US worry about China’s Pacific island strategy

• China has made advancements in the Pacific islands.
• It is made as a strategic objective.
• This objective is not able to elsewhere in the globe.

According to a recent study by a think tank funded by the US Congress, China has made advancements in the Pacific islands as a strategic objective that it has not been able to make elsewhere in the globe.

According to a paper released on Tuesday by the United States Institute for Peace, whose co-authors include former top military officials, the development of China’s geostrategic aims among Pacific nations should be a matter for concern – but not alarm – for Washington.

The report advises the US to increase support for island states in the north Pacific where it had the strongest historical ties in order to counter China’s expanding influence in the area.

The paper states that although Chinese officials have not officially acknowledged that the Pacific Islands region is a focus of greater strategic interest, Beijing would profit from closer ties to the area.

The Pacific Islands “give China a low-investment, high-reward opportunity to score symbolic, strategic, and tactical successes in support of its global agenda, maybe to a larger extent than any other geographic area.”

The claim comes as Washington strives to vie with Beijing for influence ahead of a meeting between US President Joe Biden and a dozen Pacific island leaders next week.

Freely Associated States (FAS), which include the Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, and Palau, signed agreements in the late 1980s giving the US control over their militaries and the right to establish bases there.

The US is now renegotiating those compacts, which expire in 2023 and 2024, but the article stated that if talks with Washington go down, the worried states may turn to China for finance.

The report’s authors, Philip Davidson, a former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command, and David Stilwell, a former US assistant secretary of state, state that “the vast FAS territorial seas, which span much of the northern Pacific, are an important strategic buffer between US defense assets in Guam and Hawaii and East Asian littoral waters.”

According to the report, if Beijing were to be successful in encircling one of the FAS nations, “it would put US military capabilities in jeopardy in a strategically vital geographic command area and open the door to a wider reordering of regional architecture with implications well beyond the Pacific region.”

Washington “should examine seriously to the degree that it coincides with defense needs,” the report stated, referring to the Federated States of Micronesia’s recent agreement to build new US military facilities and Palau’s request for the US to construct airstrips, ports, and bases.

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