US SECRETARY OF STATE ANTHONY BLINKEN TAKES HISTORIC VISIT TO TONGA
ANTHONY Blinken, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, will be making a historic visit to Tonga, a first for a US Secretary of State, on a short regional island-hop en route to New Zealand and Australia.
Blinken will be in Tonga to officiate the opening of the new US Embassy in the country.
The Pacific is one of the most important zones in geostrategic and geopolitical global power competition, especially given the swelling competition and potential confrontation with the People’s Republic of China.
And for that, Mr. Blinken’s visit is hoped to pair up the US against a previous senior visit from the Chinese government, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, to Tonga earlier in January this year.
Having taken the initiative, the Chinese government has also proposed sponsoring a regional security pact with the Pacific nations, even within its wider Belt and Roads Initiative to which the small islands have signed on, including Tonga. Tonga and the PRC have also signed a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with the Chinese, and to what extent that cooperation is, have not been revealed.
In promoting the Indo-Pacific Partnership with select allies in the region, excluding the Pacific nations as second-tier Partners, the Chinese proposal stands to undermine the whole US calculus in the region.
It also seems the US is trying to carry excess baggage in promoting European alliances over the region and is not seen too warmly, such as the region AUKUS, between the US, UK, and Australia, even incorporating NATO as a first-tier stakeholder in the Indo-Pacific strategy. This is seen by some as a revivalist move to re-establish old colonial structures that the region has been trying to free themselves from throughout the last century, leaving behind a legacy of infighting and conflict in the region. However, people-to-people relations in the region are overcoming these challenges.
Tongans have a significant community in the US. In the announcement of the opening of the new Embassy in Tonga, it was hoped they would be servicing consular and visa permits. Unfortunately, applicants will still have to go through the usual costly routes through Fiji or other countries for them. It was one of the main things the people had hoped for in the announcement of the new embassy.
Fundamentally, if the US would hope to counter China in this complex region, there are a few initiatives that make investments go a long way:
Converging Inter-dimensional Interests
As hard security interests are becoming more pronounced in the current geopolitical competition, non-traditional issues of climate change, sea-level rising, and more frequent intense natural disasters are increasingly salient as most Pacific nations have declared them an “existential threat,” and thus demand rightful attention. The inter-dimensional convergence of these challenges may not necessarily be a bad thing. While the spectra of difficulty can accelerate exponentially, this also means that fewer solutions can solve far more numbers of problems. Solutions against threats to problems of military invasion, such as amphibious platforms, UAV platforms, are also the same needed in disaster responses to the tens and hundreds of islands and islets in the region hit by cyclone, tsunami, or a combination of both.
Financial Connectivity and SLOCs
The Pacific has never been the source of any global ill, man-made or otherwise, but has been dubbed, for political reasons, as one of the riskiest in terms of money-laundering and terrorist-financing. This is due to “weak institutions,” unfortunately left over from colonial administrations, and has caused the availability of capital to be extremely high that only the few banks from local middle-powers have been able to prey on this shortage of capital. This impoverishment is exactly what opened the door for new challengers like China to take a foothold and unleash their own geoeconomic strategies. Pacific economies’ growth and security are particularly vulnerable to any disruptions to their Sea Lanes of Communications, which is also inherently the global connective tissue between East and West, so it is inherent to solving global maritime security in insuring regional Infrastructure and institutions.
Consolidating Regionalism
The current take and tenor of Pacific regionalism have to be re-imagined and advanced, and advancement and innovation have to be built into the new system. In the “old days” of colonies and empire, foreign and international policy were cordoned off as the purview of administrators or local elites. However, the current and new generations have a more cosmopolitan consciousness and are not easily limited by the inter-tribal borders that empires left behind. The Pacific Island Forum has outlived its time, conceived during the Cold War and entrenched by the post-independence period.
A curious misnomer as although named a “Forum,” it doesn’t live up to its name as only government political leaders are allowed. The Forum should be liberated to its full potential and become the melting pot of Pacific peoples, women’s groups, young people, environmental groups, CSOs, NGOs, and communities as the touted Pacific Family. Government leadership focus on the Secretariat and the Executive branch, and the only new institution is the Council of Pacific Heads of States. Only the Mana and auspices of their presence can lift the spirits of any Pacific gathering, and the morale and aspirations of Pacific peoples can be real elements of empowerment. Currently, there is too much power in the hands of too few individuals who are also politicians, and limited windows of operations. The Forum is increasingly seen as irrelevant to Pacific life, corrupted with foreign political money, and only a costly feel-good getaway for politicians, nothing for the people. And it is currently set to be taken by China.
