China and the U.S. Face Off Over the Solomon Islands

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The United States will dispatch high-level officials to the Solomon Islands this week as the White House attempts to stave off a rapid turn toward China. Kurt Campbell, U.S. President Joe Biden’s top Asia national security official, and Daniel Kritenbrink, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, will make the journey as part of a trip that includes stops in Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Although the Solomons are far from the U.S. mainland, they sit in a key strategic chokepoint in the Pacific, just over 1,000 miles from Australia and 3,600 miles from Hawaii. A prospective deal between the islands and China has set off alarm bells among allies in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which includes Australia, India, Japan, and the United States.

The Solomons’ drift toward Beijing began in 2019, when Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare switched the country’s allegiance from Taiwan to China. The move prompted Taipei to cut off aid to the islands’ most populous province and helped stir resentment against Sogavare that culminated in deadly riots in the country last year.

Those ties are about to go further, according to a leaked draft security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands that emerged in March. The potential deal would allow Chinese navy ships to use the Solomons’ ports for “logistical replenishment” and possibly for Beijing to send security forces, if called upon, “to assist in maintaining social order.”

Although replenishment deals are not unusual between countries with large navies, the prospect of a Chinese military base on the islands has caused the most concern. Solomon Islands leaders have denied that bases form part of the agreement.

Regardless of the still vague details, the situation is considered serious enough to send Washington heavyweights to the Pacific. “The security deal between Beijing and Honiara has Washington and Canberra spooked,” Greg Poling, an expert on Southeast Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told Foreign Policy. “And so that explains why Kurt Campbell and Dan Kritenbrink are rushing out right now.”

Poling added that the hasty nature of the trip belies other, more long-term efforts to engage with Pacific island nations, dating back to the Trump administration. Biden’s team has renewed those engagements, with the recent appointment of Joseph Yun as the special presidential envoy for compact negotiations meant to keep the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau on Washington’s good side.

The visit comes as Western pressure builds for the Solomons to tear up the agreement. Zed Seselja, Australia’s minister for international development and the Pacific, visited the islands last week, asking “respectfully” for Sogavare “to consider not signing the agreement.”

Campbell’s trip is also an indication that the United States isn’t content to let Quad partner Australia handle diplomacy in its backyard alone. Before the draft security agreement leaked, U.S. officials were already laying the groundwork to reopen the U.S. Embassy on the Solomon Islands, which had been closed since 1993, a move U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken confirmed himself on a visit to Fiji in February.

With the Solomons getting plenty of attention from global powers, will it encourage others in the region to play Beijing and Washington off each other? “I think that’s really hard to do. And I’m not really sure there’s anybody in the region who’s done it well,” Poling said, citing the tricky balancing acts of Cambodia, Sri Lanka, and the Philippines. “Playing both sides is just not as easy as it used to be. And this is really ripping the Solomons political environment apart in a way that I don’t think other Pacific island states are going to want to mimic.”

In the meantime, Washington is left playing catch-up, at a time when it’s not the only option in the region. “This is not the Cold War. The U.S. does not get to dictate which side of an Iron Curtain countries land on,” Poling said. “The idea that you’re going to box out now the world’s second-largest navy, soon to be the world largest navy, is just absurd.”

“So the question is, can we make sure that as China does develop a global navy with a global footprint, that countries signing access agreements are doing them in ways that don’t circumscribe their autonomy, that the strings attached aren’t so onerous that they damage the host country and ultimately damage the U.S.?”