China’s Ambitions Are Endangering the Pacific Islands

I n September and October of 1944, 28,000 brave American marines and Army infantry ventured into what became known as the “forgotten corner of hell.” Initially, U.S. Marine Corps major general William Rupertus predicted that it would take less than a week to capture the South Pacific island of Peleliu, but in the end it took 74 days to achieve victory against the island’s Japanese occupiers. A combination of stiff Japanese resistance and poor American planning resulted in “the toughest battle of the Pacific war,” according to Lieutenant General Roy Geiger.

Today, 80 years after the Battle of Peleliu, the Pacific Islands are once again becoming vital to American national security in the face of China’s malign advances throughout the Pacific. Already, the U.S. has significantly “reengaged” with the region, but to date it still lacks a long-term strategy for advancing its national interests there. This is a mistake. To safeguard the U.S. and counter China’s advances, Washington must develop and implement a Pacific Islands strategy that guides policy-makers’ decision-making and resource allocations for years to come.

That strategy must begin with a clear assessment of America’s No. 1 adversary, the People’s Republic of China, and its intentions in the region. At the heart of U.S.–China competition in the Pacific Islands is access to physical territory throughout the region. If Beijing inks security agreements with some Pacific Island states that grant it access to their airfields and ports, that better positions China to challenge America’s defensive architecture along the first, second, and third island chains.

China is certainly trying to do just that. The March 2022 leak of a draft security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands alerted both America and its allies that the Pacific Islands are now a zone of great-power competition. In May 2022, Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited seven Pacific Island countries to pursue a regional policing and cybersecurity agreement. Although the agreement did not materialize, the message was clear: China’s ambitions in the Pacific Islands are growing and threaten U.S. and allied security interests.

The U.S. is racing to counter China’s moves. In the last three years alone, the U.S. has committed to providing more than $8 billion to the Pacific Islands. Most of that, $7.2 billion, came from Congress’s renewal of provisions related to the Compact of Free Association agreements. These agreements provide the U.S. exclusive military access to the Federated States of Micronesia, the Marshall Islands, and Palau — access that could prove critical during a war in the Pacific.

To streamline U.S. and allied efforts, the Biden administration released the Pacific Partnership Strategy, the first-ever national and public U.S. strategy for the Pacific Islands, in 2022. This was a step in the right direction, but the document’s primary shortcoming is that reads more as a foreign-policy pitch to a diplomat from Fiji than as a strategy document tailored to American policy-makers. In other words, the document answered the question of what America can do for the region rather than what America wants to see in the region and how it can bring that outcome about.

A more robust strategy is needed. Putting one together, however, will require the White House to be more realistic and candid about the threats China poses to the region and its implications for U.S. interests. One good place to start would be for Washington to simply increase its physical presence in the Pacific Islands. Right now, America’s embassy in Fiji still provides consular and diplomatic services to Tuvalu, Nauru, and Kiribati — despite the fact that the latter two countries are more than 1,000 miles of ocean away from Fiji. In 2022, Vice President Harris pledged that the United States would give the region the “diplomatic attention and support” it deserves and build an embassy in Kiribati, but two years later that has yet to happen.

In addition to supporting the construction and staffing of embassies throughout the region, the U.S. president — whoever it may be — should go to the region, ideally visiting one of America’s Compact allies, such as Palau. No sitting U.S. president has ever visited a Pacific Island country, a concerning fact considering that the U.S. is obligated to defend its Compact allies during an attack. General Secretary Xi Jinping, for his part, has met one-on-one with multiple Pacific leaders.

To backup this increased diplomatic presence, the U.S. should also expand the Pacific Deterrence Initiative — which is designed to “focus resources on key military capabilities to deter China” — to include non-traditional security cooperation, such as upgrading regional harbors and airfields in interested Pacific Island countries that the U.S. could potentially use for its own security operations. Such an effort would bring needed and welcome infrastructure improvements to the region and allow security forces to work more efficiently with American units, especially the U.S. Coast Guard, which already coordinates with Pacific law enforcement to crack down on illegal fishing and drug trafficking.

Of course, China can also offer Pacific Island countries these things. To distinguish itself from Beijing, then, a key factor in Washington’s approach must be its respect for national sovereignty and interests. One way to do that in the Pacific Islands specifically is to mitigate the realized or potential effects of climate change, which affects this fragile region more than most other parts of the globe. For example, Washington can win goodwill in the region by proposing projects that provide environmentally resilient infrastructure, pushing environmental-management efforts that combat invasive species, and providing assistance in the wake of natural disasters.

Furthermore, the U.S. and its allies should consider providing medical services and training that support domestic hospitals, encouraging public-private partnerships that support local industries, including tourism, and completing infrastructure projects that support local economies and expand capacity that the U.S. can utilize, such as ports. By striking the right balance between addressing the region’s identified concerns and advancing its own national-security interests, the U.S. can present itself as a partner of choice for Pacific Island countries that supports win-win engagements and does not utilize China’s coercive tactics.

Eighty years ago, the Battle of Peleliu resulted in an American victory, but it came at the terrible cost of more than 10,000 U.S. casualties across a two-month battle. The U.S. can honor the citizens who gave their lives in Peleliu by successfully implementing a long-term strategy, guided by its national interests and engagements with its Pacific partners, that keeps the Pacific prosperous and safe from America’s most dangerous adversary.