Australia, Japan and US to finance submarine cable to Palau

The $42m project comes after Palau volunteered to be a base to counter China’s assertiveness in the region.

Palau has volunteered to be a base to counter China’s assertiveness in the region. Picture: iStock

Australia, Japan and the US will finance a $42m submarine internet cable to Palau, a strategic project to be unveiled two months after the Pacific nation volunteered to be a base to counter China’s assertiveness in the region.

The Australian has confirmed the new project, which underlines the three countries’ close co-ordination in the Indo-Pacific region.

News of the strategic communications project follows a visit by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and US Defence Secretary Mark Esper this week to India, which further strengthened the two countries’ defence relationship.

And it comes weeks before the Royal Australian Navy will join with the US, India and Japan for military exercises in the Indian Ocean. It will be the first time all four members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, or Quad, have participated in the Malabar exercises since 2007.

Two months ago, Dr Esper is believed to have become the first US Defence Secretary to visit Palau, an archipelago of more than 500 islands with a population of 20,000, which sits north of Papua New Guinea and east of the Philippines.

During the five hour visit, Dr Esper accused Beijing of having a “malign influence” across the region.

At their meeting, Palau’s president Tommy Remengesau Jr reportedly hand-delivered a message to the Defence Secretary, urging the US to commit to military infrastructure on its islands.

“Palau’s request to the US military remains simple – build joint-use facilities, then come and use them regularly,” the president’s letter said.

Japanese outlet Nikkei – which is close to the new Suga administration – first reported on the new cable project.

Nikkei reported that the roughly $US32m, 170-km long cable to Palau will branch off a trans-Pacific deep sea line that will connect the U.S. mainland with Singapore, another key strategic partner in the region.

The new strategic project will formally be announced in a joint video recording with Foreign Minister Payne, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Japanese Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi to be released later on Wednesday.

The video – to be screened at an international forum in Vietnam – was recorded at the start of October on the sidelines of the in-person foreign ministers meeting of the Quad in Tokyo.

Underwater cables have become more important as the volume of data in communications has increased.

That has also made them more important strategically.

In 2018, the Turnbull government funded a 4,000km undersea cable to link the Solomons and Papua New Guinea to Australia’s fibre optic cable network.

Chinese telco giant Huawei had been earmarked to build the cable, causing deep anxiety among the Australian intelligence and security community.