New Solomon Islands PM lessens heat of Asia-Pacific power competition cauldron

But as a friend of all, enemy to none, Jeremiah Manele faces a battle for sovereignty like his predecessor, as allegations of interference and disinformation fly in the archipelago.

USS Sampson creates wakes while performing “S” turns off the coast of the Solomon Islands in December 2016. The missile destroyer was deployed to the Western Pacific as part of the US Pacific Fleet-led initiative to extend the command and control functions of Third Fleet into the region. Photo: US Navy/ Bryan Jackson

This story was first published by Consortium News

The Solomon Islands’ security pact and economic ties with China will remain intact after the election of Jeremiah Manele as the country’s new prime minister, with sovereignty and development his key concerns.

Manele, a former foreign minister in Manasseh Sogavare’s outgoing government, needed the support of independent MPs to form a government after his Unity and Responsibility (OUR) Party surprised many by losing its outright majority. It took 15 seats in the April 17 election, down from 37 at the last election.

Western pundits have cast the new leader as a less “divisive” figure than his “pro-China” predecessor, but many see Manele facing the same difficulties as Sogavare, with the US and its sub-imperial, regional allies squaring up to Beijing to try to contain its rising power.

China and the US, with its Pacific allies, had a vested interest in the new government’s political formation, with major implications for US plans in the region. Some members of the opposition had vowed to revisit a security deal with China signed by Sogavare last year that caught the US, Australia and New Zealand on the back foot.

The election was marred by allegations of US interference and counter charges that leaked documents picked up by Chinese and Russian media and shared locally amounted to disinformation about Washington’s supposed intentions. 

The stories were based on leaks from an unnamed individual said to have been embedded within a US-funded NGO where the source was able to access policy documents, expense sheets and minutes of meetings. 

The unverified documents point to the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the non-profit International Foundation for Election Systems (IFES), the International Republican Institute (IRI) and National Democratic Institute (NDI) all allegedly coalescing around support for so-called democracy-promoting activities as part of the Pacific Islands Program in the Solomon Islands (SDGPI).

The program is administered locally by the Solomon Islands Election and Political Processes Program (SIEPP) and operates under the direction of the USAID’s Consortium for Election and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS).

Victoria University of Wellington associate education professor, Kabini Sanga, told In Context there had been a “sustained and dynamic political engagement on the island” before the election.

Sanga, who has held a number of senior education sector roles in the Solomon Islands, says he had been unconcerned about Chinese or US interference over individual constituency’s electoral results.

“Who gets voted in is still largely explained by relational and material-sharing investments in voters’ lives, over time. Positive educational initiatives over recent years have also countered “the unethical ‘big man’ politics of wealth-sharing to candidates’ supporters.”

However, given what is at stake with great power competition in the region and taking into account a history of US electoral intervention and regime-change activities elsewhere in the world, any questions over the possibility that US agencies are playing dirty in the Solomon Islands will be taken as seriously by politicians in the archipelago as allegations of Chinese or Russian disinformation.

US President Joe Biden (right) during Pacific Island country summit at the State Department on September 29, 2022, with Solomon Islands’ Sogavare (third from right). Photo: White House/Adam Schultz

Several US agencies are operating in the country. The Millenium Challenge Corporation (MCC), for example, with a US$20 million grant program signed off in 2020, has focused on addressing what it sees as mismanagement of resources like forestry in the Solomon Islands, and a “lack of secure access to land” it says is limiting the growth of tourism.

USAID-linked activity is more focused on what it says is strengthening of electoral processes and democratic participation in the country. As with USAID engagements in other parts of the world, the full extent of its activities are in question. But so too is the authenticity of the documents released to the Global Times and Sputnik.  

The leaker claims the CEPPS is interfering by building a network of US-friendly civil society groups, media and opposition figures, using surveys with flawed methodologies to frame the government as lacking in key areas and to create campaign issues for groups in Malaita province hostile to the government to run with.

Most controversially, one of the documents references CEPPS conducting “protest intervention activity” in Honiara in 2021 - after Sogavare’s diplomatic switch of allegiances from Taiwan to China — to supposedly “test” local appetite for political change and determine the government’s “ability to manage conflict”. Sogavare’s decision was met with riots and an attempt to storm Parliament.

Documents and stories ‘disinformation’

On the eve of the Solomon Islands election, US ambassador to the Solomon Islands, Ann Marie Yastishock, said in a statement: 

“We strongly refute allegations being made in known propaganda outlets that claim USAID and the US Government has sought to influence the upcoming election in Solomon Islands. These and any similar allegations are categorically false and detract from USAID’s highly professionalized and non-partisan support of free, fair, and credible elections in the Solomon Islands and elsewhere in the world.”

The Australian Strategic Policy Institute, a Canberra-based think tank linked to Western security agencies, argued without evidence in article on its website The Strategist that “Russia and China had co-ordinated spreading disinformation before the Solomon Islands elections”, with stories in an attempt to sway the election with baseless lies and create a false narrative of US regime change activity.

Documents obtained by In Context purport to show minutes of two meetings in late November 2023 attended by Western diplomatic staff and Solomon Island opposition figures.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power giving a a keynote address at the University of the South Pacific in Suva where she stressed the US government’s partnership model of respecting the independence of Pacific Island nations, August 15, 2023. (Photo: Boss Communication Agency for USAID, Flickr, CC BY-NC 2.0

Minutes from one of the alleged meetings on November 20, 2023 record Solomon Islands Democratic Party leader Matthew Wale and Opposition MP Peter Kenilorea Jr in talks with a named US State Department official, USAID staffers, as well as named New Zealand and Australian diplomats. The minutes purport to record Wale discussing funding of groups, the success of media campaigns and general discussions over possibility of protests and violence at election time.

The authenticity of the document or veracity of the meeting minutes could not be verified. New Zealand’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) was asked if one of  its officials had attended the November 20 meeting and whether such activity could be perceived as political interference.

In an emailed reply, a MFAT spokesperson said: 

“In the lead up to elections, including across the Pacific, it is usual New Zealand diplomatic practice to speak with a range of candidates, civil society organisations and partner countries. MFAT refutes any characterisation that this is inappropriate.”

Foreign Minister Winston Peters was in Honiara this week leading a delegation in talks with Manele’s new coalition government. The delegation also visited Papua New Guinea where Peters had talks with Prime Minister James Marape, which included defence and regional security issues. He was also expected to visit Vanuatu and Tuvalu.

Continued ties to China

It is expected that Manele will continue to look to China for trade and help with economic development, while also striving to protect the country’s sovereignty in the face of increasingly hostile great power competition.

Van Jackson, a professor of international relations at Victoria University of Wellington, says this may be unrealistic. “As China’s growth slows and its capital account surpluses diminish, its interest (and ability) to engage in overseas lending will wane,” he says.  

“And indeed, that’s what we’ve seen since around 2016 — a gradual ebbing in the looseness of its lending to the Pacific.  I guess what I’m saying is that betting on China to be your source of economic growth may not be realistic in the mid-term or long-term, even though it made sense the past five-to-10 years.  

“In that context, the approach of ‘friend to all, enemy to none’ — which pretty much every small nation in Asia and the Pacific subscribes to more or less — is rational but might also be a challenge to sustain.  

“Friend to all, enemy to none strategies are stabilizing to the extent that outside powers respect them. But Australia is functioning as a full-throated sub-imperial power on behalf of US primacy, the US itself is expanding its presence in ways both formal — security cooperation, military training — and informal — through civil society organisations like National Democratic Institute and International Republican Institute.  

“China’s economic and security footprint has been expanding too. The ability to maintain independence from outside powers is really key to a strategy of friend to all, enemy to none, but is that possible? I’m skeptical.”

Map indicating locations of China and Solomon Islands. Photo: Sangjinhwa, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain

Economic issues will be a priority for Manele, with jobs, services and infrastructure key indicators to his success or failure in government. Inability to deliver on any of these fronts will be exploited by the opposition, whether they are supported by Western agencies or not. 

It is clear Manele and his party are skeptical of any lasting benefits of accepting exclusive arrangements with Western partners. It is not hard to see why. 

“Aid comes in different colours,” says Pascal Lottaz, assistant professor for neutrality studies at Tokyo’s Waseda Institute for Advanced Study. “Any form of economic aid is a way for countries to influence others, but models of aid can radically differ.”  

He said the US has built a post-war system with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in which the US has controlling stakes:

“Through these, they then funnel money and aid into certain countries but in return, make strong political demands, the neoliberal discourse, basically — you have to open your countries, give us your raw materials.

“This debt trap is then being used in order to demand more structural adjustments in order for debt relief and making these countries dependent on the US dollar. That is a very clever strategy, not a nice one, but a clever one.”

Lottaz says China gives aid in its own currency and uses Chinese companies to build infrastructure while creating a circle of dependency with the need to maintain these assets’ infrastructure with Chinese know-how. 

“It is always an economical tool, beneficial, usually, for both sides,” he says.

However, the outcome is qualitatively different from those elicited by Western aid agreements.

“The Chinese don’t have a history of using this to get political leverage inside the individual countries, just like the Japanese. The Japanese and the Chinese don’t try to get regime change or to get new policies in these countries done through this aid,” Lottaz says. “That’s something that the Americans have been doing a lot, and Europe by way of interacting with that.”

US policy goes back to 1950s

The Solomon Islands archipelago, with a population of over 740,000 people, consists of six main islands and over 900 smaller ones in a strategically important location lying on what US strategists call the “Second Island Chain,” separating China from the open Pacific Ocean.

The “Island Chain Strategy” first formulated in the 1950s, aims to project US power by surrounding China with naval bases to achieve a strategic military upper hand and gain a stranglehold on China’s commercial shipping lanes.

There have been a number of recent moves by the US to form naval alliances among China’s neighbours, with joint naval patrols by Philippines, Japan and the US in the disputed South China Sea.

The AUKUS nuclear submarine alliance between the US, UK and Australia could be at the forefront of any hot war with China, whom the US is finding increasingly hard to compete with in the global market.

A problem for the West

Manasseh Sogavare during one of his previous periods as prime minster, with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in July 2016. Photo: President of the Republic of China, Wikimedia Commons

Sogavare, who served four stints as prime minister, became a major fly in the ointment for the global hegemon’s plans after being voted into power in April 2019. His move closer to China was driven by what he judged to be more favourable development opportunities, free from the strings of neo-liberal economic “reforms” Western aid typically attaches. 

Sogavare dropped diplomatic ties with Taiwan in September 2019, the self-governing island that China claims as an integral part of its territory. A month later he signed up to China’s trillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative.

The move away from Taiwan sparked violence that included the torching of a police station, attacks on businesses in Honiara’s Chinatown and the attempted storming of Parliament in an attempt to oust Sogavare. 

Sogavare blamed opposition leader Wale and a “foreign country” for orchestrating the violence. The trouble was quelled with the help of Australian police after a request for help.

Australia has operated the peace-keeping Regional Assistance Mission (RAMSI) to the divided nation since 2003 in response to tensions and political violence between armed groups on the islands of Guadalcanal, where the capital is based, and Malaita, Wales’ electoral stronghold.

“We all know who they are,” Sogavare told the ABC at the time, adding his decision to switch diplomatic allegiances put the Solomons “on the right side of history.”

Sogavare set Western alarm bells ringing further in June last year after signing a bilateral security pact with China that would see China build a pier, allowing its naval ships to stop for supplies. China also agreed to deploy its police to the island and help build the country’s own policing capacity. 

The US, Australia and New Zealand released a joint statement at the time stating the agreement posed a threat to “a free and open Pacific.” Beijing has denied conspiring to have a military foothold in the islands.

Diplomatic relations with the West reached a nadir in March last year, when the Solomon Star reported on March 4, 2023 that there was a US-backed plan to assassinate Sogavare.

The report came just two weeks before a visit to the Solomon Islands by US State Department’s Kurt Campbell, seen as one of the chief architects of Washington’s foreign policy in the Asia-Pacific.

Campbell was forced to answer press enquiries about the report, which he called “disinformation and smears,” and which the US embassy dismissed as a “fantasy.” Talk of an assassination plot against Sogavare first surfaced in April 2022.

Sogavare had increasingly kept the US at a distance, notably declining to attend a meeting in Washington with US President Joe Biden alongside other Pacific leaders last September, telling media he wasn’t prepared to be “lectured”.