Interestingly and to much amusement, the US is busy recruiting non-Pacific powers like NATO into the Indo-Pacific, and there’s hardly any encouragement of the Pacific Islands into the Indo-Pacific.
NUKU’ALOFA, TONGA
The past week has been interesting in the Kingdom of Tonga as it endures the geopolitical flurry between the ascending optimistic powers from the East and the setting sun of the empires of the West.
Last Tuesday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken made his first visit to the island kingdom, just east of Fiji and due north of New Zealand. Blinken is the first Biden Cabinet member to visit the country, and his visit is also seen as a response to PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit earlier in the year. Blinken didn’t waste too much time battering his competition.
“As China’s engagement in the region has grown, there has been some—from our perspective—increasingly problematic behaviour,” Al Jazeera reported parts of what Blinken told his hosts in Tonga.
He claimed that China had been behind “some predatory economic activities and also investments that are done in a way that can actually undermine good governance and promote corruption.”
“We’re (US) a Pacific nation,” Blinken told his hosts. “We very much see the future in the Indo-Pacific region.”
“We really understand what is a priority for the people here.”
As Secretary Blinken departed, another western diplomat, David McAllister, Member of the European Parliament and Chair of the European Parliament’s Foreign Policy Committee, touched down in Tonga.
His visit, according to Tongan Prime Minister Siaosi Sovaleni was, about “…listening to the Pacific and what the Pacific wants, rather than just sitting around in Brussels.”
Western economies are considered by analysts as only a hollowed-out shadow of their former selves, filled with overpriced companies that have most of their resources or manufacturing done for them in Asia, Africa, or Latin America—aka the Global South.
The two senior diplomats would have enjoyed rock-star welcoming if they were allowed to meet the crowds, but as they mingled with their counterparts and leaders, the media waves and social media vines were abuzz with the announcement of the arrival of the hospital ship “Ark of Peace” of the People’s Liberation Army Navy of the People’s Republic of China.
Such was the irony.
The boat would be making its fourth visit to Tonga, and would be offering free medical checkups and treatments including serious surgical operations while in Tonga. It just left Tarawa in Kiribati, after performing more than 20 serial surgeries, and almost 7,000 diagnoses and treatments for the islanders. A military hospital ship is a welcomed sight to locals as the region heads into the tumultuous super-cyclone season.
During the diplomatic visits and by the end of the week, as the Peace Ark revs up visits to the ship and medical operations, most have almost forgotten the US’ most eminent diplomat and the European Parliament’s most eminent emissary on the Union’s foreign policy ever even visited.
Which says a lot about the old boys’ art of naval diplomacy, almost forgotten now in the West.
In terms of public diplomacy, intentionally or not, the PLA pulled off a nice neat trick that drowned out the visit of the fifth in line to the US throne in the Pacific. And it didn’t cost much—all it took was a bit of rescheduling, as the vessel was visiting the region anyway.
CHINA IN THE PACIFIC
The global economy and security are embedded on a maritime foundation. The globalized world is a maritime world. And about a fifth of the maritime domain, is the Pacific.
As the challenger to the western-established “rules-based international order”, with experience in global trade and in small local wars and conflicts, China knows and understands the geopolitical values of the Pacific and the Pacific Islands.
On top of that, China fully appreciates the existing strategies of the West, the hub-and-spoke system centered on Japan (for command of littoral Far East), the Chinese Communist Party also understands the US’ Island Chain system, and how dependent and vulnerable the mainland is to foreign resource embargoes and sanctions.
Therefore, going asymmetric diplomatically speaking, the Belt and Road Initiative is about pushing what it does best in economic growth and trade, and then securing that access for later dual use.
A critical region is the Pacific Islands as they are components in, and just behind of, the island chain system. Ideally, apart from the South China Seas, the Island Chain system can be simply complicated if China can secure basing or access to safe harbour in these islands.
China has in fact offered to build major infrastructure projects in the Pacific, including bridges in Tonga and a new naval base, to a new dock and slipway. These would bring the islands hundreds of millions in revenue, employment and taxes.
So China aims to increase its Pacific footprint, at least on an anti-access/area-denial basis against US forces. And if it can deny access to US maritime operations in the region, it can certainly deny it to India. Or leverage it for greater access in the Indian Ocean.
China also doesn’t take middle-men like the West and other countries do, in the region including India. (The US relegates Australia to look out for Melanesia, and New Zealand to look out for Polynesia). Regional embassy accreditation is a thing of powerful empires comfortable in their reign after vanquishing all their enemies and enslaving their foes. China will talk directly to each and every one of the islands. And it’s not like its hundreds more, there are only 14 Pacific countries. And in doing so, the feelings of goodwill and appreciation are returned and reciprocated.
China has already embedded its own assets and elements in its String of Pearls in the Indian Ocean.
Therefore, it is important to fully appreciate the nature of Pacific geopolitics and how relevant they are to Indian interests.
WHERE are INDIA AND THE PACIFIC IN THE INDO-PACIFIC?
The Indo-Pacific is touted as the status quo powers’ counter-strategy to the Belt and Road Initiative.
Ideally, it would have integrated forces in the Pacific and Indian Oceans as they would be the most effective in countering the Chinese Red Tide. Countries like the Pacific Islands are front and center in this emerging gargantuan confrontation and it will be inter-oceanic and truly global.
However, interestingly and to much amusement, the US is busy recruiting non-Pacific powers like NATO into the Indo-Pacific, and there’s hardly any encouragement of the Pacific Islands into the Indo-Pacific.
Would there have been a summit of Everest by Edmund Hillary if not for Tenzing Norgay?
This only leaves room for India to act, take the initiative, and not be too dependent on “partners” who are more interested in promoting their other partners and none of yours. To act proactively, and not reactively.
The initiation of the FIPIC India-Pacific Forum was a great proactive initiative. Non-reactive. The declaration to open an Embassy in the Solomon Islands was almost impulsive purchasing on Amazon.
Foreign policy should also not be about the feel-good lunches and dinners of elites and senior bureaucrats. The strongest most enduring is one that is embedded in people-to-people relations.
In the 1970s, as much of the former British colonies were finally liberated so too were the small island countries of the Pacific Ocean. Once the Tonga-UK Protectorate Treaty was rescinded, Tonga’s King Taufa’ahau IV immediately took his first official state visit to New Delhi in 1971, and again in 1976. Soon afterwards, Tonga was also the first of the Pacific islands to establish relations with the Soviet Union, India’s “all weather friend”. Not long after, Indira Gandhi landed and overnighted in Tonga.
Not to diminish other destinations in the Pacific. But it seems like our forebears were a lot more cosmopolitan than we are, although we like to see ourselves as a lot more free, a lot more civilized, than they were.
There should already be an Indian Embassy in Tonga, and a similar Tongan representative in India. Let alone the China card and the geopolitical pressures, the peoples of the two nations deserve to know that they were closer than let to believe.
THE THREE MUSES OF FATE
There are three main axes upon which Pacific Island and Tongan strategic interests and compulsion revolve upon.
- The Inter-dimensionality of Security: Out in the islands, Oceanus is truly a primordial god of the elements. One is as much under threat from the overwhelming presence and power of the ocean, as one is from another hostile military. In fact, the power of nature waits for no man and his war. But also the borderlessness of the oceans opens up for criminal groups like illegal fishers and poachers, to transoceanic traffickers (human and illicit substances).
One effective way to approach these are the provision of capable platforms, such as the Khukri class small corvettes (close to the Arafura class OPV), that can also be upgraded for carry forward operating midrange drones such as the UMS Skeldar’s V200 rotary wing VTOL.
Recently India gifted Vietnam with one of its 4 Khukri class corvettes, produced in the Soviet Union. Last year, Tonga experienced a nuclear-level volcanic explosion and tsunami. Platforms like above would be ideal for evacuating entire island groups and be able to defend them if the main capital is destroyed, or a sinister drug operation takes advantage of the weakened situation. The UAV is ideal for forward observing and scouting disaster zones and search and rescue. - Informational and Financial Connectivity: Pacific Island connectivity to the rest of the world is important and critical and India is a leader in satellite and digital communications technology. This also spans out to the financial space and the availability of capital.
Much of what is limiting and holding back development is the high cost of capital. Even though the Pacific is home to a lot of innovative substances and even sports and other recreations. Surfing, sailing, tattooing, are all Pacific Island innovations as well as a host of other exotic organic products that are crippled by the overwhelming control of western institutions and their high cost of capital.
Innovations in fintech and other digital platforms are ideal for fragmented populations of the Pacific. - Innovative Regionalization: There is no doubt that the Pacific Island is a vast space with strategic locations. If the 14 or so island countries are given enough opportunity to consolidate a single voice, they can wield for themselves a voice for their own in global affairs, and enough leverage to be able to rally resources useful for themselves. On that day, these countries would be best had as friends.
Russia previously held the second Russia-Africa Summit or Russia-Africa Economic and Humanitarian Forum, with enough resources that could shoot the Pacific to the moon and back. Russia itself is a Pacific nation with a vast coastline in north-east Asia.
There are several models as a start for a Pacific Union, from the European Union to ASEAN, to even the United Arab Emirates. The current Pacific Island Forum is increasingly seen as a feel-good week-long vacation for Pacific leaders and venue for bribery and pay for play for outside powers. None of the local populations are looking forward to it seriously anymore.
But a conglomeration of Pacific affairs, much like a major corporate merger, would bring together Pacific Islanders who have been divided by European colonialism, to address the new challenges and neo-imperial ambitions of today.
India’s experiences with its own post-colonial challenges, and the experiences with managing the Indian Ocean Rim Association, among others, would be best suited for leveraging a new Pacific regionalism.
Dave Motulalo, MSc Geopolitics and International Relations (Manipal), is Editor-in Chief of Tonga Independent https://tongaindependent.com/