U.S. Pacific strategy heralds new engagement in region
The Associated Press
The United States in late September 2022 unveiled a Pacific strategy to bolster U.S. engagement with more than a dozen island nations on issues including climate change and maritime security, while pledging to expand its diplomatic presence in the region.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration released its strategy, as well as plans for U.S. $810 million in aid for Pacific Island Countries (PICs), as President Biden prepared to host leaders attending the U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit at the White House in Washington, D.C. (Pictured: Leaders pose outside the White House during the U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit in September 2022.)
Among the initiatives the White House announced are plans to ask the U.S. Congress to appropriate U.S. $600 million over 10 years to support economic development and promote climate resilience efforts for Pacific fisheries; establish a regional mission of the U.S. Agency for International Development in Suva, Fiji; and open embassies in Kiribati, the Solomon Islands and Tonga.
The White House also announced plans to recognize the Cook Islands and Niue as sovereign states, after “appropriate consultations.” The United Nations recognized the rights of the two self-governing islands in free association with New Zealand to establish diplomatic relations with other countries in the early 1990s.
President Biden is increasing engagement with PICs as part of his effort to shift U.S. foreign policy focus toward the Indo-Pacific and offer a counterweight to the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) attempts to expand its military and economic influence in the region. In April 2022, the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with the PRC that analysts said could pave the way for Beijing to open a military base in the island nation, a scenario denied by both countries.
The new strategy notes “heightened geopolitical competition impacts” for PICs that also directly affect the U.S.
“Increasingly those impacts include pressure and economic coercion by the People’s Republic of China, which risks undermining the peace, prosperity, and security of the region, and by extension, of the United States,” the document states. “These challenges demand renewed U.S. engagement across the full Pacific Islands region.”
Among the strategy’s aims are increasing U.S. diplomatic missions from six to nine across the Pacific and finalizing the renewal of strategic partnership agreements with the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau. The strategy also calls for increasing the regional presence of the U.S. Coast Guard, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the U.S. Defense Department.
Leaders from the Cook Islands, Fiji, French Polynesia, the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, New Caledonia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Tuvalu attended the two-day summit. Nauru and Vanuatu sent representatives, and Australia, New Zealand and the secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum sent observers, according to the White House.
IMAGE CREDIT: THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
