institutions, engagement, regional buy-in — and diplomatic carrots and sticks — became standard operating procedure for Australian officials over the past decades.
However, something is different this time around: a powerful and assertive China.
Because of China, Sogavare can continue to push ahead with alienating groups and regions outside of his coalition. And if it blows up in a crisis, he will not be turning to Australia, which would oblige him to make democratic concessions. He would likely turn to China’s well-funded and trained paramilitary police or military personnel. The consequences for human rights and freedom in the Solomon Islands would be disastrous. The only condition Beijing would impose is one that is easy for Sogavare to give: more fully lining up behind its preferences. In short, Australia has lost the Solomon Islands.
This situation did not exactly sneak up on Australia. The Australian foreign policy establishment has been chattering about China in the south Pacific ever since it lost interest in the former Soviet Union, although it has been by and large focused on the wrong things.
The discourse surrounding the Solomon Islands is a perfect case in point. One side of the debate casts concern about China’s growing influence as racist hype in the service of the US military–industrial complex. On the other side, there is a fixation on whether Honiara will allow China to establish a naval base.
Both sides are missing the point. Anyone concerned about racist foreign policies, military–industrial complexes and threat-hyping who is not concerned about Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) China clearly has not been paying attention. Fear about a naval base is a red herring. China might want such a base when it is stronger, or it might not, but it is already too powerful for Australia’s jumping up and down to change its plans.
The real issue is the loss of the liberal order in Australia’s near abroad. Yes, that liberal order is imperfect and flawed, but to do nothing to protect it from an anti-liberal order led by Beijing for that reason is — as George Orwell memorably put it — like arguing that half a loaf of bread is the same as no bread at all.
China exporting its “authoritarian model” is only one side of the equation. Rather, there are illiberal politicians everywhere. Empowered by a risen China, the dark-suited men in Beijing reach out to those forces, those forces reach back, and liberalism recedes.
Australia bears much of the blame. It worked to delegitimize liberal and open Taiwan as a diplomatic partner for Pacific islands countries. Yes, Taiwan provided cash in return for official ties, but this says less about Taiwan and more about the governments that make such decisions in return for money — and the short-sighted, cynical way countries such as Australia have shut Taiwan off from the normal channels of diplomatic recognition.
While Taiwan was not an angel, it had limited ambitions and power in the south Pacific. And, it is a liberal democracy. None of this can be said about China.
For Australia to push autocratic China as a partner in its “good governance” agenda and sideline Taiwan was an epic strategic and moral error.
What to do now? Given that Canberra let the situation deteriorate to this point, a difficult grind seems inevitable. Concerns about corruption, being overbearing or engaging with China as a partner must take a back seat. Australia should use its considerable resources and influence, in concert with the US, to make sure the more liberal, pro-Western — and if necessary — anti-China players in Pacific politics have the support they need to win. There should be no news conferences, policy papers and public announcements on this shift, but behind the scenes, Australia and its partners have to start playing to make liberalism win.
Joel Atkinson is an Australian and has researched China’s relations with the Pacific islands for 17 years. He is a professor in the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies’ School of Chinese Studies at the Graduate School of International and Area Studies in Seoul.
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