A few months ago, the United States’ Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, during the course of her first official visit to the Asia Pacific region, told the media that the US was “not ceding” the Pacific to anybody.
Apart from the fact that it was a poor choice of words (for one can cede only if one has possession of something in the first place – and the US does not possess the Pacific by any stretch of imagination) it betrayed real fears of being upstaged in the region by the regional giant who is on a fast track to becoming a global giant: China.
Perhaps the word was also used to convey a sense of comfort to its allies in the region; that the US still meant business in the region even if had been distracted geopolitically, stretched economically and severely criticised domestically because of its fruitless engagement in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade.
If there was any “we mean business” firmness that Ms Clinton sought to convey in what she said a few months ago in the usual vein of the United States’ big brotherly manner, President Barack Obama’s pronouncements when he visited the Asia Pacific region, by contrast, had more emotional content. With his eloquent, straight from the heart approach – which indeed is his well-acknowledged forte – he sought to project himself as a part of the region.
Speaking at Suntory Hall in Tokyo, the US President said, “I am an American President who was born in Hawaii and lived in Indonesia as a boy. My sister Maya was born in Jakarta, and later married a Chinese-Canadian. My mother spent nearly a decade working in the villages of Southeast Asia, helping women buy a sewing machine or an education that might give them a foothold in the world economy. So the Pacific Rim has helped shape my view of the world.”
On a more tangible note, during the course of the visit, the United States also announced its assent to participate in negotiations for an Asia-Pacific free trade agreement with itself.
So, further to naming the year 2007 the Year of the Pacific and setting in motion one of the single biggest infrastructural projects in the region – the US$ 15 billion military base in Guam that will take shape in the years to 2014 – the US has begun to actively focus its commitment in what is now indisputably the region of the future. Make no mistake: the twenty first century belongs to Asia and, by extension, to the Pacific.
Several recent developments have conspired to make the Pacific the world’s hottest property. It is one of the last unexplored regions of the world; it is incredibly rich both in mineral content beneath the ocean floor and teeming with life above it; the recent changes in the UN Law of the Sea will greatly expand the exclusive economic zones of the far flung island states scattered across the surface of the world’s largest geophysical feature – because of which it presents great opportunity for expanding geopolitical ambitions, particularly of energy and resource hungry fast developing economies like China and India.
Laying your bets on the Asia Pacific region is therefore a complete no brainer.
But the painful truth, as the US must now know, is that it is rather a little too late to do so now. Both it and the resident bloc of western nations in the Pacific – Australia and New Zealand – have frittered away their longstanding first mover advantage of having been here in the Pacific for decades to the Asian powers.
This they have achieved with a fateful combination of condescending attitudes, high handedness, neglect and generally taking for granted that the Pacific and the small, economically and geopolitically powerless island states, many of which are their former colonies, to be their backyard over which they could walk all over at will, with the lure of that convenient and cheap instrument called aid. Western powers have always appeared smug in their belief that the long and historic ties they have had with the islands were vouchsafed to them for eternity.
They couldn’t have been more wrong. And now it’s too late.
The deepening imprint of the Chinese juggernaut is there for all to see – not just in the Pacific Islands but also all over the world. With trillions of dollars worth of cash at its disposal, China has the shopping budget not just to buy up the most expensive real estate in any country and the biggest of corporate conglomerates anywhere but also entire nations, if ever it found a way to do so.
Already it is the largest single investor in several countries in Africa, South America and parts of Asia and has jockeyed itself into a strong position throughout the Pacific Islands, thanks in no small way to the apathetic attitude of the regional western economic powers – New Zealand and Australia. It has stepped up its investments in the capitalist heart of the west, buying up assets in the US, UK and Australia, triggering off demands for hitherto unheard of protectionist measures for guarding “sensitive assets” from businesspeople and lawmakers.
It now commands respect and pulls its considerable weight at all international forums, whether political or economic. The world’s leaders have no choice now but to grudgingly acknowledge that the Chinese dragon is here to stay and simply cannot be wished away. It is a part and parcel of the landscape – and in the case of the Pacific, oceanscape – and is poised to take a progressively bigger role in their economic milieu, like it or not.
One of the fallouts of the Fiji situation and the extremely muddle headed response to it from Canberra and Wellington has hastened China’s increased relevance as development and economic partner not just in Fiji but, by virtue of it being a gateway to the Pacific Islands region, to the rest of the South Pacific island nations as well.
China is well on the path to consolidating its position in the Pacific over next year or two. With improving relations with Taiwan, divisions over the support from Pacific Island states will become increasingly irrelevant.
Whether by necessity or design, a country like Fiji, all things considered, particularly from the standpoint of its present leadership that has been left marooned by its traditional western partners, seems to have done the right thing in forging closer ties with the world’s most formidably growing superpower.