Tag Archive for: Pacific Islands

From pandemic to endemic: living with Covid-19 in the Pacific

When the Mamas and Papas sang ‘The darkest hour is just before dawn’, they referenced an age-old belief that dire events appear bleakest just before they improve. Certainly, the rise in Covid-19 deaths and cases around the globe has made it as dark as it has ever been. So, do the array of vaccines coming on the market constitute the first rays of the post-Covid dawn?

The notion of a sudden end of the pandemic is problematic, unfortunately. According to a December 2020 briefing by World Health Organization, the ‘destiny’ of Covid-19 is to become endemic, not to disappear. This means that the occurrence of the disease will simply reduce to a level that will appear ‘normal’.

The transition from pandemic to endemic, however, will be very complicated, especially for the Pacific island states, on several counts.

The problems start with the nature of Covid-19 as a pandemic. Pandemics are essentially an epidemic that occurs simultaneously in a number of countries and even, as in the case of Covid, worldwide.

The WHO has grappled regularly with the nuances of what qualifies a particular level of disease as an epidemic or pandemic. Combinations of factors—such as intensity, spread, severity and seasonality—go into the definitional mix.

Covid creates a problem for the basic WHO definition of an epidemic as ‘an illness … clearly in excess of normal expectancy’. Since Covid is a novel coronavirus, there’s no baseline for normal expectancy.

Aspects of this issue were found when, for example, Fiji declared an outbreak of dengue fever and leptospirosis diseases in August 2020 while grappling with the pandemic raging in the rest of the world. At that time, the country had recorded only one Covid death, but there were four from dengue and 10 from leptospirosis.

The WHO declaration of Covid-19 as a global pandemic had significant consequences for public health policy in Fiji as elsewhere across the Pacific island region. Prophylactic barriers, including closing borders and imposing social distancing measures, were swiftly enacted on the strength of the WHO declaration.

The national announcement of the two disease outbreaks in August also produced significant public health responses in Fiji. However, despite the greater direct impacts of dengue and leptospirosis, those declarations had far fewer domestic consequences than the declaration of Covid as a pandemic.

The status of Covid is more than an exercise in semantics. It has real public health and social policy consequences. Deciding whether Covid should be treated as a genuine pandemic or in some sense a routine disease was an incredibly politically divisive issue in the United States throughout 2020.

For most of the rest of the world, Covid is a serious pandemic that will not be reduced to a manageable endemic disease until we have adequate vaccines and therapeutics to allow commerce, education and social life to return to normal.

At present, the global focus is on vaccines. The broad public expectation is that, despite the lethality of the seasonal flu, Covid might reasonably be treated as endemic if there are appropriate vaccines to allow it to be treated like the flu.

Cue the Mamas and Papas again. The increasing number of successful Covid vaccines appears to be the daybreak everyone wants. Yet, there seems to an unbearable darkness before the nightmare ends.

In reality, Pacific policymakers will have to confront two related challenges. First, the dawn ending the pandemic will come as a series of daybreaks not a single sunrise. The second will be the answer to when their country can safely end the prophylactic measures that they have used to hold Covid at bay.

The Covid-ravaged states of Europe and the US, for example, will decide that their measures to deal with Covid will be at an end when the policymakers and publics agree that it can safely be treated as an endemic disease like the seasonal flu. This will be a political as well as a public health decision.

Throughout the pandemic, creating safe travel bubbles has been beset by such issues. A decision by one country to downgrade Covid domestically to the status of a manageable endemic disease will require other states to respect that level of risk for their own people.

Before the Pacific island states open their borders fully, they will want to ensure their communities are adequately immunised against a disease they have not yet experienced. A policy misstep at this stage would undo all the sacrifice, economically and socially, made to date.

It’s especially pertinent to recognise in this regard that all but two (Guam and Niue) in the region are archipelagos. Thus, virtually every country is, in effect, a set of nested bubbles. Once the national borders are open, significant differences in risk will have to be managed internally.

However, the islands’ access to vaccines appears beset by continuing technical difficulties in both vaccine production and roll-out across the world. Agreements such as the COVAX Facility for ensuring fair access to vaccines for developing economies are looking less certain to provide the intended equity.

The Economist Intelligence Unit recently predicted that most low-income countries would not ‘have wide access to a vaccine before 2022–23’. Moreover, there’s some granularity to this prediction for the Pacific island countries which will contribute to significant regional variation.

The US’s Pacific territories and former dependencies reportedly are likely to match the rate of vaccine rollouts within the US. Elsewhere, the regional timetable appears variable, with some projections suggesting a final date as late as 2025, notwithstanding Australia’s pledge of $80 million to support the COVAX program in the region.

Given that Australia’s own experience of Covid has been closer to that of our island neighbours than most other parts of the world, it is important that our public health policy experience as well as the vaccines and ancillary supplies be shared equitably with our neighbours.

Hopes for the morning of a post-Covid Pacific achingly enthral, but without careful preparation it could become a false dawn.

Samoa applies lessons from 2019 measles epidemic in response to coronavirus

In 2019, only a few months before Covid-19 hit, Samoa suffered a disastrous measles epidemic. The lessons from that epidemic have shaped Samoa’s hardline response to Covid-19 and offer important insights about maintaining public trust in government vaccination programs.

The tragic consequences of the measles epidemic prepared the Samoan public to accept strict Covid-19 countermeasures, with the result that Samoa has had just a single case and no deaths.

Those measures included the speedy decision to close the country’s international borders on 20 March. Yachts, cruise ships and fishing boats were prohibited. Cargo ships were allowed to enter to ensure the availability of food and other required goods, but only after crews were screened.

Schools were closed and church services, weddings, birthdays, chief title bestowments, village and church meetings, and swimming were banned. Opening hours for shops and restaurants were also restricted. A maximum of five people were allowed to attend funeral services or ride on public buses. Even inter-island travel was restricted. Public-sector workers with school-aged children were allowed to stay home to mind the children.

Travel to Samoa was severely restricted. Those over 60, including Samoans stranded overseas, were granted special leave with pay. People repatriated from New Zealand went into quarantine for 14 days at the expense of the Samoan government. Samoans repatriated from the US will undergo three weeks of quarantine.

Overall, the government acted quickly and comprehensively with hard-hitting policies, which the public appeared to readily accept despite the economic consequences for the country.

The border closure, unemployment and reduced hours of work have had drastic effects on tourism, which is one of Samoa’s most important income earners. According to a July 2020 UN report, two-thirds of households reported a decline in their main income and almost half experienced the loss of at least one job due to pandemic-related restrictions. This has led to an increase in subsistence production. Fish and vegetable stalls are seen almost everywhere in the township of Apia, local chicken farms have been revived, and people are again working the land.

The speed and comprehensiveness of the government’s response to Covid-19 appears to have been significantly influenced by the consequences of its slow response to the measles epidemic in 2019. Then, global health warnings on measles went unheeded by health officials as the epidemic was rampant in Southeast Asia and spreading to the South Pacific.

Two months elapsed between the first reported case of a measles-infected traveller to Samoa and the health ministry’s issuance of a notice confirming measles in mid-October. On the same day, Samoa recorded its first infant death due to measles. A month later, the government declared a state of emergency in the wake of more than 700 cases and six more deaths, mainly of unvaccinated infants under the age of two. By the time the state of emergency was lifted at the end of December 2019, more than 5,600 Samoans had been infected and 81 were dead. The tragedy for Samoa was that much of this could have been avoided. The extent of the casualties stemmed from a national failure to vaccinate against measles.

Until 2002, Samoa had relatively high vaccination rates for measles, but for several reasons immunisations dropped off over the following years. Parents’ mistrust of the health system, their trust in traditional healers and medicine and the influence of anti-vaxxers all contributed. The dwindling number of children vaccinated left the country seriously exposed. When the measles epidemic hit, the vaccination rate was as low as 30%.

The government’s response to the measles epidemic was seriously hampered by the death of two babies in mid-2018 due to the negligent preparation of vaccines by nurses. That led the government to initially withdraw vaccines from use. Afterwards, there was strong public resistance to an aggressive program to roll out a measles vaccination campaign, even after the mistake by the nurses was identified and they were sentenced to jail.

In November 2019, after the measles epidemic hit, the government instituted a compulsory immunisation campaign. Given initial shortages of vaccine and staff, the campaign was rolled out in stages, prioritising children aged six months to 19 years and non-pregnant women aged between 20 and 35. Mobile vaccination teams, supported by a 48-hour shutdown of businesses and government services, went door to door administering vaccine to unvaccinated households, which had been asked to display red flags.

The Samoan Government has learned some sobering lessons about maintaining confidence in public health. Proactive awareness programs to encourage and educate people on the importance of public health initiatives must be continued and evaluated to ensure their effectiveness. People’s confidence in the system must be regained; otherwise, public health programs will be ignored and resources wasted.

To that end, the government has provided additional funding to village-level women’s committees as a way of enhancing primary healthcare and awareness programs at the grassroots level. Since colonial times, local women’s committees have played an important role in promoting hygiene and preventive medicine, including during the 1918 influenza epidemic. They’re now being revived in recognition of the importance of traditional relationships in delivering public health.

Some critical questions are now looming for Samoa. Having been criticised for creating public doubt about the measles vaccine, will the government pursue another national immunisation program for Covid-19, and will the public accept it as a post-measles ‘lesson’?

Just how well the people of Samoa have accepted the lessons and consequences of both the measles epidemic and the Covid-19 pandemic will be tested in April 2021 when the government of Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi goes to the polls.

This post is part of an ASPI research project on the vulnerability of Indo-Pacific island states in the age of Covid-19 being undertaken with the support of the Embassy of Japan in Australia.

How Taiwan can help its Pacific partners get through the pandemic

As the Covid-19 crisis wears on, the challenges facing Taiwan and its partners in assisting Pacific island countries are more complex than in usual times.

In the early stage of the pandemic, the immediate focus was on providing medical assistance, including the means to detect the virus, treat patients and protect civilians from getting infected. Taiwan overcame the shortage of personal protective equipment after beefing up production over a couple of months, and started to ship supplies around the world, including to Pacific islands (the Marshall Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru, Palau, Fiji and Papua New Guinea).

But the biggest challenges for island states are now, and likely continue to be, on the economic front. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, economic threats are the more urgent concern for Pacific islands as strict measures seem to have brought health threats under control. But tackling the economic brunt creates its own challenges as Taiwan and its partners in the Pacific islands all hunker down to keep the virus away from their territories.

Financial aid is one of few paths for economic relief during a pandemic. Many countries have provided cash in the form of unemployment relief and economic stimulus programs. Monetary aid such as policy-based loans, budget support, grants and concessional financial assistance also comprise a big portion of aid to Pacific islands.

Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has requested additional funding (yet to receive legislative approval) for Pacific islands for the next fiscal year, and it intends to discuss ways to implement aid with its allies and partners. According to the Griffith Institute, Taiwan has already provided some A$2.2 million in cash aid to the Marshall Islands.

Providing direct financial assistance isn’t without political challenges in a democratic society. Most Taiwanese are glad to provide medical equipment and food aid to diplomatic allies and partners, but an aversion to the legacy of chequebook diplomacy has made some reluctant to provide cash.

Improving public understanding of and the sense of connection between Taiwan and its allies and partners in Pacific islands could help reduce concerns from the public and even encourage people to voluntarily join aid programs in ways they see fit. Taiwan, with 23 million people, donated roughly US$200 million to assist with Japan’s earthquake and tsunami disaster in 2011, which showed the willingness of its people to help friends in difficulties, and the potential of their big hearts.

It would be easier politically to support Pacific island partners simply by boosting trade. But there’s little economic complementarity between Taiwan and Pacific islands countries outside the tourism sector. Tourism, which comprises as much as 40% of GDP for some Pacific islands, would be where a boost could help in economic recovery, but the pandemic has made that complicated and difficult.

New Zealand and Australia have been working towards a reciprocal ‘travel bubble’, although and the new cluster of Covid-19 cases in South Australia may cause further delays. New Zealand has also been exploring a travel corridor with the Cook Islands, but that too may be postponed. Although the delay has frustrated the Cook Islands’ tourism sector, other Pacific islands are more cautious about opening their borders to save their economies.

Taiwan has so far managed to keep community transmission to a very low level. Its admirable management of the pandemic has invited countries such as South Korea, Thailand and New Zealand to float the idea of wrapping up a travel bubble with Taiwan. Palau is inclined to the enter into a travel bubble with Taiwan before it opens to other countries. But the head of Taiwan’s Central Epidemic Command Center recently told reporters that no progress has been made on building such a travel bubble.

In meeting this pandemic, Taiwan’s sense of community has driven creation of business models to support local enterprises, such as ‘pay now, eat later’. This program allows people to pay in advance for their future consumption, in order to help restaurants and shops which they used to frequent in their neighbourhood to weather the pandemic. This concept could well be adapted to support Pacific islands’ tourism and aviation industries to overcome some of the effects of pandemic-based border restrictions. Tourism-related industries could continue paying for their employees to work on promoting travel packages to overseas tourists.

The Global Cooperation and Training Framework, which started as a bilateral mechanism between the US and Taiwan, now has had four co-hosts with the addition of Japan and Australia for some projects. The GCFT serves as a useful platform for Taiwan in collaboration with co-hosts to share its knowledge and expertise more broadly. The GCTF addresses themes from good governance and improving media literacy to women’s empowerment and responding to infectious disease. Through their common interests, the four co-hosts can use the GCTF to develop and support solutions to the challenges Pacific islands are facing now and will face after the pandemic.

The recent incident in Suva, Fiji, when Chinese officials assaulted a Taiwanese diplomat during celebrations of Taiwan National Day, is a disappointing outcome of China’s recent ‘wolf warrior’ approach. It is disturbing as it imports harassing surveillance to a free and democratic civil society. Also disturbing is that it brings challenges to the judicial system of the host country if the Chinese impose political pressure in an attempt to get away free.

Despite these challenges, Taiwan is committed to pursuing initiatives for building up mutual understanding and a sense of community with the Pacific islands in the face of the grave challenges posed by Covid-19. There are limits to what Taiwan can do. Supporting its partners in the region is a priority. The GCTF can help to find ways for Taiwan to share its innovative health and economic responses to the pandemic, as well as its expertise in education, governance and climate change, more broadly across the region.

This post is part of an ASPI research project on the vulnerability of Indo-Pacific island states in the age of Covid-19 being undertaken with the support of the Embassy of Japan in Australia.

Something fishy about Hao Atoll?

In a recent Strategist article on China’s island-building strategy in the Pacific, Steve Raaymakers recycles a number of misapprehensions about a planned Chinese fisheries project on Hao Atoll in French Polynesia.

The article suggests that China will leverage an as yet unrealised fisheries project into control of an ‘atoll lagoon, which is large and deep enough to accommodate an entire naval fleet’. It is understandable that the defence community looks at worst-case scenarios. But it’s hardly likely that the French government will allow China to build a military base in its territory or to conduct military operations from its Pacific dependency.

Unfortunately, Raaymakers repeats the same errors as previous media articles arguing that the Hao project proposed by China’s Tianrui Group will lead to greater Chinese strategic influence in the region.

In a May 2018 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, David Wroe wrote:

The massive fish farm project on Hao atoll has raised eyebrows in Canberra because it will sit next to the airport the French military previously used to carry out nuclear tests in the Pacific—though the French Polynesian government says the Chinese investor will not control the four-kilometre airstrip …

Concerns in Canberra focused on speculation Tianrui could seek a lease on their airport, giving Beijing a strategic foothold 11,000 kilometres into the Pacific Ocean.

Citing US security officials and Australian think tanks, Wroe’s story followed a similar line to pieces he had written about purported discussions to establish a Chinese military facility in Vanuatu—claims denied by the Vanuatu government.

It’s ironic that commentators are only now expressing concern about the militarisation of Hao Atoll. For decades, Hao was used by the French military as a forward base for the Centre d’Expérimentation du Pacifique (Pacific Testing Centre). Located in the Tuamotu Archipelago, Hao has a 3,420-metre military airstrip, which is one of the longest in the Pacific.

With a population of around 1,700, Hao served as a staging post between France, Papeete and the nuclear testing sites at Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls, where France conducted 193 nuclear tests between 1966 and 1996.

Hao lagoon—one of the largest in French Polynesia—was used to decontaminate aircraft, ships and personnel exposed to radioactivity at the testing centre. A number of studies have investigated potential nuclear contamination on the atoll. More recent examinations have found asbestos and other toxic substances around the former airbase. In 2006, the French Delegate for Nuclear Safety and Radiation Protection for Defence Activities revealed that large amounts of contaminated material were simply dumped in the ocean after the end of testing in 1996, including 532 tonnes of waste off Hao.

Given this polluted legacy, the French Polynesian government has been trying for decades to lure investors to Hao Atoll, to replace jobs and economic activity that collapsed as France wound down its military operations. After the end of nuclear testing, the government under then President Gaston Flosse urged foreign corporations to invest in Hao, touting it as ‘a genuine tax haven in the heart of the Pacific!’ Advertisements in The Economist in 2000 proclaimed that Hao Atoll offered ‘exemption from corporate taxes, exemption from registration and property taxes, exemption from custom duties and no personal income tax’.

Decades later, with little interest from Western corporations, the search for investors extended to Asia. In December 2016, Tahiti Nui Ocean Foods presented a proposal for a fisheries project on Hao. Established in 2014, the company is a subsidiary of the Tianrui Group. Chaired by billionaire Li Liufa, the parent company operates from Ruzhou City in Henan and has investments in cement, foundry, tourism, mining, trade and logistics, finance and other industries.

Early corporate publicity stated that Tahiti Nui Ocean Foods would invest US$1.5 billion (A$2 billion), creating up to 10,000 jobs. However, the scale and cost of the project have been revised downwards several times and the start of construction has been repeatedly delayed. No fish are yet being farmed.

Raaymakers reiterates the claim that it’s a $2 billion project, a claim that is really just company spin. Publicly available documents, published in the official gazette of the French Polynesian government, show the company plans to invest 32 billion French Pacific francs, equivalent to US$300 million. Even that figure is suspect—little of this money has materialised so far.

This project is often presented in the Western media as an example of Chinese ‘debt-trap diplomacy’, but there are no loans involved, and the very concept has been criticised in a recent report from Chatham House. Indeed, the government of French Polynesia is so eager for job creation on Hao that it is providing massive financial incentives to Tahiti Nui Ocean Foods, agreeing to exempt it from any tax for 30 years on the importation of materials and fuel.

Raaymakers talks of ‘the leasing of the highly strategic Hao Atoll’. But on the basis of public documents, neither the Chinese company nor the Chinese state retains control over the airstrip, let alone the whole atoll. At the time the project was being negotiated, French Polynesia’s development minister was quoted by Wroe as saying, ‘This airport is owned today by the French Polynesian government … There is no deal possible about leasing an airport.’

It’s certainly worth looking at Chinese corporate activities in the Pacific, but digging into source documentation, rather than repeating incorrect data and speculation, is critical for an accurate understanding of what is happening in the Pacific. I’ve written a study on the activities of Chinese investors in the French Pacific territories that addresses some of these assumptions to be published later this year as a chapter in The China alternative.

With Paris signing off on the Hao project and eager to reduce the amount of government revenue flowing into French Polynesia, there’s little evidence that it could give Beijing ‘a strategic foothold 11,000 kilometres into the Pacific Ocean’. It is worrying that commentary continues to be published suggesting that China will be able to conduct military operations from French Polynesia.

The notion that France would allow China to use its territory to attack US sea lanes in the eastern Pacific doesn’t pass the pub test. As a journalist, I have been approached by bemused officials in Tahiti, angered by such claims. One asked me, ‘Do Australians really think we would ally with China to attack America?’

Australia must go big and bold to strengthen its role in the South Pacific

If Australia’s relationship with China continues to deteriorate, part of Beijing’s response could be to put more effort into challenging our strategic interests in our immediate region—the South Pacific.

This is happening already in Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji—our closest and most strategically important neighbours.

However, Australia’s approach to countering China’s activities in the region needs an urgent rethink.

Our aid programs, generous though they are, as well as the Pacific step-up initiative, on their own are just not capable of successfully challenging and reducing China’s regional influence. The time has come for Australia to go big and be bold when it comes to our strategic role in our region, and in PNG in particular.

Our $600-million-a-year PNG aid program needs a major restructure. It’s important, and it does good work in PNG, but it is simply not doing anything to minimise China’s role right across PNG, in infrastructure, education, agriculture and communications.

Recently, Australian mining magnate Andrew Forrest visited PNG and signed a memorandum of understanding with the PNG prime minister to undertake feasibility work on the Purari hydro-power proposal. This project, in the Gulf Province close to Australia, has long been talked about.

Origin Energy devoted some resources to the proposal a decade ago, but sadly it ended up going nowhere. The Queensland government at the time was interested, as were a number of mining companies, but it didn’t progress. The PNG government has rekindled interest in the project through its state enterprises holding company, Kumul Consolidated Holdings.

It may well be that Forrest’s interest lies in a cheap, reliable energy source as the foundation for a possible smelter in the neighbouring Western Province, which is even closer to Australia.

But the Australian government should not be relying on Forrest alone to advance the proposal. It ought to be a big-picture project to enhance our role in PNG in a way that really helps our neighbour deliver affordable electricity for its people and its businesses, and open up real opportunities for downstream processing, including processing of iron ore and bauxite from Australia.

If Australia embraces this project, in conjunction with banks, construction companies and the minerals sector, it won’t be open to the Chinese to potentially invest in.

The other advantage of seriously looking at Purari is that it will reduce the case for another hydro-electric project China is pushing relentlessly with the PNG government—the Ramu 2 hydro-power station.

Initial approval for this project was given in 2015 to a China construction consortium, with China Exim Bank financing. Ramu 2 would probably bankrupt the national power entity, PNG Power, given limited energy demand and the estimated construction cost of around US$2 billion.

Purari, if properly financed and developed, could meet PNGs key energy needs for years to come even with a staged development over a period of years.

A second big-picture and high-impact project Australia could consider is redevelopment of PNG’s universities, which have been chronically underfunded for years. There’s some evidence of Chinese interest in the tertiary sector, building on its major school project in Port Moresby and smaller projects in other parts of the country.

In 2010, the Australian and PNG governments initiated a review of PNG’s tertiary education sector by Ross Garnaut and Sir Rabbie Namaliu. Some additional funding has been provided, but the case for a major restructure of the whole sector, with priority being given to mining, agriculture, business, information technology and tourism, is an overwhelming one.

Apart from selected major projects, it’s inevitable that Australia, supported by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, will have to have frank conversations with the PNG government about its capacity to get itself out of, or at least minimise, its indebtedness to China.

Already PNG has total national debt of close to K40 billion (A$15 billion), now over 40% of GDP. A significant proportion, and a growing share, is in the form of loans from China in areas such as infrastructure, communications and agriculture.  And this debt doesn’t include the full impact of the Belt and Road Initiative agenda to which PNG signed up in 2018.

PNG owes China around K2.5 billion (A$1.1 billion) for communications projects—many of them defective—and well as hundreds of millions for road projects already underway.

But much more BRI debt is looming. On the horizon is a US$330 million agricultural industrial park, a commitment to a series of high-priority economic road projects worth at least US$3.5 billion, and a possible involvement in marine park project.

The capacity of the national government and state-owned entities, let alone provincial governments, to service PNG’s existing debts to China is already questionable. But add in what is proposed, and promised, and the debt-managing capacity is more than just questionable.

We might need to be innovative in our discussions with PNG on reducing its reliance on loans from China and on stopping those debts from expanding in a way that is not fiscally responsible. PNG has been reluctant to agree to an IMF-led restructure package that might include devaluation and public sector cuts. But it may have little alternative, other than a bailout from China, which was on the agenda a year ago.

While recommendations here have focused on PNG, they are of equal relevance to Australia’s relationships with other South Pacific nations.

Our immediate priority must be to look at big and bold projects that enhance our influence and assist Pacific nations in key areas at a time when they are sorely tested, economically and strategically.

Four South Pacific futures

Geostrategic competition, climate change and Covid-19 push at the South Pacific, heightening the internal challenges of state security and human security.

The South Pacific has weak states and strong societies. As a journalistic recycler, I’ve been using variations of that line about struggling states, vigorous villages and wonderful wontoks since the 1970s. It cycles through my ranking of the hierarchy of threats, risks and challenges for the South Pacific.

Over the 50 years or so since decolonisation, island societies have stretched and strained while their governments haven’t got much stronger. The problems are as well known as they are pressing. That familiarity plays to the habits of our species when peering into the future: tomorrow will be much like today, only more so.

The continuity comfort is an element of Australia’s Pacific ‘step-up’. We’re going to build on our already substantial role to do a lot more of what we’re doing, only better.

The pandemic shakes what’s familiar and our sense of what will come next. The virus is a disruptive twin for the gyrating geopolitics of a shaking global balance and multilateral malaise.

The South Pacific has shut down and so far shut out Covid. But the geopolitical shakes will arrive as inevitably as the next cyclone season. Perhaps the South Pacific’s future is going to look different because the international context is changing so much, even if the local problems are unchanged.

The spark for such thinking is Peter Layton, a grand strategist who has written the book on grand strategy. He offers four scenarios for the future of the South Pacific, three of them marked by regional disruption and disintegration, in his work on Pacific island futures, Australia’s new regional context.

Sustaining the islands as a coherent region working together is going to demand a lot of effort, Layton argues:

The Pacific Island region as it is today may be an historical anomaly contingent on a particular international system, globalisation, favourable international laws of the sea and digital information technology that makes distance at times immaterial. The alternative futures combined with the impact of global warming may have highlighted that this sweet spot may not last.

Layton’s four scenarios use the Australian Defence Department’s crystal-ball effort from 2016 on the military’s future operating environment out to 2035.

I was struck by how much of Defence’s musing about what the islands face could have been written at any time over the past 50 years. The list goes like this:

  • South Pacific states will struggle with weak governance and weak economies, plus a youth bulge with half the region’s population aged under 23.
  • Fragile governments will draw few benefits from the economic centrality of the Asia–Pacific, but they must contend with ‘major power competition or encroachment’.
  • Papua New Guinea will remain prone to outbreaks of violence; most will be localised ‘but their impacts could be severe in major population centres’.
  • Australia will take a leading role to prevent police and security forces from being overwhelmed and will help with evacuations, humanitarian relief and other noncombat tasks. ‘The most demanding operations will involve large populations and large areas of operations … [and] the potential for conflict with military or paramilitary forces.’

The defence planners imagined four alternative future international systems. Peter Layton uses them to offer four scenarios for the South Pacific in 2040.

The multilateral future assumes stronger island governments and a cooperative environment. Globalisation keeps going and the islands retain strategic autonomy (‘we can secure our future for ourselves’). Unexpectedly, global warming is held at 1.5°C. Urban centres are resilient and outer islands are stable.

The networked future sees the region as semi-autonomous (‘we can secure our future if we can turn a good profit’). States, corporations and non-state actors work together in complex business-oriented networks as globalisation deepens. Global warming is held at +1.9°C. Island urban centres grow but outer islands decline.

In the fragmented future, globalisation declines in an era of hard-nosed, zero-sum nationalism. Regionalism becomes strategically irrelevant (‘my island first and foremost’). Global warming is at +1.9°C and worsening. With poor social cohesion, urban centres are unsafe and outer islands are in sharp decline.

The multipolar future is when globalisation splinters and the South Pacific divides between a China-led bloc and US-led bloc. The region has minimal autonomy (‘we do as we are told’). Global warming is at +1.9°C and worsening. Urban centres are unsafe and outer islands are declining.

The four scenarios ask deep questions of island governance. Layton writes that the South Pacific must build connectivity to achieve resilience in the face of global warming and geostrategic change: ‘Such connectivity is not only the physical kind of airfields, ports, roads and information technology but also the intangible people-to-people links. Broad and deep connectivity brings not just physical robustness but also an enduring social cohesion critical to recovery from disastrous events.’

The irony of the connectivity thought is that in the 2040 Layton describes, the islands may be more alone than they are now, and have to rely more on their own resources.

See the shadow of Layton’s scenarios and the bones of earlier Defence thinking in the way the 2020 defence strategic update offers a new framework focused on Australia’s immediate region. With Papua New Guinea and the Southwest Pacific central to that frame, consider this update vision:

State fragility, exacerbated by governance and economic challenges, has the potential to facilitate threats to the region including the spread of terrorism and activities that undermine stability and sovereignty. Increased state fragility could also potentially lead to the [Australian Defence Force] being called on more often for evacuation, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief missions and potentially more demanding stabilisation operations. It may also increase threats to Australia’s domestic security including through irregular maritime arrivals.

In that fragile future, the ‘irregular’ arrivals mightn’t be sent by people smugglers. Instead, they’d be neighbours fleeing climate disaster and troubled societies.

The South Pacific sees a lot of history and old problems that get newer every day. Australia seeks to shape a strategic environment that is shape-shifting.

The importance of Australia’s Pacific step-up in the post-virus environment

Australia’s Pacific step-up, introduced in 2016 and significantly upgraded in November 2018, is widely seen as the spearhead of our response to China’s growing influence in our region.

At its heart is a record $1.4 billion in development assistance to the Pacific in 2019–20, accompanied by a welcome $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific, an expanded Pacific Labour Mobility Scheme, and the Coral Sea cable system which will deliver high-speed communications infrastructure to Papua New Guinea and Solomon Islands.

When the impact of Covid-19 is fully felt in the Pacific, the step-up strategy will need to be revised, and it should be upgraded. Responding to China’s activities will remain important, but the further steps Australia can take may well secure for us a stronger and more wide-ranging leadership role in the Pacific, and especially the South Pacific.

Given the enormous cost of the health, economic and social measures now being implemented to save our own future, funding an enhanced step-up program isn’t going to be without domestic political challenges.

The immediate measures Australia and New Zealand are taking are vital and won’t have a significant impact on the budgets of either nation. They are sensible and will be supported by the electorate.

The real challenge is going to come when the full impact of the virus on Pacific economies and communities becomes clearer. That may not be for many months, and it will vary from country to country.

The Australian government should use this period to carry out a comprehensive review of the step-up program so that it’s not just about enhancing our regional engagement and countering China’s influence but also about rebuilding economies and communities in the long term.

That may require a significant shift in our development assistance programs so that they focus on restoring the small business and agricultural sectors; industries that have been ravaged by the shutting of international borders, including tourism and hospitality; and areas affected by the closure of schools, colleges and universities.

The government needs to consult widely with those in the Australian community who have a history of engagement with the region, such as business groups, churches, schools and universities, and major investors, such as mining companies, banks and the IT sector.

The needs of Pacific nations are going to vary greatly. Identifying what Australia is best capable of delivering is a challenge in itself.

In making that assessment, we will have to look hard at what China is doing, and planning to do.

We will also need to take account of assessments and actions by international agencies such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank as they examine PNG’s precarious fiscal and economic position.

We can help the island nations and their people most if we put maximum effort into combining economic support with social assistance, especially in education and healthcare.

Now, how can that best be done?

Drawing on my 40-plus years of engagement with PNG, and an association with the wider region, I urge the Australian government to bring together the businesses already operating in our region, the churches that already have direct engagement, and NGOs and community organisations that we know can deliver programs and projects efficiently and compassionately.

The response in PNG, for example, is going to have to be very different to that in Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga. PNG is going to need long-term support to build infrastructure, to improve vital community services such as hospitals and health centres, and to develop small businesses and agriculture.

Clearly Fiji, Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Samoa and Tonga will need support to rebuild their tourism and hospitality sectors and small businesses. The needs of Timor-Leste will be different again.

Australia has enormous capacity in all these areas—and in the prevailing environment much of that is spare capacity. Harnessing that ought to be a high priority.

One clear option that’s open to Australia—and not to China—is to support the education of school and university students in Australia while capacity in individual countries is rebuilt.

Here, I draw on a personal experience. When the then PNG Prime Minister, Rabbie Namaliu, visited Australia in 1989, Prime Minister Bob Hawke asked him how the ‘people to people’ association might be enhanced.

It was agreed that, while PNG rebuilt its rundown high school system, Australia would fund up to 1,000 scholarships each year for high school students to attend public and private schools in Queensland and New South Wales.

The program lasted close to 10 years until it was terminated by both the Australian and PNG governments—a very short-sighted move.

Twenty years on, Australia is slowly introducing a similar, but considerably scaled-down, program. It should be accelerated, and expanded to include Pacific island nations in which education standards need improvement.

Expanding the program won’t just enhance our people-to-people engagement; it will also benefit struggling schools and universities in Australia.

The Pacific step-up is a good start at enhancing our regional engagement and helping to counter China’s growing influence. With the looming difficulties confronting our immediate region, Australia’s assistance needs to be stepped up even more.

Putting Pacific people in Australia’s Pacific policy

Cyclone Harold crashed through the South Pacific. Covid-19 creeps towards the islands.

Pandemic and cyclone should sharpen Australia’s thinking about what it can and must do in the South Pacific.

My single most important suggestion: Australia must put Pacific people at the centre of its South Pacific policy.

The idea seems simple and obvious, a policy prescription worthy of a sarcastic, ‘Duh—brilliant, Sherlock!’

Yet Australia struggles with the people dimension of its Pacific policy.

Canberra has strong thoughts about aid, geopolitics and geoeconomics in the islands—and the China challenge. ‘The Pacific is our home,’ observes Australia’s Defence Department, and this ‘deep and enduring relationship’ aims to ‘build a region that is strategically secure, economically stable and politically sovereign’.

A crowded canvas can obscure rather than highlight the Pacific people who should be in the middle of the picture.

A telling illustration of the people point: there aren’t many islanders in Australia.

Contradicting geography, Australia’s population has more Polynesians than Melanesians. Few Melanesians come to Australia to visit or settle, while Polynesians can enter and settle in Australia, coming in easily via New Zealand.

The Kiwis have done us a great, indirect favour. Still, it’s deeply strange that New Zealand drives the people dimension of our Pacific policy and which Pacific people live in Oz.

The former diplomat James Batley notes that the Pacific islands population in Australia—around 200,000 people—is heavily dominated by Polynesian communities:

Our nearest Melanesian neighbours—Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu—are seriously under-represented. It’s a surprising fact that, according to the census, in 2016 more people in Australia claimed Cook Islands ancestry (over 22,000) than claimed ancestry from PNG (under 19,000), particularly given that PNG’s population is around 500 times the size of the Cook Islands’.

All other dimensions of Australia’s Pacific policy have at their core the chant, ‘Melanesia, Melanesia, Melanesia’. So the absence of Melanesians in our population tells much about the absence of Pacific people from our policy. We live in the South Pacific, but not many islanders live here.

The Melanesian arc is also Australia’s arc, the islands that frame our Pacific policy as well as our geography.

Using the phrase ‘Australia’s arc’ means that the sweep of policy and geography starts in Timor-Leste, then swings through Papua New Guinea (and Bougainville), Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and Fiji. That is where most islanders live. And it’s where we’ll find the countries that are most likely to face problems of political stability and human security.

My hierarchy of threats, risks and challenges in the South Pacific is an Australia view, deeply flavoured by Melanesia.

In building Pacific policy over the past 60 years, there’ve been only two occasions when Canberra had big thoughts about getting islanders into Australia.

In 1966, federal cabinet considered a submission on the future of one of Australia’s territories, Papua New Guinea. An option that was canvassed was statehood for PNG within Australia’s federation. The submission dismissed the idea of making PNG the seventh state as ‘impracticable’. But it noted that cabinet had never ‘made a decision on Australia’s position in relation to the ultimate status of PNG’.

In 1968, the Oz territories minister was still musing on PNG as a ‘seventh state’ as a convenient way of referring to a close association with Australia without implying total integration.

The winds of change that’d blown through Africa and Asia seemed a gentle zephyr when Canberra looked at PNG; the illusion persisted that Australia still had decades in the territory. Reality arrived in a hurry. Decolonisation came with the tropical winds as PNG became independent in 1975.

Our Pacific policy became about diplomacy, defence and aid—not the people who were the responsibility of these newly independent nations.

Australia’s welcome move to a non-discriminatory immigration policy meant we’d do nothing to discriminate in favour of the islands. Special access to Oz for Pacific workers became a taboo topic in Canberra. When the Pacific Islands Forum was being created in the early 1970s, Australia feared that the new regional body would be used to attack our migration policies, and worked hard to impose the taboo.

The second big rethink on people policy evolved over the past decade as Australia inched open the door for Pacific workers. The Pacific people are coming temporarily, but now they’re coming. Score this a major achievement of island leaders, working through the forum, to change Australian thinking and dismantle the taboo.

The Australian pilot scheme for Pacific seasonal workers announced in 2008 (following New Zealand’s lead) was made permanent in 2012 as the Seasonal Worker Programme.

By 2018, Australia added on the Pacific Labour Scheme and opened it to all the islands, a decision that meant—at last—people from PNG have a chance to work in Oz. This was Australia listening to the islands and acting for Pacific people.

The presence of islanders in Australia under the seasonal worker and Pacific labour schemes has become part of the Covid-19 story.

On 3 April, The Strategist published a typically thoughtful piece by Richard Herr about what the pandemic means for island workers caught in Australia and unable to return home. Coincidentally (although Richard is a powerful professor), the following day Australia announced that their visas would be extended for up to 12 months: ‘We want to assure our Pacific neighbours that Australia stands with them during this crisis and we are doing all we can to support Pacific workers in Australia.’

Australia speaks easily of our ‘home’ and our ‘neighbours’. And Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s use of the term ‘Pacific family’ is goddamn genius. Acting on that language means putting Pacific people at the centre of our Pacific policy.

Framing the islands: strategic denial and integration

‘The stability and economic progress of Papua New Guinea, other Pacific island countries and Timor-Leste is of fundamental importance to Australia.’
Australian foreign policy white paper, 2017

Australia’s deepest, oldest instinct in the South Pacific is strategic denial, striving to exclude other major powers from the region.

As Australia can never achieve complete dominance in the South Pacific, the instinct is beset by a faint, constant ache. Throughout the 20th century, that ache was directed variously at France, Germany and Russia. The ache became a fevered nightmare during the war with Japan.

Today, Australia sees its interests and influence in the South Pacific directly challenged by China.

The challenge rouses the same strategic denial impulse that fostered federation and was expressed in the Commonwealth of Australia’s founding document. Our constitution has one clause stating the parliament’s power over external affairs, while the next clause specifically expresses the denial impulse, identifying authority over the ‘relations of the Commonwealth with the islands of the Pacific’.

As Greg Fry observes in his new book on power and diplomacy in Pacific regionalism, Framing the islands, the Oz hegemonic agenda has a long history. He quotes a 19th-century observation from Otto von Bismarck about the ‘Australasian Monroe doctrine’.

The same sphere-of-influence intent prevails today, Fry writes, as Canberra asserts its leadership and management role: ‘Australia’s preferred regional order is one in which it is the leading external security partner to Pacific island states and the undue influence of other metropolitan powers, particularly China, has been denied.’

Australia and New Zealand, he notes, have had ‘enormous influence on Pacific regionalism—on its finances, agenda, policy directions and institutional development’.

Yet, Australia is the frustrated, edgy hegemon; the problem for Oz leadership is generating enough island followership. As Fry puts it, ‘Power as capacity has not easily translated into power as legitimate influence.’ So Australia’s influence in the islands is at times limited, and may be declining.

Australia’s habits and interests bump up against ‘the “new” Pacific diplomacy’, Fry says, as island leaders project an assertive regional identity and seek to act as ‘a diplomatic bloc promoting a Pacific voice in global arenas’.

Climate change has given Pacific diplomacy a heightened urgency and unity, raising doubts about Australia’s regional membership, much less leadership:

In many ways, climate change has become the Pacific’s nuclear testing issue of the twenty-first century; it has brought an urgency and emotional commitment to regional collaboration. Where the Pacific states might in the past have tolerated some frustration with the domination of the regional agenda by Canberra and Wellington to pursue the war on terror or to promote a regional neoliberal economic order, this tolerance reached its limit in relation to the climate change issue.

The islands have acted to ‘securitise the climate emergency’ by expanding the concept of security, declaring climate change ‘the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific’.

Fry says the islands have resisted what he calls ‘coercive’ European-style integration. Since the end of the Cold War, he writes, Australia has been the chief exponent of coercive integration, using the Pacific Islands Forum to push for regional norms to govern island development and governance.

A notable element of Australia’s 2017 foreign policy white paper was its embrace of integration as a key objective: ‘This new approach recognises that more ambitious engagement by Australia, including helping to integrate Pacific countries into the Australian and New Zealand economies and our security institutions, is essential to the long-term stability and economic prospects of the Pacific.’

Integration is a fine example of the problem of winning followership. Indeed, integration has become the i-word—the Oz policy that can’t be named.

The i-word got an embrace from the secretary-general of the Pacific Islands Forum, Dame Meg Taylor, when she launched Fry’s book:

[C]ontrary to Greg, I don’t think we should be dismissive of opportunities for regional integration in the Pacific, whether they be economic, political or based on something else. I would argue that the Rarotonga Treaty can be considered as an example of regional integration through which national sovereignty has been transcended [by] delineating a shared ocean space that is subjected to regulatory actions. Therefore, to dismiss ‘coercive integration’ from the beginning as irrelevant to the region would seem to go against the dynamic and contingent approach to regionalism that is the strength of Greg’s conceptual framework.

Canberra shouldn’t read too much into Taylor’s endorsement of the possibilities of integration. In my short conversation with her after the launch, she was emphatic that her words implied no embrace of Australia’s integration agenda.

In her Griffith lecture in Brisbane last month, Taylor offered three examples of the ‘political strength of the collective’, to show what regional resolve and solidarity look like:

  • the Rarotonga Treaty, which establishes a nuclear-weapon-free zone in the Pacific and was adopted by Pacific leaders in August 1985
  • the Biketawa Declaration, adopted by leaders in 2000, which provided the framework for the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands, or RAMSI
  • the Pacific’s ‘instrumental role in concluding what was perhaps the toughest global negotiation ever—the Paris Agreement’.

Australia was central to the nuclear-free zone and RAMSI; the Paris climate negotiations are a different story.

As an example of how Oz strategic instincts can be embraced and used by the islands, Taylor points to Australia’s establishment this year of the Pacific Fusion Centre, bringing together information from across the region on security threats such as illegal fishing, people smuggling and narcotics trafficking.

Taylor says the centre is ‘region-led and owned’, aligning a regional priority with ‘the aim of Australia’s national foreign policy for stronger security integration across the region’.

Australia’s effort to assert its interests, influence and values in the South Pacific must embrace that ‘region-led and owned’ mantra. The region, too, must adapt and accommodate as it seeks to come together again as a ‘sea of islands’—large ocean states that are connected, not isolated and alone.

The islands coming together is about identity, but also the forms and forces of cooperation that can reach towards regional integration. How best can the islands serve the human security needs of their people? Sovereignty and security are based on strength, not weakness; Australia and New Zealand should be natural sources of help in building that strength.

Australia is often criticised as swinging between being in and out of the South Pacific. Accepting a region-led version of the Pacific future will minimise the attention swings, bolstering Australia’s fundamental interests in the stability and economic progress of the arc that runs from Timor-Leste through Papua New Guinea into the islands.

Fry argues that Pacific regionalism is more than an arena for governance, but constitutes a ‘regional political community—a term that connotes a deep level of commitment, affiliation and identity beyond the nation-state’.

The instincts of Australia’s history can embrace that idea of region.

The Tulagi turning point

The New York Times reported on 16 October that the People’s Republic of China had leased the island of Tulagi from Solomon Islands. A secret deal was apparently struck in September, no doubt around the time Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare ascended to his leadership role and Solomon Islands announced its switch from recognising Taipei to Beijing. Tulagi is remembered mostly as the place where the pivotal Allied campaign for Guadalcanal started in World War II. With the leasing of the island, we may well have a shift in the strategic competition in the Pacific.

Long-term access to Tulagi will provide Beijing with a base for commercial or military activity. For example, it may make managing regional Chinese fishing fleets easier. Fishing, however, is the least of the worries for the West. How long will it be before Tulagi begins to take on features like those found on the faux-island bases in the South China Sea? Will China build an airfield on Tulagi? China’s J-10 fighter aircraft could use Tulagi, as they’ve done in the Paracel Islands, which arguably brings the coast of Queensland into range. (It’s worth noting, though, that while a J-10 could reach the Queensland coast, it wouldn’t have any time on target without refuelling.)

Tulagi also extends Beijing’s political influence. Cementing Chinese operations there could give China far greater reach in Solomon Islands and the Southwest Pacific. If Beijing manages the leasing agreement well, it will serve as a proof of concept for other Pacific island countries. Leasing an island may become financially very attractive to Pacific island elites. If that’s the case, then Tulagi is the thin end of the wedge. How long will be it before Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia votes for independence and pursues a similar leasing arrangement?

The Chinese interest in Solomon Islands has been noteworthy in recent months. Beijing appears to have promised US$500 million in aid to Solomon Islands. In addition, the Taiwan News reported on 20 September that the China Railway Group had agreed to build and lease a railway system to service the Gold Ridge Mine on Guadalcanal through a US$825 million loan. The mine had been closed due to a damaged tailings dam, but appears to slated for reopening. Lyle Goldstein of the China Maritime Studies Institute at the United States Naval War College has discussed China’s military interest in Solomon Islands. He writes in The National Interest that the People’s Liberation Army Navy magazine, Navy Today, carried a detailed analysis of the Guadalcanal campaign in its December 2017 issue. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that Beijing is well aware of the strategic importance of the Solomons.

As an indication of how Beijing sees its efforts in the Pacific, Xinhua, the official news agency of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial titled ‘The future is bright for China, Pacific island countries’. The author proclaimed, ‘China’s relations with the Pacific island countries, based on mutual benefit and a balance of righteousness and interests, are at their best time in history.’ The establishment of diplomatic relations between Beijing and Honiara has been singled out as part of China’s self-declared success in the Pacific. Leasing Tulagi is also part of the historical high point proclaimed by Beijing.

A senior State Department official told me that the US would rely on domestic opinion in the Solomons to push back against the Chinese. In a Western democracy, that might seem a plausible wish, but in Solomon Islands things are bit messier. Island, ethnic and wantok relationships will play out in the Tulagi story in ways that Washington may not adequately understand or appreciate. Political leaders in Honiara and Beijing might want one thing, but others in Solomon Islands may have another idea.

On 24 October, the New York Times reported that the Solomon Islands attorney-general indicated that the Tulagi leasing agreement had problems, which presumably can be fixed. These technical challenges by no means preclude an agreement. Assuming the deal goes ahead, it’s unclear what chiefs in the Central Province of Solomon Islands will do. With enough financial incentive, they may acquiesce; on the other hand, they could opt for independence. The Bougainville referendum on independence could serve as an additional trigger. Or, they may simply opt for civil action. Would the West support independence?

Given Australia’s huge investment in RAMSI, it’s hard to believe that Canberra would be happy. Local protests against Chinese island leasing are one thing, but how far will the West go in supporting and equipping those protests? Will it provide financial assistance or training in community organising and protest? What if tensions between pro-Chinese and anti-Chinese groups in Solomon Islands escalate? Again, how far will the West go? In the unlikely event of armed opposition, will it provide military training and arms?

The leasing of Tulagi should serve as a wake-up call for the ANZUS+J countries (Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Japan). China has several strengths that are difficult to counter. Those strengths start with the fact that China is a single actor, whereas ANZUS+J is a coalition and therefore far less efficient. China uses economic engagement in a way that’s very attractive to Pacific island elites, whereas the West’s economic muscle is far more diffuse and slower to materialise in the islands. China’s use of a diaspora is a policy tool unavailable to ANZUS+J. Policies in place today may be too meek to adequately counter Chinese efforts.

There are things the Western states can do. First, diplomats should be better trained in understanding the Pacific islands. Building institutional capacity is an absolute necessity. Australia is well positioned to help with capacity building for ANZUS+J diplomats.

A second step would be to rethink the ways in which states engage with the islands. Development agencies are central to this engagement, but the development perspective alone falls short in addressing the strategic importance of the islands. The US already engages with a broad array of state agencies. ANZUS+J countries should maintain their expanded development spending, while at the same time thinking more broadly about how they work in the region. The essential criterion for assessing ANZUS+J work in the Pacific should be effectiveness, not dollars spent.

A third requirement is to profoundly deepen people-to-people engagement in the Pacific. The utility of bringing people from the Pacific along with those from ANZUS+J countries cannot be overstated. Having contacts and relationships on the ground throughout the islands plays a vital role in understanding events. Track two diplomatic efforts can also help build deeper connections. In addition, the West should engage with churches through the lens of both people-to-people engagement and institution building. Greater understanding between peoples should be viewed as the West’s competitive advantage, one unlikely to be matched by the CCP.

A final area for improvement has to do with consultation and coordination. Japan has now deployed a diplomat to Washington who is responsible for managing Pacific island issues. To be effective, however, Japan needs to embrace the strategic importance of the islands with greater seriousness. Australia has had a diplomat in Washington with responsibility for the islands for some time now. He has been a strong and constructive voice. These developments are good, but they need to be expanded to be effective.

The campaign that began at Tulagi has long been regarded as the turning point for the Allies in the Pacific during World War II. The island is again a turning point, but maybe not in ways we would welcome.