The wisdom of Solomon is needed on Pacific security

Any suggestion that Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare did not appreciate the strategic importance of his close embrace of China was dispelled on Friday with his declaration that it had put his nation on “the right side of history”. Opening a Chinese-funded sports facility in Honiara, Mr Sogavare said it justified the wisdom of the decision to swap his country’s allegiance from Taiwan to the People’s Republic. Coming immediately ahead of a scheduled meeting in Honiara with two of Joe Biden’s top diplomats – National Security Council Indo-Pacific co-ordinator Kurt Campbell and Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Daniel Kritenbrink – Mr Sogavare’s remarks demonstrate the challenge ahead.

China has Mr Sogavare exactly where it wants him to be: thankful for the reciprocity that has been shown for ditching Taiwan and eager to build on a relationship that has progressed from friendship to armed security in the blink of an eye. The bedrock of Mr Sogavare’s enthusiasm is no doubt rooted in self-interest, but clearly he has been captivated by the messaging of China’s soft-power diplomacy that holds a rising China to be an inevitable and irresistible fact. The global community is on notice that a new superpower is rising and the rules of the game must be changed to accommodate it.

Diplomatically, China has couched its push outwards into the Indian Ocean through Sri Lanka and the Pacific through the Solomons in the rhetoric of global progress and international friendship, helping poor nations to meet their development goals. The realities of debt-trap diplomacy have been quite different, as has been witnessed already in parts of Africa, Sri Lanka and elsewhere. Fundamentally, the aim of Xi Jinping is to break US hegemony, challenge the foundations of the US alliance network and remake the international order. Mr Xi this week proposed a new “global security initiative” positioning China as a champion of the developing world and himself as a visionary leader prepared to deal unflinchingly with the world’s challenges. Mr Xi called for a new “indivisible security” in which a state’s security was inseparable from that of others in its region – the same justification used by Vladimir Putin to invade Ukraine to prevent it becoming a member of NATO.

China’s ambitions in the Pacific have been building for many years but now are becoming fully apparent. Against the backdrop of China’s trade wars with the US and Australia, Mr Xi no doubt will enjoy the confusion his security plunge into the Solomons has provoked. He also no doubt will appreciate the signs that political elements in Australia and New Zealand have been seduced by the soothing rhetoric of the inevitability of China’s rise.

Acceptance was at the heart of comments by New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern when she expressed disappointment at the Solomons’ security pact with China but said there was a need to work together with China on areas of “natural mutual interest”.

A similar resignation is reflected in the thoughts of Labor’s deputy leader, Richard Marles, who has argued Australia should encourage China’s involvement in the Pacific. In a speech at Beijing Foreign Studies University, Mr Marles said he had been “very cognisant” since 2012 of the growing role that China was playing in providing development assistance in the Pacific. In a mini-book, Tides That Bind: Australia in the Pacific, published last August, Mr Marles warned that “basing our actions in the Pacific on an attempt to strategically deny China would be a historic mistake”. He said Pacific nations were perfectly free to engage on whatever terms they chose with China or, for that matter, any other country.

Mr Marles’s comments may well reflect the reality of sovereignty of Pacific nations. But they also expose the hypocrisy of Labor’s attack this week on the Morrison government for being the most “incompetent government on national security since World War II” for allowing the Solomons’ security deal with China to take place. Given the heightened emotions of an election campaign, exaggerations are to be expected. But as we editorialised this week, the tightening hold that China has placed on Solomon Islands presents a challenge that transcends the party politics of the domestic election campaign. At play is a calculated push by China to confront US dominance in the Pacific and expand its military reach as a regional power. The likelihood that the deal will pave the way for Beijing to establish a military base in the Solomons, barely three hours’ flying time from our shores, is real and imminent. This is against the wishes of the vast majority of inhabitants of Solomon Islands and against the interest of long-term stability and security in Australia and in the Pacific.