Regional destabilization

“We believe that signing such an agreement could actually increase destabilization within the Solomon Islands and could set a concerning precedent for the wider Pacific Island region,” Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told a press conference, when asked about the agreement.

The White House too, were concerned, saying: “We are concerned by the lack of transparency and unspecified nature of this agreement, which follows a pattern of China offering shadowy, vague deals with little regional consultation in fishing, resource management, development assistance and now security practices”.

“What we are saying is that the Pacific island countries are not anyone’s backyard, let alone pawns in a geopolitical confrontation,” Wang said, addressing Campbell’s visit.

There’s no international law requiring two countries engaged in negotiations to stipulate all details to a third party, but their fear is that the deal will open the door to a Chinese military base, which is certainly what the United States would do in such circumstances. With far more than 600 bases ranging in size from covert air fields to small cities, the U.S. standard procedure is to base wherever it is viable and advantageous to do so.

In terms of true overseas military presence, China has only one outside of the South China Sea, but the White House’s reluctance to recognize the Pacific Ocean is not its bathtub could mean that this strategy must change. However the Solomons have stated there are no military agreements in the new partnership, and the Chinese did not request basing rights.

Of course even if China and the Solomons are just lying and that a large sophisticated military base was constructed there, in terms of regional destabilization, nothing could be greater than the AUKUS Alliance which set up a technology-sharing agreement to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, and recently hypersonic glide cruise missiles.

China has used the example of the current conflict in Ukraine as a worst-case scenario of “bloc mentality” and “Cold-War mindsets” being introduced into the Indo-Pacific, with the AUKUS weapons proliferation agreement as a perfect example of both. WaL