The U.S. Ignores the Solomon Islands at Its Peril

G uadalcanal: It’s largely forgotten now, but to Americans of the World War II generation, it was as resonant as the Somme to the French or Dunkirk to the British. In 1942, several months after Pearl Harbor, U.S. Marines landed on the strategically located island in the Solomon archipelago to retake it from the Japanese for use as a staging base against Japan in the Pacific theater. When the Japanese retreated six months later, the Battle of Guadalcanal marked the first major offensive victory by the Allies against Japan.

Eighty years later, Guadalcanal, and the Solomon Islands more broadly, now finds itself at the center of another nascent Pacific conflict, this time between the U.S. and China. As both powers seek to rally the region’s states into alignment, nations like the Solomon Islands have tried a balancing act between them. Because of American arrogance, the Solomon Islands now teeters in China’s favor.

The tilt was evident last week when Solomon Islands prime minister Manasseh Sogavare signed a security deal with China. Under the pact, China will be permitted to “make ship visits, carry out logistical replenishment, and have stopover and transition” in ports in the Solomon Islands. It also allows “the relevant forces of China” to protect the safety of Chinese assets and projects there. The Solomon Islands, for its part, can “request China to send police, armed police, [and] military personnel” to the country to “maintain social order.”

Glancing at the short text of the deal, one is tempted to infer a unilateral gain for China. Not only may its ships use Solomon ports at will, but also its military may be deployed on the island,  giving China wide leverage over the country. If Guadalcanal was a staging ground for U.S. forces against Japan, the whole archipelago now appears to be one for the People’s Liberation Army — to be used, potentially, against adversaries like the U.S. and nearby Australia.

The deal has prompted alarm in Canberra. One commentator called it Australia’s “Cuban Missile Crisis,” while Australian deputy prime minister Barnaby Joyce said the Solomons would become a “little Cuba off our coast,” recalling a locus of Cold War tension between the U.S. and the Soviets. The U.S. also reacted with alarm, sending a high-level delegation to the Solomon Islands to warn the country against a “permanent military presence” by China, saying that America would “naturally respond” if that happens.

A sober and reflective response from the U.S. might be more appropriate. Matthew Kroenig, a former CIA officer and Department of Defense military strategist who is now a professor at Georgetown University, certainly thinks so. In a conversation with National Review, he claimed that the U.S. isn’t perturbed by the “specific arrangement” with the Solomon Islands but rather by the trajectory of Chinese military activity and what it reveals about U.S. efforts in the region.

“This new base would play a marginal role in a conflict with, say, Taiwan,” said Kroenig. “Australia may have to do battle with those ships before it moves into another area,” but the nuclear submarines to be provided to Canberra under the AUKUS deal are to account for that threat. Moreover, given that China lacks a blue-water navy with sophisticated technology, its ability to project power from the Solomon Islands — nearly 5,000 miles away from its mainland, without heavy port infrastructure — is rather limited.

“The bigger concern is not the tactical but the strategic value” of the base, Kroenig said. As China is gaining influence globally, the U.S. is worried about the optics of countries veering toward the Chinese. Perceptions influence decisions; the more nations appear to embrace China, the more others may do so as well.

The Solomon Islands’ deal is symptomatic of this problem, which Kroenig ascribes to Washington’s “ignoring relationships with countries” and taking them for granted. “Twenty years ago, more countries in the Indo-Pacific had the U.S. as their largest trading partner . . . Now, it’s mostly China. After the Cold War, we had ignored some countries and thought we could take them for granted.” That’s no longer the case.

Those responsible for this neglect include the foreign-policy establishment in D.C. on both sides of the aisle, whose focus on Iraq and Afghanistan diverted attention from great-power competition, and who arrogantly ignored the role of smaller states in grand policy goals (e.g., the Obama “pivot to Asia”). The U.S. tendency to make either “pivots” here or “recalibrations” there, as opposed to sustained vigilance in all directions, has caused smaller states to find themselves outside Washington’s field of vision.

For the Solomon Islands, beset by poverty and civil unrest against the Sogavare government, the failure by the U.S. and its major allies to offer financial and security assistance has made China attractive. Indeed, in roughly the same period when Australian foreign aid to the Solomons decreased by 43 percent, the Solomon Islands broke with its 37-year-old policy of relations with Taiwan to recognize the PRC, and has since accepted millions of dollars in Chinese assistance. China is deeply unpopular in the Solomon Islands, as Sogavare has realized after fierce protests. However, lacking U.S. support, he takes what China offers.

“The U.S. has deprioritized not merely the South Pacific,” said Kroenig, “but Latin America, Southeast Asia, and Africa,” all while China’s military activity in each of these regions increases. It now has a space station in Argentina, a listening post in Equatorial Guinea, and a full-fledged military base in Djibouti. Akin to the role played by the Third World in the Cold War, these may be up-and-coming battlefields for great-power competition. Right now, the U.S. is ceding ground.

America could still regain some of that ground. The Solomon Islands can’t discount the U.S. — a major economic and military player in the Pacific — though it must now play both sides. The Solomons’ deal with China, a brewing crisis for Australia, should signal to Washington that, when competing with China, no nation, not even the smallest, can be ignored.

“I talk to other officials in the region, such as the Singaporeans,” Kroenig told NR, and “they want good relations with both of us.” Many of these states are democracies and thus natural U.S. allies, but they can’t ignore the “800-pound gorilla in their backyard” as it maneuvers to become the region’s hegemon. As the conflict between Pacific powers heats up, everybody wants to be on good terms with the belligerents. Nobody wants to be the next Guadalcanal.