Solomons pact with China threatens Pacific security

Pacific leaders have a responsibility to work with Australia and New Zealand to help avert militarisation of the region through Solomon Islands’ proposed security pact with China. Confirmation of a deal that would allow China eventually to secure a naval presence in the Solomons has sparked deep concern, rightly, in Washington, Canberra and Wellington. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare used parliament on Tuesday to tell other nations to butt out. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said the security deal was between “two sovereign and independent countries” and was “consistent with international law and international practice”. It also is profoundly unsettling for regional security.

As leaders of the Melanesian Spearhead Group alongside the Solomons Prime Minister, Papua New Guinea’s James Marape and Fiji’s Frank Bainimarama have a clear responsibility to head Mr Sogavare away from the dangerous course on which he has embarked. It may not be easy to persuade them to help, of course. China is deeply involved in Fiji and PNG. Like the Solomons, Fiji has substantial Belt and Road so-called aid ties with China and clearly is not averse to military help as well, having agreed to a Chinese military attache at the Chinese embassy in Suva last year. PNG, too, has close economic ties with China, particularly as a result of the development of the high-strategic port and airport at Lae. It certainly does not help that the headquarters of the Melanesian Spearhead Group is in Port Vila, Vanuatu, in a facility built by China.

But even with those considerations, PNG and Fiji have a clear responsibility to the wider South Pacific community to ensure the Solomons does not fall prey to Beijing’s strategic ambitions and become a new regional bulwark for the People’s Liberation Army. Neither PNG nor Fiji will benefit from having the PLA ensconced in a military base in Honiara. Mr Bainimarama and Mr Marape should be under no illusions about what’s at stake and what the CCP’s intentions are for Solomons Islands. Only last week the AP news service reported that Beijing had “fully militarised” at least three islands it had built in the South China Sea, giving Beijing, as US Indo-Pacific commander Admiral John C. Aquilino said, the function “to expand the offensive capability of the PRC beyond their continental shores”. A similar Chinese base in the Solomons will be the inevitable consequence of Mr Sogavare’s pact with Beijing – and, as dire as that prospect is for Australia, it is no less dire for democracies in the region such as Fiji and PNG. They must help Scott Morrison in his determination to persuade Mr Sogavare he is on the wrong track. Mr Marape and Mr Bainimarama need to be better than Mr Sogavare’s ill-judged agreement to allow the PLA into his island nation when, paradoxically, Australian peacekeepers who were sent in last November after his desperate plea to Canberra for help are still there. It was not the first time that Australia had answered such a plea. Yet now Mr Sogavare appears to have gone ahead and signed up to a PLA takeover of the Solomons’ security and its law enforcement agencies. It would be hard to imagine a more outrageous example of ingratitude from any national leader anywhere. For many decades when the rest of the world largely ignored them, South Pacific states, in good times and bad, have benefited from help from Australia and New Zealand. Those years of close co-operation and assistance are now under threat because of Mr Sogavare’s servile acceptance of Beijing’s expansionist ambitions.