45 - Going After the Islands: Competing for Caribbean and Oceania
Long past time, prodded by Chinese designs on the Pacific and war-time needs to shore up support everywhere for the United States as it battles Russia, Washington is wisely beginning to pay attention both to the near abroad -- the island states of the Caribbean – and to the numerous small-sized Pacific nations that have been neglected diplomatically and strategically for decades.
On the same day this week, Vice-President Kamala Harris convened virtually with fifteen Caribbean heads of government and Kurt Campbell, the U. S. State Department’s Indo-Pacific Coordinator, met virtually with the members of the New Zealand Business Forum.
The Caribbean countries consulted ranged geographically from Suriname and Guyana (with its big new oil deposits) in South America, Belize in Central America, and Haiti and the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola, to the micro-states of the Caribbean island chain from Trinidad in the south to Jamaica (the home of Harris’ father) in the northwest. Haiti and the Dominican Republic are rarely considered as having the same political interests as the English-speaking states, but troubled and impoverished Haiti has nevertheless long been a member of CARICOM – the Caribbean Community -- its regional organization. The Dominican Republic is not.
CARICOM succeeded the colonial West Indian Federation and now includes the fifteen members that met with Harris and five associate members (Anguilla, Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, the British Virgin Islands, and the Turks and Caicos) with a total population of about 16 million.
Harris’ sale was easier than Campbell’s. She explored initiatives to expand “equitable” economic growth throughout the vast region, increase trade between the U. S. and the smaller countries, and improve investment inflows from the U. S. She also introduced the idea that the states of the Caribbean and the U. S. together should act to reduce drug trafficking – a given – but also trafficking in small arms. Together, such advances, plus promised training for police forces, might conceivably reduce violence throughout the Caribbean basin and inhibit the spread of criminality from the islands to places such as Miami, New Orleans, and Houston.
Haiti, the poorest country per capita in the Western Hemisphere, poses far greater challenges for Washington than all of the other places on the vice-president’s call. It is a steady source of migrants fleeing a distress and danger. We hardly know how to combat the gang violence there that, together with narcotics trafficking, paralyzes the half-island nation and endangers everything that the U. S. wants to do to strengthen relations with the region. Yesterday, however, Haiti managed to extradite a major gang leader to the U. S., where he will be tried for mayhem and murder.
The assassins of Haitian President Jovenel Moise last year have still not been fully identified; Washington notionally supports his successor even though interim President Ariel Henry has been implicated in the killing. This week, one of the many powerful gangs that control sections of Port-au-Prince, the capital city, kidnapped and a trade attaché from the Dominican Republic. He was released more rapidly than usual in such situations; seventeen missionaries and children were held for weeks earlier this year.
Vice-President Harris also spoke strongly about intensified cooperation with the Caribbean states to upgrade maritime security. None of the region’s nations can effectively patrol their sovereign waters; they lack vessels and trained personnel. Often, the U. S. Coast Guard operates the only surveillance and rescue missions across the entire Caribbean; drug transporting in fast launches is common.
China in Oceania
Campbell has the much more difficult task of inserting the U. S. after a long absence into the security and development mix of Oceania. Washington has, not inappropriately, relied for the strategic oversight of this region on Australia and New Zealand, the local hegemons. Both, especially Australia, have had long ties to the states from the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu east of New Guinea to Fiji, Tonga, Samoa and others across the International Date Line much farther easwards.
But China’s new thrust into the region, initially purchasing support by replacing Taiwan as a funder of several of the region’s states and political leaders, and very recently signing security agreements, has aroused Washington, as well as Canberra and Wellington. Solomon’s Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare defends his recent accession to Beijing’s request for potential docking and refueling rights in Honiara, his capital, as well as the expansion of China’s embassy there. The agreement allows China, when called, to send armed police and personnel to help maintain public order and protect property. Last year riots convulsed sections of the capital, including the section called Chinatown, and Sogavare said that the Solomons needed Beijing’s help if troubles arise in the future.
Australia, which for decades has overseen policing and security needs in the Solomon Islands, was obviously distressed by Sogavare’s signing with Beijing. When his multi-island state (well-fought over in World War II) was convulsed in civil conflict in the earlier years of this century, Australia arrived to separate the contending parties and restore order, not for the first time. Additionally, the leader of Malaita, the most populous part of the offshore island chain that comprises the Solomons, objects loudly to switching away from Taiwan and giving China unprecedented special rights. The U. S. has provided financial aid to Malaita.
The new Chinese cooperation agreement with the Solomon Islands follows similar arrangements with Fiji, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga. China also has a police support assistance plan forged with Vanuatu. Unique to the Solomons is the possibility that China could end up planting armed military detachments in the middle an island-state that Australia has always considered within its sphere of influence.
What is unsaid is that Beijing must have dangled good rewards before Sogavare. Wherever Taiwan has lost recognition to China in recent years (Malawi, São Tomé and Principe, Nicaragua, and El Salvador) large sums have found their way into personal as well as official coffers. Doubtless, something like that must have happened in the Solomons.
Australia and New Zealand asked Sogavare to refrain from signing with Beijing. But sign he did, and may bring experienced Chinese security teams to protect his premiership from those in the outer islands who have long been at odds with his leadership.
Washington is distant geographically and diplomatically from these corridors of power. But Campbell happily has announced that the State Department will fill (if the Senate will cooperate) existing embassies with ambassadors and will open new embassies across the scattered principalities of the Pacific. Also, and as significantly, Campbell promised to open or re-open Peace Corps missions to the island states. Doing so energetically, as well as putting greater emphasis than now on US AID assistance, could well boost US influence and credibility in the Pacific. That, in turn, ought to help blunt China’s plan to turn the western if not the entire Pacific basin into a Chinese dominated sea.
After the war in Ukraine is settled, no matter how long it takes, Washington will need to resume worrying about the growth of Chinese soft and hard power east of Shanghai. What Washington and Campbell are starting to do between Hawaii and Indonesia will be critical to the global power competition that will grow more and more heated as China increasingly tests and challenges U. S. global hegemony.
As the battle in Ukraine against Russia demonstrates, the era of peace and order that followed World War II and the Cold War is now finished. Even peripheral places strategically like the states of the Caribbean and Oceania must now be made allies, and their needs considered afresh.
Monday: A Special Look at Crime in the Caribbean