Sogavare singing for his supper

It remains to be seen whether Australia really does remain the “primary security partner of choice for Solomon Islands” that Scott Morrison insists it is. But what is clear is that Solomons Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare is going to present a challenge for whomever wins government on May 21.

Mr Sogavare’s latest outburst – during which, without mentioning Australia or the US directly, he implied his island nation could become the target for an invasion, while going on to draw parallels with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and defending Russia – should worry not just the Solomons’ 700,000 people but countries across the Pacific and beyond. Like his similar assertion last week that a “lack of support” from Australia led to him signing his controversial security pact with China, Mr Sogavare’s claims make no sense.

Rightly, Mr Morrison has warned that the establishment of a Chinese military base in the Solomons will be a “red line”, while the Biden administration’s top regional official, Kurt Campbell, has said the US will “respond accordingly” to a Chinese military presence in the island nation. However much hyperbole Mr Sogavare applies to them, neither of those statements comes even close to implying an invasion. Last week’s attempt to blame Australian neglect for the security deal with China was equally absurd. Has the Solomons Prime Minister really forgotten the 14 years of Australia’s stabilising Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands that cost Australian taxpayers $2.5bn to help 500,000 people? And has he forgotten the way, as recently as last November when his government was under existential threat from angry mobs rioting in Honiara, Mr Morrison immediately dispatched troops and police to save him? Just as it did during the Covid crisis. The only conclusion that can be drawn from Mr Sogavare’s latest outburst is that, having accepted China’s largesse, he is showing himself to be a craven leader who is singing for his supper. The lesson he should learn from the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban missile crisis is that Fidel Castro’s enslavement of his own island nation to Moscow condemned it to decades of bleak isolation, impoverishment and loss of fundamental freedoms.

The absurdity of Mr Sogavare’s invasion claims shows how totally misguided he is. Like every other country that mindlessly has put itself in hock to Beijing, sooner or later he will be brought face-to-face with the crippling consequences of China’s vicious debt diplomacy and the demands that flow from it.