Facing the Solomon Islands’s escalating action against U.S. interests, the Biden administration must show it is willing to deploy the stick as well as dangle the carrot.
Tensions with the island government, led by Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare, have grown dramatically in recent months as Sogavare has forged a de facto alliance with communist China. Particular U.S. concern rests on Sogavare’s apparent plans to allow the People’s Liberation Army to station forces in the Solomon Islands. Sogavare denies any such plans, but his word is utterly unreliable. The problem? Any deployment of Chinese armed or intelligence forces to the Solomon Islands would pose a serious security threat to U.S. and Australian interests. Such deployments would allow China to threaten the U.S. Navy’s lines of communication at depth while also gathering valuable intelligence from ground-based sensor systems or other assets based on the Solomon Islands. Of note: The islands are less than 1,000 miles from Australia.
The Biden administration has rightly attempted to redress these concerns by boosting U.S. diplomatic, aid, and economic engagement with the Solomon Islands. Those moves follow years of lamentable neglect by the United States, something that has fostered understandable frustration among the country’s population and government. With a total export market of less than $1 billion annually, the Solomon Islands continue to rely on low-value exports such as wood and fish. China has stepped into this gap, offering massive investment in return for political fealty. Money talks.
Unfortunately, Sogavare’s government seems disinterested in now taking the U.S. carrot and its associated offer of a fresh start in relations.
Evincing as much, Sogavare is restricting long-standing port access to U.S. and British vessels. As reports indicate, a U.S. Coast Guard patrol ship and British warship conducting anti-illegal fishing patrols were recently denied a Solomon Islands port call after their requests to do so went unanswered. Such antics are literally straight from the Chinese Communist Party playbook. Moreover, seeing as it is Chinese fishing crews that are most responsible for illegal fishing globally, China has good reason to obstruct these patrols. Sogavare, Beijing’s puppet regent, is doing his job.
Sogavare’s anti-American escalations are evident in other areas.
Just last week, the controversial prime minister warned he might ban Australian journalists over what he described as “disrespectful and demeaning” reporting by Australia’s ABC news network. Once again, this rhetoric is right out of Beijing’s playbook of playing down damaging reporting as nothing other than malicious slander. Still, it’s not hard to see why Sogavare is angry. After all, ABC published a major investigative report this month documenting China’s deep influence over Sogavare’s government. Of specific note, ABC identified slush fund payments from Beijing to Sogavare’s allies.
Albeit a fragile democracy with a weak rule of law, the Solomon Islands has the sovereign right to pursue whatever foreign policy it chooses. But the U.S. and its allies also have the sovereign right to defend their interests. Rising Chinese access to the Solomon Islands poses a clear threat to keystone U.S. interests. If the Solomon Islands wants to continue on this course, it must face consequences.
What might be done?
For a start, the U.S., Australia, and like-minded allies such as France and Britain — the looming accession of Britain’s likely next prime minister, Liz Truss, makes British support more likely — should increase military patrols near the Solomon Islands. While there is a clear risk of further morphing him into Beijing’s footrest, it is important that Sogavare recognize the seriousness with which his policies are viewed in the West.
At the same time, the U.S. could undermine Sogavare’s diplomatic and economic interests beyond China. While China represents the Solomon Islands’s most important economic partner, other U.S. allies such as Italy also retain close trade links with the country. These links are far more important to the Solomon Islands than they are to its trade partners. The U.S. and Australia should also declassify intelligence reporting that proves that Sogavare and his government are personally beholden to Beijing. (Beijing has done the same thing with Pakistan.) The people of the Solomon Islands deserve to know the corruption of their leaders. The U.S. and Australia could also ramp up their support for pro-independence interests in the Solomon Islands’s Malaita province.
Whatever action the Biden administration takes, Sogavare must recognize that his hostile actions will carry painful costs as well as Chinese benefits.
