CHINA'S SECURITY PACT WITH SOLOMON ISLANDS HAS POKED MORRISON SQUARELY IN THE EYE
0China's security pact with Solomon Islands has poked Morrison squarely in the eye
You've got to hand it to Beijing. It may be playing the long game to displace American world order. but it also knows exactly when to strike. No better time than when America's great southern ally is in the constitutional caretaker grey zone of an election campaign. Beijing's audacity has embarrassed Scott Morrison and exposed his own recent rhetorical overreach. His claim of foreign policy superiority has been tarnished. By inking a security pact with Solomon Islands. China furthers two objectives. Firstly. it establishes a basis on which it could potentially build a Chinese naval base in the South Pacific. Secondly. the agreement is a strategic hit on Australia and the United States which talked up its Pacific 'pivot' more than a decade ago under Barack Obama. The US hasn't even had an embassy in Honiara for 29 years. With exquisite timing. Chinese President Xi Jinping has poked Morrison squarely in the eye. An electoral trump card under threat The Prime Minister presents national security and regional uncertainty as one of his electoral trump cards. Morrison is proud to have called for an independent inquiry into the origins of COVID 19. and for using the world stage to call out China's economic coercion. He has been vocal in his criticism of Beijing's cyber intrusions both here and abroad. Space to play or pause. M to mute. left and right arrows to seek. up and down arrows for volume. And not long before calling the election. he weaponised China. declaring in Parliament that the Deputy Labor leader Richard Marles was a 'Manchurian candidate'. suggesting — foolishly — that Beijing's preferred outcome was for the Opposition to win. His political charge against Labor? That only Morrison had the courage and the steadfast guard to protect Australian sovereignty and interests. Yet under Morrison's watch. Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has spurned concerted Australian pressure to seal a security agreement that undermines long standing regional objectives. Space to play or pause. M to mute. left and right arrows to seek. up and down arrows for volume. Foreign Minister Marise Payne was not dispatched. Labor says this was neglect. In the context of the Solomons skirmish. Beijing has won a contest with Canberra with wits and dollars — lots of them. Whether the security agreement is in Solomon Islands' long term interests is highly dubious. But it is personally humiliating to Morrison that his parliamentary flourish targeting Marles has been so quickly exposed. More importantly. it is a blow to policy aims of the joint Australian American Pacific project — aims that will live on whoever wins the May 21 poll. Space to play or pause. M to mute. left and right arrows to seek. up and down arrows for volume. Australia 'too soft' on Solomons Penny Wong calls it 'the worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War II'. This is a somewhat hyperbolic assessment but understandable given the pressure cooker atmosphere of an election campaign and the way Morrison has used China policy as a sword against the ALP. Read more The diplomatic corps and foreign service is less scathing but no less worried. When Australia sent police and military personnel to quell violent unrest in Honiara. there was an obvious bind: by quickly restoring peace. Australia didn't want to be seen as propping up a Solomons government that faced legitimate civilian disquiet. The concern now is that in signing a security agreement with China. Sogavare will see Beijing as a better guarantor for the future of Solomon Islands and his government. Solomon Islands Opposition Leader Matthew Wale. who says he warned Australian officials of the military pact as early as August last year. suggests Canberra has been naive. 'I am extremely disappointed in Australia. the Australian government has been too soft on this issue and too trusting.' Wale told the ABC. At high levels in the Australian...
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