Tag Archive for: Micronesia

What to expect from Biden’s summit with Pacific island leaders

When the White House announced that President Joe Biden will host the US – Pacific Island Country Summit on 28–29 September, it noted that it’s the ‘first ever’ such meeting. This both focused attention on the importance the US attaches to repositioning its place in the Pacific island region and gave a Johnny-come-lately look for a country that has been a power in the region for more than 150 years.

Along with Australia’s ‘Pacific step-up’, New Zealand’s ‘Pacific reset’ and the UK’s ‘Pacific uplift’, the summit is intended to show that Washington has recognised the need to drastically renovate relations with the Pacific islands to respond to the more muscular influence of China in the region under President Xi Jinping.

The road to the White House began with the 2019 ‘Pacific pledge’, which significantly elevated US policy on, and financing for, the region, but these efforts were embedded in the broader strategic context of an Indo-Pacific strategy with China as its focus.

The novelty of Biden’s summit, however, contrasts with the way other states have demonstrated their interest in the region at the highest level.

Australia and New Zealand, of course, have had annual summits with the regional leadership through the Pacific Islands Forum since 1971.

Other states have also had meetings to cement closer relations with the Pacific islands. Japan has held triennial iterations of its Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting since 1997. There have been five France–Oceania summits since 2002. The China – Pacific Island Countries Economic Development and Cooperation Forum has met three times since it was launched in 2006.

Adding to the apparent tardiness of the Biden summit, the US has had a recurrent opportunity for more than 40 years to meet with the regional heads of government.

The Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders has offered 12 occasions for a US-based summit since it was founded by Fiji’s Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara and Hawaii Governor George Ariyosh in 1980. The secretariat for the conference is the Pacific Islands Development Program located in the East–West Center at the University of Hawaii.

The most recent meeting of the conference was held in Honolulu earlier this month. In addition to its role of giving direction to the Pacific Islands Development Program, it served to rehearse the key issues to bring to the White House summit. The islands’ agenda was further workshopped by leaders’ conference participants when they met on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly last week.

The most important of these meetings was the one convened by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken of the Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative launched a few months ago by the US, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the UK. Like legislative underpinnings for the US policy change (the BLUE Pacific Act), the name for this informal association seeks to identify with the Pacific Islands Forum’s 2050 strategy for the Blue Pacific continent.

The meeting included all the Pacific Islands Forum members then in New York as well as Canada, Germany, India and South Korea. Discussions centred on ways to align the US-led initiative with the forum’s strategy, addressing specific projects in areas such humanitarian risk management and support for accessing climate-change financing. (Canada subsequently announced that it would join the Partners in the Blue Pacific and Germany is expected to follow.)

Perhaps encouraged by the positive developments in Australia and the US regarding the region’s climate-change-mitigation demands, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu used their time on the global stage to push a proposal to address adaptation needs.

Building on the Pacific Islands Forum’s 2021 declaration on the need to protect maritime boundaries in the face of rising sea levels, Tuvalu’s Prime Minister Kausea Natano and the Marshall Islands’ President David Kabua unveiled a ‘rising nations initiative’.

The island states will expect the White House summit to attract diplomatic and financial support for a proposed global partnership that aims to preserve the sovereignty, heritage and rights of Pacific islanders through practical measures to adapt to climate change.

Broader geopolitical and security concerns, including those of the Pacific pledge, were also canvassed during the UN week. The Quad countries of Australia, India, Japan and the US held a foreign ministers’ meeting which reaffirmed a commitment to the ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ concept as well as cooperation on food and energy security and climate change.

At the same time, but half a world away, Exercise Cartwheel was taking place in Fiji’s Nausori Highlands. This tactical field training exercise was unrelated to, but somewhat reflective of, the Quad’s rationale and membership of the Partners in the Blue Pacific. Led by Fiji and the US, the exercise also included defence personnel from Australia, New Zealand and the UK.

Exercise Cartwheel stands as a practical demonstration of the hopes the Biden summit holds for closer security ties with the region as against the constraints for achieving that directly. Although neither was included, the only other Pacific defence forces that might have participated in the exercise were those of Papua New Guinea and Tonga.

This does much to explain why the White House agenda will be focused on meeting the region’s security objectives as expressed in the Pacific Islands Forum’s Boe Declaration and 2050 Blue Pacific strategy.

The Biden administration will have two factors going in its favour for aligning US policy with the Blue Pacific strategy. Rejoining the Paris agreement on climate change brought the Biden administration credibility by removing a significant Donald Trump–era irritation.

Second, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has highlighted the weakness of the UN’s collective security guarantees against aggression. Beijing’s unwillingness to condemn the invasion has reinforced to some extent some emergent regional apprehensions over China.

Given all the high-level preparations and agenda pretesting for the White House summit, the Biden administration will be hoping that the meeting smoothly delivers a regional seal of approval for Washington’s new policy directions in the Pacific islands.

Nevertheless, there are issues that could derail the expected lovefest. The Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative is investing heavily in a regional architecture that remains fractured. While the US doesn’t have a direct role in the Pacific Islands Forum, it does have a dominant place in Micronesian subregional affairs.

The Marshall Islands threw a late pre-summit spanner into the ongoing negotiations with America’s three Micronesian allies—the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshalls and Palau—to renew their compacts of free association with the US. Strains within the forum have revolved around the Micronesian subregion for nearly two years. Washington needs the three states to lend a positive voice to its regional initiative.

Might Blinken’s visit halt the Pacific Islands Forum split?

Unless some last-minute dramatic event occurs, the unravelling of the Pacific Islands Forum will begin its final stage sometime in the next week when the first of the five Micronesian members is expected to complete a year-long transition out of the PIF.

This drastic action was provoked by what the five deemed an unforgivable betrayal by the other PIF members. The Micronesians had relied on a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ to deliver their candidate, Ambassador Gerald Zackios of Marshall Islands, the secretary-general’s post. They believe this was dishonoured by the majority of the PIF in favour of the Cook Islands’ former prime minister Henry Puna.

Consequently, in February 2021, the Micronesian presidents announced that their nations would cease their membership in the PIF. By July, all had deposited formal letters of denunciation to withdraw from the 2000 Agreement Establishing the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.

The Federated States of Micronesia deposited its instrument on 17 February; the Republic of the Marshall Islands on 9 March; Palau on 16 March; Nauru on 7 April; and finally Kiribati on 23 July. The consequence is that each Micronesian state will complete its year of transiting out of the PIF during 2022.

The prospects for any eleventh-hour intervention to circumvent the cascading departures look very bleak as events have conspired repeatedly to frustrate year-long efforts to end the impasse between the Micronesian states and the rest of the PIF.

Covid-19, which may have been the original catalyst for the problem, continues to be an issue. In 2020, the pandemic prevented the normal face-to-face PIF leaders’ retreat where last minute details of the secretary-general’s job could have been worked out. A face-to-face meeting of leaders planned for January 2022 also failed due to the Omicron variant, and the virtual alternative scheduled for later this month is in doubt.

While not specifically a PIF meeting, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s brief stop in Fiji this weekend could provide an opportunity for some belated interest by the US in supporting the unity of the PIF to change the Micronesian leaders’ trajectory. Blinken and the current PIF chair, Fiji’s PM Frank Bainimarama, are scheduled to co-host a virtual meeting with Pacific island leaders.

At the time of writing, however, Bainimarama is recovering from heart by-pass surgery in Melbourne and it’s not clear that he will be able to serve as co-host even if PIF unity is put on the meeting’s agenda. He is not due to return to Suva until the end of February.

Conversations involving high-level US State Department officials and Marshall Islands leaders have reportedly emphasised US support for maintaining a unified forum. Similar conversations are likely to have occurred with leaders of the other two ‘freely associated states’—Palau and Micronesia, former trust countries that have retained a special relationship with the US.

Moreover, even at this late stage, there are reports that some leaders in the Marshall Islands who were involved in the country’s early forum membership in the late 1980s are reconsidering the withdrawal plan. But such reconsideration is fraught with local political machinations and family ties.

However, the intertwining of the importance of Palau and Micronesia to US security with the broader importance of PIF unity to stability in the Indo-Pacific region is severely impacted by the congressional politics of renewing the compact of free association now underway.

Critics bemoan the tunnel vision of bean counters in Washington that is ‘squandering’ the opportunity the compact negotiations offer for improving American relations both with the associated states and with the region.

Thus, as important as the timing of Blinken’s meeting in Fiji could be as a final throw of the dice to preserve PIF unity, it seems unlikely that even a single die will be rolled. Equally, even if a Micronesian state such as the Marshalls decided to withdraw its denunciation, this virtual bilateral would not be the occasion to arrest the Micronesian retreat from the PIF.

Yet a somewhat bizarre legal twist may still be in play.

As noted in The Strategist last year, the Micronesian states’ formal departure from the PIF has been complicated by the technicalities of the dual treaties involved in their PIF membership.

Until August 2021, their membership was through the 2000 PIF Secretariat agreement. However, on 18 August 2021, the successor 2005 Agreement Establishing the Pacific Islands Forum entered into force. Article XIII of the 2005 treaty specified that immediately on its entry into force it would ‘terminate and replace’ the 2000 agreement.

If the Micronesian states had wanted to end their membership of the PIF as quickly as possible, they could have withdrawn their ratification of the 2005 treaty before it came into force. That would have ended their membership when the 2000 treaty lapsed with the activation of the 2005 treaty.

Withdrawing a ratification is not a simple unilateral act as it can have consequences for the remaining parties that wish a treaty to continue. Typically, some concurrence from the continuing states is expected. That might not have been an issue for the Micronesians because the other PIF states have no real desire to force them to remain against their will or to go through a second act of denunciation.

A problem with this scenario was that the Micronesian states couldn’t be certain that the 2005 treaty would come into effect during the year of their transiting out of the 2000 treaty. Hence the need for denunciations of the 2000 treaty. Fiji was the last state needed to complete the treaty and it had been dragging the chain for 16 years.

Nonetheless, it would have been prudent for the Micronesians to withdraw their ratification of the 2005 treaty while there was still an opening to do that. Apart from one Palauan news report, however, there is little to indicate that this possibility was even considered, and the fact that the Micronesians don’t believe they have already exited the PIF is solid evidence that this step wasn’t taken.

Thus, as things stand now, the Micronesians’ denunciations of a treaty that lapsed last August will be applied politically to allow them to exit a different treaty that hasn’t yet been denounced.

Nevertheless, the dual treaties twist could provide a legal way out if there’s a political will to exploit it. Alas, the corner into which everyone was painted appears to have no exit path and so the dominoes are likely to begin falling on schedule from next week.

Micronesia’s exit from the Pacific Islands Forum

The slow-motion crash of Micronesia’s break with the Pacific Islands Forum has reached the one-year mark.

Back on 8 February 2021, the Micronesia five—the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru and Palau—announced they would withdraw from the Pacific Islands Forum. Having lost the vote to elect a new PIF secretary-general, Micronesia expressed ‘great disappointment’ and declared there was ‘no value’ staying in the forum.

Each of the five then started the one-year process of leaving the PIF, and those individual exit points will arrive in coming months.

The PIF is set to lose nearly a third of its members, shrinking back towards the identity it carried from 1971 to 2000—the South Pacific Forum—grouping Polynesia, Melanesia, Australia and New Zealand.

More than a tiff inside the PIF, great damage is being done to ideas of region and regionalism and the Blue Pacific; to the interests of the Pacific’s subregions; and to the role of key powers Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

The conditions for the smash were announced in October 2020, when Micronesia’s leaders issued a communiqué threatening to withdraw from the forum if the secretary-general job didn’t go to their candidate, Gerald Zackios, Marshall Islands’ ambassador to the United States and former Marshalls foreign minister.

Five months later, at the forum summit on 3 February 2021, PIF leaders instead voted 9 to 8 to appoint Henry Puna, former prime minister of the Cook Islands, as secretary-general of the forum secretariat.

After that one-vote loss, Micronesia announced it saw no worth in belonging to a PIF ‘that does not respect established agreements, including the gentlemen’s agreement on sub-regional rotation’.

A Micronesian had only once been secretary-general. It was their turn, they proclaimed loudly, and the promise was the job would rotate to Micronesia. The trouble with gentlemen’s agreements in politics and diplomacy is that there aren’t many gentle people in these trades (men or women) and they’re cagey about agreeing too precisely on what’s actually agreed.

Five nations had nominated candidates and the contest got complicated. A virtual summit doesn’t offer the chance for face-to-face politics, be it a quiet chat over coffee or tough talk during dinner. The vote ‘put the Pacific way and leaders’ wisdom to the test’.

Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps Jr, said Micronesia had no choice but to abandon the PIF after being ‘thoroughly and publicly disregarded’. Whipps pointed to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji as three key votes that went against Micronesia in that 9-to-8 count:

Australia, which had promised not to ‘influence the process’ and instead ‘to simply get behind the consensus candidate,’ could have declined to break this tie. It could have abstained in search of actual ‘consensus.’ New Zealand could have done the same, as could have Fiji, home of the Forum headquarters.

The lack of leadership by PIF’s strongest members could hardly be more jarring.

In voting against Micronesia, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji certainly disavowed any tacit or gentleperson’s deal. And threats can provoke pushback.

The Canberra version is that Australia voted for Puna because he was the best candidate, because Foreign Minister Marise Payne had a high regard for the former prime minister of Cook Islands, and because of doubts that Micronesia would do as it threatened.

Canberra’s view was that Micronesia was holding a gun to its own head. Not enough thought was given to the danger that the gun was aimed at the PIF.

Fiji had got into the race for the job by nominating its former foreign minister Inoke Kubuabola. Fiji had never before sought the secretary-general position; having the secretariat based in Suva is a permanent form of influence. Fiji claims creation rights for the forum and the consensus creed of the ‘Pacific way’, one reason why Fiji’s Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was forum chair during its 50th anniversary year.

Bainimarama, though, puts less value on the PIF than previous Fijian leaders. He still carries the scars of Fiji’s expulsion from the PIF (2009–2014) during his supremo years.

New Zealand’s vote was that of a nation that more than ever views the Pacific ‘through the prism of Polynesia’. While Australia may have misjudged its call on the PIF job, New Zealand seems to have voted the Polynesian line as a matter of solidarity and values.

Suva, Canberra and Wellington had lost sight of the integrity of the PIF as a core interest.

Visiting Palau in December to open Australia’s new embassy (part of a pre-crash pledge to put Oz embassies into every PIF member), Payne put that concern clearly: ‘Of course, the matter of the unity of the Pacific Island Forum is one in which Australia has a strong interest. We firmly believe that we are stronger together as a region.’

When the United Nations secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, met the Pacific leaders in September to commemorate the PIF’s 50 years, he made a similar pitch about a strong, united Pacific voice, especially on climate change.

The coming crash means everyone loses. Even China suffers, because Micronesia outside the PIF will turn more than ever to the traditional relationship with the US.

The time for a compromise ticks away.

The PIF summit last August pointed to the need for a ‘Political Dialogue Mechanism which seeks to secure the solidarity and unity of the Forum family’. Micronesia is offered a ‘balanced reform package that respects the equality of all members’.

The forum keeps saying, ‘We hear you. We’re sorry. We’ll change. The secretary-general usually gets two three-year terms. We promise Puna will get only three years. You can have it next. It won’t be a gentlemen’s agreement—we’ll put it in writing. Please don’t go.’

The Micronesia five still stand together, heading for the exit. The most hesitant about leaving seems to be Marshall Islands, a reflection of domestic politics and the balance between pro- and anti-Zackios forces as much as affection for the forum.

The PIF’s August summit called for a face-to-face leaders meeting in January 2022, to try to clinch a reform package that would give Micronesia enough face and reason to stay. Obviously, Covid nixed those plans.

The chance of a virtual summit being called in coming weeks depends on Micronesia being prepared to step back and accept a deal. Not much sign of that. Yet. The crash keeps unfolding.

The rising strategic stocks of Micronesia

CHUUK, Federated States of MicronesiaStrategists have long focused on twin arcs drawn from Kyushu through Okinawa to Taiwan and then back through the Philippines to Indonesia. Much of the maritime space inside those ‘shallow arcs’, also known as the First Island Chain, is contested, not least by China.

But in a piece published in the AFR today I’ve suggested we consider another arc: from Tokyo to the US-held Northern Marianas and Guam, and on to Yap, Palau and Indonesia. Behind this ‘deep arc’ lie the Caroline and Marshall islands, forming independent republics.

This ‘Second Island Chain’ surrounding China is the Micronesian region. It’s of great strategic importance to the US, which is in the midst of a military build-up on Guam. And it has been used in the past as an invasion route to PNG and Australia. It’s an important strategic axis where the interests of China, Japan, Taiwan and the US, as well as several Southeast Asian countries, intersect. Read more