Closer defence ties with Pacific

It remains to be seen whether Defence Minister Richard Marles is successful in gaining support for his proposal that Pacific Island countries integrate their military forces with Australia’s for regional security and dealing with natural disasters. But there is no doubt that if he is, the initiative is one that holds potentially enormous benefits for both Australia and Pacific Island nations, and that it could do much to help counter communist China’s malign advances in the region. In the context of the Biden White House’s latest assessment, issued on Wednesday, that China has eclipsed Russia as the No.1 threat to the international order, Mr Marles’s initiative could not be more important.

Papua New Guinea has been first cab off the rank in Mr Marles’s drive for support. After Port Moresby, he will go on to extend the offer of enhanced military co-operation to other Pacific Island states at a meeting of defence ministers next week. The outline he has provided of what he has in mind should be welcomed by countries across the region. Mr Marles’s proposal suggests an almost entirely new form of mutual co-operation among all states across the region that undoubtedly would be as much to their benefit as Australia’s. Leveraged off Australia’s historically close ties to the region and a shared commitment to meet regional security challenges and those that flow from natural disasters as a single “Pacific family”, Mr Marles’s plan has considerable merit that should commend it to Pacific Island leaders.

The benefits to Pacific Island countries of being able to integrate their military forces with Australia’s to undertake regional security and natural disaster response missions obviously would be of immense significance. Having access to resources such as Australia’s world-leading jungle warfare training school at Tully in Queensland, which would be a key part of the closer engagement plan proposed by Mr Marles, would help each of the Pacific Island states as well as Australia. So would the opportunity to deploy with the Australian Defence Force on regional military exercises and support missions, especially those mounted in response to natural disasters.

In the longer term, as Ben Packham reported, there would be an opportunity for personnel from the Pacific Island states to be embedded with the ADF in the same way Australians are able to serve in the US and British militaries. Ultimately, the objective will be to achieve the same level of military co-operation between Australia and its regional neighbours as that between Australia and New Zealand, although Mr Marles has been quick to assure Australia’s Pacific neighbours that they will retain full control over their own forces.

With its recent success in signing a security pact with Solomon Islands, it is more than likely China will run interference and seek to ensure Mr Marles’s initiative does not gain the support it needs. States across the region will be the losers if that happens. China will be the only winner.

Tried and tested over decades, Australia unquestionably remains Pacific Island nations’ best friend in the region, especially when it comes to natural disasters. Mr Marles’s initiative builds on that longstanding, mutually beneficial relationship with proposals for even closer ties that will allow the Pacific Island countries unprecedented access into the heart of Australia’s training structures in a way that cannot do other than benefit them. The plan follows Labor’s election promise to establish an Australia-Pacific defence school to provide training for the defence and police forces of PNG, Fiji, Tonga, East Timor, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands.

A detachment of Solomon Islands police reportedly left for training in China this week, the first to go since the controversial signing of the secret security pact between Honiara and Beijing. As significant as that may be when seen in the context of China’s brazen attempt to gain influence, and possibly a military base, in Solomon Islands, it does nothing to diminish the importance or detract from the longstanding, proven relationship between the Pacific Island states and Australia as the pivot of the Pacific family in good times and bad.

That is the basis on which Mr Marles’s plan is predicated, and Pacific Island leaders would be wise to give it the consideration it deserves. They would be foolish to allow themselves to be beguiled into ignoring China’s irrefutable record of crippling debt diplomacy and self-serving interest when it comes to aid, and the communist subversion and threats to their sovereignty that invariably are unleashed as part of any involvement anywhere by Beijing.