Is Australia even capable of defending itself?
On Friday, it was announced that Australian freedom is on its deathbed. Yet the weekend press glossed over it and instead cheered wildly as Buddy Franklin kicked his 1000th goal. Hooray!
I refer to the imminent announcement of a new security deal between the Solomon Islands and China. After alarm spread through the corridors of power, Honiara made it quite clear it intends to go right ahead with the deal:
The Solomon Islands government issued a statement late on Friday, saying while it valued its 2017 security treaty with Australia, the proposed agreement with China was consistent with its “friends to all, enemies to none” foreign policy.
“The government recognise the state’s responsibility of protecting its people from fear and to live in dignity. Broadening partnerships is needed to improve the quality of lives of our people and address soft and hard security threats facing the country,” the statement said.
“The government is expanding the country’s security arrangement with more countries. The proposed security arrangements have a development dimension to it, covering humanitarian needs of the country besides maintaining the rule of law.
“In diversifying the country’s security partnership including with China, the government is working to sign off and implement a number of development frameworks with China to further create a secure and safe environment for local and foreign investments including Civil Aviation Services Agreement with China, Expanding Trade under Non Reciprocal Trading arrangement with China and sending more students to China for tertiary education in addition to those that left our shores this week.
“Solomon Islands continue to preserve its Security Agreement with Australia as it develops and deepen its relations with all partners including with China.”
Only two pieces in the MSM on the weekend were revealing of the depth of malaise. Laura Tingle mentioned it and Crikey offered a tid bit:
Late last year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sent Australian troops to Honiara to help curb civil unrest in the capital. The source of that unrest was broad dissatisfaction with Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s leadership — issues around corruption, lack of service delivery, and controls on the media.
But another key source of malcontent was Sogavare’s increasingly close relationship with China. For decades, the Solomon Islands had recognised Taiwan’s independence, but switched that recognition to the People’s Republic of China in late 2019.
According to Griffith University Pacific expert Tess Newton Cain, that move was controversial, in part because of Taiwan’s historic support for the country, but also since Sogavare was viewed to have “railroaded” through the change without properly hearing advice from relevant inquiries.
China’s relations with the Solomon Islands have been deepening, particularly in the areas of infrastructure provision.
“What we’ve seen since 2019 was an increasing closeness between Beijing and Honiara, with increased infrastructure particularly around the 2023 Pacific Games,” Newton Cain said.
“We’ve also seen a deepening security relationship, particularly around the provision of personnel.”
Earlier this year, China provided police officers to help train local law enforcement in the aftermath of the riots. Last week, a shipment of fake guns sent from China led to controversy about Beijing trying to funnel arms into the country. When Sogavare, who drove the China pivot, faced an unsuccessful no-confidence motion last year, he reportedly used a Chinese slush fund to buy support.
The Solomons are very poor and China is buying it or, more precisely, buying its elite. Sound familiar? There is more on the subtleties of Solomon’s polices at The Conversation.
After the near-silent weekend, The Australian dropped a clangor this morning:
Solomon Islands Opposition Leader Matthew Wale says he warned Australia last year the country’s Sogavare government was negotiating a security agreement with Beijing that could lead to the establishment of a Chinese base there.
Mr Wale said he issued the warning to Australian high commissioner Lachlan Strahan seven months ago, and watched Mr Strahan take notes on their conversation.
“As far back as August last year, I told the Australian high commissioner that there were discussions on something that would lead to a security agreement that may be open to security assets and shore base facilities was in the making,” he told The Australian.
“I was already at that time aware (of the plan) because I was informed by somebody who was in those discussions.”
“At that stage internal discussions between key ministers were happening, and exploratory – that’s the way it was put to me – ‘exploratory discussions’ were being held with China.”
Another prominent Solomon Islands opposition MP, Peter Kenilorea, said he issued a similar warning in the middle of last year, though in less specific terms.
“I did tell the Australian high commission mid-last year that I felt Sogavare was leading us towards a situation that would justify closer security ties with China,” he told The Australian.
Australian strategists have warned the framework agreement between the two governments, revealed last week, would offer an “open door” to a permanent Chinese military presence 2000km off Australia’s northeast coast.
…Mr Wale said he found it “a little frustrating, really” that Australia had failed to head off the plan, given it had advance warning of the negotiations.
Opposition foreign affairs spokeswoman Penny Wong said Mr Morrison needed to explain when the government knew about the proposed Solomon Islands-China security pact, “because it certainly seems like it was caught on the back foot when the draft agreement emerged last week”.
…The Morrison government announced last week, after the Chinese security agreement was made public, that Australia’s international assistance force would remain in the Solomon Islands until the end of 2023.
Mr Wale said there was a danger now that Mr Sogavare would push ahead with his publicly stated plan to defer next year’s national election, under the cover of a security blanket provided by Australian and potentially Chinese personnel.
He said Australia had allowed itself to be “hoodwinked” by Mr Sogavare into providing security forces to quell riots against him last year, declaring “there is no doubt Australia saved Sogavare in November of 2021”.
He said if the security agreement was signed, the Solomon Islands would become a “vassal state” to China. It would also escalate the tensions between the nation’s most populous province, Malaita, and the national government, which led to the civil unrest.
“Malaita sees this as a direct threat, that (Mr Sogavare) wants China here so they can take on Malaita, and put Malaita in its place,” Mr Wale said.
“So I think this is a direct threat to our national unity.”
Mr Sogavare has declared he wants to delay the 2023 election because of a clash with the Pacific Games, which the country will host in November and December next year.
He needs a three-quarters majority vote in parliament to change the constitution to extend his term.
Mr Wale predicted Mr Sogavare would secure the necessary votes using Chinese money, as he did last year to fend off a no-confidence vote in his leadership.
So, Aussie troops are now protecting the transition of the Solomons into a Chinese military base that will permanently threaten the Aussie military. I mean, for real, Canberra?
Throughout this period, PM Morisson has bashed China yet done nothing. Throughout, DM Dutton has warned about China yet done nothing. Now Labor is blaming the Government but what would it do?
I wrote my Friday piece about Australia preparing to invade the Solomons out of fear that the press would not get the importance of the issue. I hoped to shock people awake. The excellent Frank Chung picked it up as News.com and it went viral from there. But the subsequent silence is terrifying.
So, let me repeat what this deal means for Australia:
- Missiles and military aircraft within minutes of every eastern Australian city.
- A permanent gun to Canberra’s head on every issue.
- Hegemonic power for China over all Melanesia with formidable reach across the entire South Pacific.
- The transition of those states into CCP satraps via increased migration, bribery of the elite, and hollowing out of democratic processes.
This includes Australia and New Zealand.
Sure, this will not happen overnight. But hegemonic dominance is Beijing’s plan and the construction of its first base for force projection is the crucial step change towards the goal:
- It shifts the normatives for all Pacific Islands and Islanders.
- It makes the entire South Pacific a region of strategic contest instead of a US protectorate and democratic millpond.
- It renders redundant Australia’s nuclear submarine defence strategy, as well as substituting Australia as the key strategic partner in island stability.
You can panic early with these things and stop them from happening or you can panic late when your chance has either slipped away or the cost of fighting it is so high that it is unbearable.
That’s where we come to one other weekend report worth mentioning:
Jonathan Pryke, of the Lowy Institute think-tank in Sydney, told nine.com.au any deal between Honiara and Beijing that enabled Chinese warships to be based in the region would be a major shift in the balance of power.
“That would be a red line for Australia in the Pacific … and it would be a phenomenal change in the way we see our national security,” Dr Pryke said.
He was speaking after a leaked document revealed the Solomon Islands is in discussions with China to allow the superpower’s military forces to be stationed in the Pacific nation, less than 2000 kilometres from Australia’s coastline.
Dr Pryke cautioned that it was only a draft agreement and Australia should not overreact to it, but its leaking exposed Beijing’s true ambitions.
“It can be seen as a gift for Canberra … this reveals China’s goals in black and white,” he said.
Did we need another reminder? Surely the 14 conditions to end democracy presented in 2020 to Canberra by China was gift enough. The Solomons deal is the weaponising of these goals:
So what to do?
In my professional life, I have had the privilege of working with two titans of Australian geopolitical thought in Owen Harries and Coral Bell. These two were globally recognised for their subtlety of reasoning and depth of knowledge.
They represented opposing schools of thought for international relations. Harries was the master of “realism”:
Realism is one of the dominant schools of thought in international relations theory, theoretically formalising the Realpolitik statesmanship of early modern Europe. Although a highly diverse body of thought, it is unified by the belief that world politics is always and necessarily a field of conflict among actors pursuing wealth and power. The theories of realism are contrasted by the cooperative ideals of liberalism.
Coral Bell was a master of “internationalism”:
Internationalism is a political principle that advocates greater political or economic cooperation among states and nations.[1] It is associated with other political movements and ideologies, but can also reflect a doctrine, belief system, or movement in itself.
In reality, these two disciplines are never discrete but trend and weave together. They are strategies of geopolitics as much as they are philosophies of it.
If they were alive, what would Owen and Coral recommend Australia do, if that is not too presumptive to ask?
Coral would counsel that Australia and New Zealand should work to bring the South Pacific together as a concert of micro-states in support of a liberal outcome for all against the encroaching great power. This would have to take in all dimensions of the political economy:
- It should place Australia and New Zealand at the centre of regional commerce with generous trading and investment rules for islands. The region must moved beyond failed states in the sun exploited for resources, cheap labour and footballers. Much fuller integration with big investment flows into the islands and a much greater attempt to integrate islanders with ANZ education, high-level labour outcomes and trade.
- It should seek to promote the development of island civil society if not with shared identity at least shared liberal values.
- It should bring all islands together in a militarised security pact that supports these outcomes and guarantees mutual security.
- It should address climate change aggressively.
We are a long way from any of that today but there are structures in place to make it happen if we work with determination and speed.
Owen would be much more bloody-minded about it. He would accept the challenge of the CCP building of bases as the natural course of events and seek to actively undermine it:
- If soft power persuasion did not work then he might counsel engineering a coup within Honiara itself. Clearly, there is significant indigenous opposition to the current pro-China regime.
- If the coup failed, he would recommend a limited incursion to bring about regime change in Honiara. Harries was not a neo-conservative and would have no intention to station troops permanently and risk imperial overreach. It would be an in and out operation to install a government more sympathetic to liberal interests. If that resulted in civil war then it should be conducted at arm’s length via logistical support. A key maxim of realism is never to get bogged down in other people’s wars.
My own view is that Australia and New Zealand should get together immediately to outline a plan that brings together these two approaches. Australia is the hard power leader of the South Pacific and New Zealand is the soft power leader. The US can act as a guarantor of both.
We should call upon all Pacific islands to join a liberal pact of self-protection that includes huge incentives from both developed economies outlined above.
Once that is in place, pressure must be applied by all to Honiara to reject the Chinese bribe. If it refuses then it becomes a threat to the entire forum’s liberal goals. A coalition of island forces is dispatched to the Solomons to occupy the capital for the period it takes to undertake new elections in which CCP funding is banned.
If none of this is possible, or only partially so, then Australia and New Zealand do it anyway with a coalition of the willing. It must include the US to keep the Chinese navy out of it.
This might upset some other island nations, and risk their courtship of Bejing, but it will equally stand as a warning against doing so. If others ignore that warning then we repeat the process.
It may sound unstable and unfortunate. But that’s not our choice to make. There are few clean outcomes in international relations and a regime of kicking the can (that is, island politics) may not be the ideal solution but it is a viable answer for the national interest.
Sooner a bunch of chaotic island states than a systematic occupation of the South Pacific by a communist overlord that will impose by force the 14 conditions to end democracy.
In the end, it is Bejing that is forcing these choices upon free peoples by building a bridgehead of tyranny into the Solomons. Our only choice is what to do about it.
We fight for our freedoms or we cheer on Buddy as he unwittingly kicks them out of the park.
