The United States released its first strategy for ties with Pacific island nations on Thursday, the second day of a summit with leaders from the region, pledging to help them fight climate change and rebuff what it called China's "economic coercion."
As President Joe Biden prepared to meet more than a dozen leaders and representatives in Washington, the strategy paper said his administration was making engaging more deeply with their countries a foreign policy priority.
"U.S. prosperity and security depend on the Pacific region remaining free and open," it said, noting that Pacific island countries faced urgent challenges, most notably from the climate crisis, but also heightened geopolitical tensions.
"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," it said.
China says its ties with Pacific island countries are based on mutual cooperation, that the region is not the backyard of any country, and that Washington's attempts to stir up opposition to China there will fail.
Leaders and representatives from 14 Pacific island states are taking part. Their itinerary includes lunch at Congress, an afternoon meeting with Biden and a White House dinner.
Biden's administration has pledged "big-dollar" assistance to address climate, health and maritime security issues, and to boost communications links with U.S. partners like Japan, Australia and India.
A senior administration official said the United States would invest more than $810 million in expanded programs to aid the islands, on top of over $1.5 billion provided in the past decade.
That figure included a previously announced 10-year $600 million economic assistance agreement request to Congress to build climate resilience and maritime security for the island states, according to an administration fact sheet.
Patricia O'Brien, a Pacific islands expert at Washington's Georgetown University, said: "It sounds a lot, but when it's divided up across so many government areas, nations and territories it doesn't look so substantial," she said.
Washington also plans to begin talks soon with Papua New Guinea on a defense cooperation agreement, the White House fact sheet said.
It had agreed too to provide $2.8 million to step up FBI training with Pacific islands, including in 2022 with the Solomon Islands, which drew scrutiny earlier this year for signing a security deal with China.
That deal included provisions for Chinese police to help maintain social order and fueled concerns among the United States and its allies of Chinese militarization of the region.
READ MORE
- Aotearoa New Zealand Conducts Rare Patrol in South China Sea
- US seeks to expand ties with New Zealand amid China worries
- Nanaia Mahuta sounds alarm on Pacific debt
- Solomon Islands backs down on plans to build Chinese military base in the Pacific
An unsigned draft of a summit declaration seen by Reuters said the leaders resolved to strengthen their partnership and shared a vision for the region where "democracy will be able to flourish."
It also said the United States remained committed to addressing the Marshall Islands' environmental and health concerns, without specifically linking them to massive U.S. nuclear testing there in the 1940s and '50s. It did though say generally that "We, too, acknowledge the nuclear legacy of the Cold War."
Sources told Reuters earlier that the State Department had objected to explicit reference to the Marshall Islands nuclear issue when negotiating the declaration with island countries earlier in the week.
It remains a sticking point in ongoing U.S. talks with the Marshall Islands to renew economic assistance to the country which houses crucial U.S. military facilities, though Washington has committed to trying to reach a deal by year-end.
BATTLE FOR INFLUENCE
The summit marks the first time the United States has hosted so many leaders of a region it has considered it maritime backyard since World War Two, but into which China made steady advances.
Some of the nations have complained about being caught in the middle of the superpowers' battle for influence.
The U.S. strategy document said the region faced challenges to sovereignty, and added that the United States would help ensure Pacific governments and people "have the autonomy and security to advance their own interests."
As part of the plan, the United States would increase its regional diplomatic and defense presence, seek to help counter marine pollution, illegal fishing, drug trafficking, and seaport security, collaborate with partners on submarine cable upgrades, and promote "secure and trusted" telecommunications partnerships.
That would include returning U.S. Peace Corps volunteers to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa, and Vanuatu this year and exploring missions in other countries, it said.
Washington this year vowed to open three new embassies in the region - in Kiribati, Tonga and the Solomon Islands.
Derek Grossman, an Indo-Pacific analyst at the RAND Corporation, said Washington had let ties with the region languish for decades, but that had begun to change in recent years and the summit was a sign of that.
"We are still all working from, generally speaking, the same sheet of music, which is we don't want the Chinese establishing a military foothold in the region, and we don't want them, corrupting the institutions of the region," he said.
Reuters
