Showdown in the Pacific
Bob Briton
22/07/2022
The Solomon Islands made the headlines in the Australian media prior to the federal election. Some of the heat behind the issue of a security agreement between the Pacific nation and China has dissipated but has not gone away. The Morrison government took some flak for supposedly mishandling Australia’s relationship with the Solomons with his patronising attitude and his slowness to respond to China’s courting of this neighbour and others in the region. The language used to describe the “worst foreign affairs blunder since WW2” reeks of hypocrisy and did nothing to explain why a Pacific island state would be interested in overtures from the Chinese government.
Successive Australian governments have worked hard at presenting the image of a generous benefactor and guarantor of stability in the region. If you believe the hype, the news of Pacific island nations growing closer to China would come as a surprise. The reality is that the people of the region have long experience of the behaviour of the US and its deputy sheriffs, Australia and New Zealand. A lot of this experience has bred resentment and mistrust.
Before looking at this history, it is worth comparing the attitude of the Australian government to this event and the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Russia’s invasion was prompted by a number of factors, each of which was dismissed out-of-hand by the Morrison/Albanese governments and the corporate media. The claims about the growing influence of Nazism and the extreme right generally are ridiculed. That’s despite the incorporation of the openly fascist Azov Battalion into the official military and the widespread veneration of pro-Nazi wartime “independence hero”, Stepan Bandera. The legislative and military violence dealt out to the large Russian-speaking minority doesn’t rate a mention.
Ukraine’s drive to become a member of NATO, a military alliance hostile to rival imperialist power Russia, is ignored or claimed that such a development need be of no concern to Russia. Russian protests at Ukraine’s violations of the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 are also overlooked. Fast forward to the present where the Solomons, a sovereign country remember, signed a security agreement with China and we find completely different standards being applied.
The US and Australia are, in this instance, perfectly entitled to object and treat the situation as an “emergency” and a “threat”. There is even talk of military intervention to prevent the possibility of Chinese bases in the region. So, the prospect of NATO bases on the border of Russia should be of no concern to anybody (despite NATO’s obvious predilection for waging war) while a Chinese base in the Pacific would spell the end of the world. The hypocrisy is rank.
Inhabitants of Pacific island nations watch all this and draw very different conclusions to the corporate media. Their current situation, the backdrop to this superpower brinkmanship, is dire. Climate change and the attendant rising sea levels threaten the very survival of a number of island states. Australia’s unambitious emissions targets are noted. Most of our neighbours are metaphorically drowning in debt to the World Bank, the IMF and an assortment of transnational banking corporations.
COVID has pushed their finances beyond the limit with the strain on medical services, the collapse of tourism and the drying up of remittances from seasonal workers in agriculture in Australia in more stable times. Albanese’s Johnny-come-lately intervention can’t erase the memories of recent times, let alone of a long history of bullying behaviour.
Australia and the US have long wanted to “pivot” their attention to the Indo-Pacific in response to the rise of China. Unfortunately for the high-level schemers involved, the region is also the scene of major historic crimes committed by the world’s most aggressive imperialist clique on local populations. A complete list would take too long but even the highlights provide insights into why the Australian government’s “family of the Pacific” slogan is hard to sell.
In line with US priorities, the Australian government had its military forces invited into the war on the Vietnamese people. It cooperated at the intelligence level in the massacre of two to three million members and supporters of Indonesia’s Communist party. It worked to undermine the popular government of Sukarno and toyed with the idea of nuclear weapons in response to its consolidation.
It opposed the independence struggle of the people of the former Portuguese colony of East Timor and supported its absorption as a province of Indonesia. The Department of Foreign Affairs pointed out that Indonesia under coup-leader Suharto would be much more likely to cut a generous deal for Australian oil and gas monopolies than the left-leaning leadership of a potentially independent East Timor. This position became indefensible as the atrocities of the Indonesian military (trained and funded in Australia) in the province became known to a stunned world.
Australian tactics then shifted to threats, bullying and spying on the government of Timor Leste to cheat the impoverished nation out of its legitimate claim to the gas fields located off its coast. It seems the legal proceedings by the Commonwealth against the lawyer of the whistle blower who lifted the lid on the spying scandal have been shelved but that, no doubt, is not the end of the story.
Australia supported PNG in its efforts to crush the independence movement on Bougainville, despite knowing that internationally notorious mercenaries had been engaged. The rebellion was sparked by the devastation caused by the operation of the huge Panguna copper mine owned by Australian resource-extracting monopoly Conzinc Rio Tinto. The stiff resolve of the Bougainville people closed the mine and secured some autonomy for the island. Of course, Australia was chief among the “peace-keeping” forces involved in the entire process.
The Panguna copper mine under construction (1971).
Most relevant of all this recent history involves the Solomons itself. The country could be said to be victim of the “failed state” strategy. First, the target country is left to flounder or set up for financial collapse that makes it ungovernable. Then a “peace-keeping” mission is arranged and the governance of the country re-jigged to suit the interests of those who have stepped in to “help”. This happened in the case of the Solomon Islands in the lead up to, and the aftermath of, the implementation of the Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands (Operation Helpem Fren) between 2003 and 2017.
It should be pointed out that Australian Aid (formerly AUSAID) is not a pot of money for distribution to the most needy in the region to get them back on their feet. It is ideologically driven to benefit the growth of capitalist enterprise and, most importantly, a return to Australian corporations. No doubt China has the same outlook with regard to its “generosity” around the world. Nothing in what has been written above should be interpreted as suggesting the Solomons and other Pacific island nations would necessarily be better off being dependent on China rather than the US-Australian mob of meddlers and manipulators. But it does help explain why they would be interested in the PRC’s advances.
The Pacific Islands Forum just wound up and Prime Minister Albanese would be pleased with how his intervention has been reported. A “climate emergency” has been declared. Elsewhere, Solomons Prime Minster Manasseh Sogavare made a statement that he won’t allow a Chinese military base on the Solomon Islands (regardless of whether that were a likely prospect prior to his “I need a hug” statement or not). US Vice-President Kamala Harris beamed into the PIF meeting in Fiji to insist the US will substantially increase its role in the region – an eye-watering prospect given its massive presence already.
The inter-imperialist rivalry in the region is not over. That much is clear. The longer-term future where there is universal application of “an independent foreign policy based on solidarity and mutual benefit”, as set down in the ACP’s program, is a long way off. To hurry that process, nation after nation will need to set off on the path of socialism. Importantly for us, but equally importantly for nations in regions like the Pacific, the most significant breakthroughs will be in the heartlands of imperialism like Australia. The peace and security of the world demand that we step up our efforts to this end.