‘After declaring 2007 as the Year of the Pacific with much fanfare, which included flying Pacific Islands leaders to Washington to convey how serious the US was about its engagement in the world’s biggest ocean and the people of its many islands, there has been little follow-up in the following 18 months or so. There has also been no policy announcement or initiative of note since then’
The run-up to the US election through much of last year coupled with the ballooning sub-prime crisis which ended up in one of the worst financial bloodbaths the world has ever seen and the troubled engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan forced the United States’ attention off some locations of geopolitical importance elsewhere in the world.
After declaring 2007 as the Year of the Pacific with much fanfare, which included flying Pacific Islands leaders to Washington to convey how serious the US was about its engagement in the world’s biggest ocean and the people of its many islands, there has been little follow-up in the following 18 months or so.
There has also been no policy announcement or initiative of note since then. Even the relocation of the US military base from Okinawa in Japan to Guam—billed as the largest logistic and infrastructure exercise ever in the Pacific at US$15 billion—appeared to have lost steam in the wake of the unfolding financial crisis and the change of guard in Washington.
Now that President Barack Obama’s administration has settled down to its routine and begun tackling the financial crisis and the situation in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also made statements last month about the new government’s geopolitical worldview.
At the global press conference at the Foreign Press Centre in Washington DC, the Secretary of State fielded questions from correspondents the over the world explaining the new government’s viewpoint.
Concerns were raised that the United States’ administration’s deep engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the global financial crisis had forced its attention off other important regions like Asia/Pacific.
The secretary’s response allayed those fears saying the US was as much a trans-Pacific power as a trans-Atlantic one.
But it was her choice of one particular word while talking about the Pacific that sought to betray the fact that the US administration knows very well it has been left far behind in the region by emerging Asian powers and may well be worried about it.
“I think we are deepening and broadening our engagement [in the Asia Pacific region]. We don’t think it’s a zero-sum game. The fact that a country like China is becoming more successful or Indonesia is now a very successful democracy, we see that as to the good for the entire Pacific region. But we also are sending a clear message that the United States will be engaged,” Clinton said in reply to one of the questions.
What she said next was telling: “But we want Australia as well as other nations to know that the United States is not ceding the Pacific to anyone.
“We have long-standing bilateral relationships with nations like Australia and others, and we have a very active multilateral agenda that we intend to reinvigorate such as our membership in ASEAN and other fora within the Pacific region.”
The implication is that the US considers the Pacific as its original backyard on which somebody else is staking a claim when it was away or not looking—and so wants to regain “ownership”.
At best, the use of the word “cede” by Clinton is a genuine case of not using the most appropriate word. But at worst, it betrays an underlying assumption embedded deep in the US administration’s scheme of things that the Pacific is its pocket borough.
If the latter is indeed the case, it reeks of the hangover of a colonial mentality because it simply is not: the Pacific is nobody’s territory except for the extent of the sovereign legal territories of its many islands that extend into the ocean and seabed. The rest of the Pacific is the world’s commons and must be left as such¬—nobody can claim to have ownership of it.
But it clearly brings to the fore the worry in the US administration and a tacit acknowledgement that there is a power at work in the Pacific that has dropped anchor deep at several places during its continued neglect of the region in the past two decades (no prizes for guessing the name of considerable power: Clinton carefully avoided naming it by saying, “not ceding to anybody”).
Military leaders of the Bush administration had earlier acknowledged the fact that the US had indeed neglected the region in recent times because of the need for resources elsewhere around the globe.
Clinton’s use of the word could also have been influenced by China’s recent show of naval strength at a huge exercise in Qingdao where it showcased its newfound military prowess to an audience of military brass from several countries around the world.
While this does not necessarily signal a race for increased geopolitical influence in the Pacific region, it does indicate that there will be moves by the United States in the coming months and years to engage in a more visible and tangible way in the islands—especially as the dust settles on the financial crisis and the Middle East situation.
The Secretary of State hinted at working closely with Australia in the region and the earlier administration had said it needed “New Zealand’s eyes to view the Pacific,” because of the country’s long-standing deep ties with several islands nations throughout the region. It must be noted that Secretary of Defence, Robert Gates, is the continuity factor—the bridge between the policies of the last administration and this one.
The added dimension of the possible extension of territorial boundaries of several islands nations is bound to bring in all elements of a “race” for the Pacific islands’ hearts and minds by the world’s powers in the coming years.
