The U.S. And Australia Threaten To Invade Solomon Islands – Now Who’s The Bully And Aggressor?

The U.S. And Australia Threaten To Invade Solomon Islands – Now Who’s The Bully And Aggressor?

Scott Morrison has again attacked China on Saturday (April 30), accusing the Chinese government of interfering in foreign politics. Like the sore loser Hillary Clinton, who had accused Russia of interfering with the 2016 U.S. election, resulting in the stunning victory of Donald Trump, the Morrison administration too is accusing Beijing of trying to influence the Australian election.

With most polls showing Morrison’s conservative coalition headed for a loss in the May 21 election, the Australia’s prime minister is throwing everything, including the kitchen sink, to project himself as a tough sheriff standing up to Beijing. He had to respond after being accused by opposition Labour party of a massive “foreign policy failure” in relation to a security deal between China and Solomon Islands.



Despite Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare’s assurance in the parliament that Solomon Islands would not participate in any militarisation in the Pacific, Morrison’s government was not satisfied. Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews claims the deal was a form of foreign interference in Australia’s election, regardless of Beijing’s denial and Solomon’s explanation.



Initially, it was believed that Taiwan, along with Australia deliberately leaked a draft of the security deal to paint China as not only a national security threat, but also a threat to the U.S. military dominance as well as sovereignty danger to every country in the Pacific. It was also done to pressure the Solomon Islands to cancel the deal, which could help Morrison’s re-election.



However, after Australia’s Liberal government and Washington fail to persuade the Solomon not to sign the pact, Beijing is being accused of deliberately timed the revelation of the security deal to jeopardize Morrison’s chance in the coming election. Understandable, Morrison’s campaign has been pressured with questions about his mishandling of the China-Solomon pact.



The deal would allow the deployment of Chinese “police, armed police, military personnel and other law enforcement and armed forces”. It also allows China to make ship visits, provide logistical replenishment and have stopovers and transition in the Solomon Islands, sparking fears among the U.S., Australia and New Zealand about Chinese influence in the region they have been dominating for decades.



After the Pacific island nation confirmed the new security partnership on March 25, saying it was expanding ties with China to combat security threats and ensure a safe environment for investment, Canberra went berserk. Obviously, having Chinese security forces in its backyard, just about 2,000 kilometres (1,240 miles) northeast of Australia, is a humiliation to the U.S. “deputy sheriff” in the Asia-Pacific region.



In what appears to be a coordinated intimidation and threats, the U.S. has warned Solomon Islands it will “respond accordingly” if its security agreement with China leads to a Chinese military presence in the Pacific island nation. The warning was personally delivered to Prime Minister Manasseh during a visiting U.S. delegation led by Indo-Pacific security adviser Kurt Campbell.



Even though the 90-minute meeting, which included ambassador Daniel Kritenbrink (U.S. assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs), did not elaborate the nature of an American response, the retaliation could be an “unprovoked invasion” on the Solomon Islands to topple its government. PM Morrison has warned that a Chinese military base in the Solomon Islands would be a “red line”.



Australia news media has basically trumpeted and supported the view of David Llewellyn-Smith, founding publisher of MacroBusiness and former owner of leading Asia Pacific foreign affairs journal “The Diplomat”, that Australia must be willing to invade the island – if that’s what it takes to stop the proposed security pact between China and the Pacific island.



Subsequently, Australia’s Defence Minister Peter Dutton followed up with the threat to attack Solomon Islands, calling for a war preparation with China. Inspired with the West’s initial overestimation of Russia’s military preparedness and prowess, Dutton and Morrison appear to believe that like Ukraine, Australia can easily beat China hence the eagerness to fight the Chinese.



Unimpressed with Washington’s threat and Canberra’s warning of an invasion, Solomon government has criticised the Western’s hypocrisy and double standard. In his response over the issue of lack of transparency, PM Manasseh slammed Australia over its AUKUS security deal with the United States and Britain, saying he only learned of the agreement through media reports.



If indeed Australia must be consulted in the name of transparency, then the Pacific too “should have been consulted to ensure the AUKUS treaty is transparent, since it will affect the Pacific family by allowing nuclear submarines in Pacific waters”, argued PM Manasseh. Even Senior Labour MP Tanya Plibersek admitted that Solomon Islands’ security pact happened due to “years of neglect” by Australia.



Pacific expert Tess Newton Cain of Griffith University said Australia’s leaders need to better understand the region’s culture and customs. A 2019 research says people across the Solomons, Vanuatu and Fiji expressed frustration over difficulties obtaining visas for Australia to visit family and friends. They are asked for “huge amounts of personal information”, including a guarantee they will not overstay.



How could Scott Morrison pretend as if the Aussie and the Pacific nations are one big happy family when unlike travellers from many countries, Canberra does not really trust the Pacific Islanders and discriminated them with intrusive process just to enter Australia? Does not Solomon Islands, as an independent nation, have the right to make its own sovereign decision?




More importantly, the U.S. warning and Australia’s threat of an invasion demonstrate the behaviour of an aggressor or a bully, the same way Joe Biden has described Vladimir Putin. If Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is being called an unprovoked and unjustified attack, isn’t Australia’s threat to topple the Solomon government through invasion is also an unprovoked attack?



The U.S. and Australian government were extremely panicked at the possibility the Chinese could establish a military base just 2,000 kilometres away. But if Morrison can argue that a Chinese military base in the Solomons is a “red line”, Beijing also can argue that the American military base in South Korea, which is just hundreds of kilometres from China, is a much “bigger red line”.



In fact, U.S. military presence in South Korea, Japan, Philippines, Singapore and Guam are just some of more than 800 military bases across the globe. Do you know the U.S. has 80 bases in South Korea alone? There are over 53,000 US troops operate from 120 military bases in the Asian nation. China, on the other hand, has only one official base in Djibouti, located in the Horn of Africa.



Despite surrounding rivals China and Russia with hundreds of military bases, the U.S. and Australia went ballistic when the Solomon Islands sought helps from Chinese security forces. Exactly what type of democracy the Western powers are practicing when they threatened to launch coup d’état against a defenceless Solomon government for being friendly with rival China?



Had Australia succeeded in preventing the 3-day riot in November 2021, the violence and destruction targeting Honiara’s Chinatown district would not have had happened. It was the incompetence of more than 200 peacekeepers from Australia, Fiji, Papua New Guinea and New Zealand in preventing Chinatown from attacks that the Solomon government has considered Chinese security forces.



Understandable, the presence of Chinese naval forces in the Pacific island will have a significant impact on the balance of security in the region as it would complicate Australia’s ability to move ships, submarines, and aircraft along its eastern coast. In addition to militarized artificial island bases in the South China Sea, Beijing will be watching and spying Australia from nearby Solomon Islands.



The Chinese military presence in the Solomon Islands will enable Beijing breaks through the encirclement by U.S. armed forces that are currently present in the region such as in Guam, Japan, and South Korea by positioning the Chinese forces behind them, therefore outflanking America. The U.S. has to think twice (constantly watch its back) about an intervention if China invades Taiwan.



Besides sandwiching the U.S. forces, China may use Solomon Islands as a deployment and a refuelling hub to deny the American forces the ability to project power by threatening their logistical supply lines. However, Australia has no one to blame but itself. Its reckless decision to get nuclear submarines and establish AUKUS with the U.S. and U.K. has forced the Chinese to set up a base in Aussie’s own backyard.



But even if it’s true China would establish a base in Solomon, there is no reason for the U.S. and Australia to panic, let alone threatens to invade the small island of 700,000 people. Unlike Russia, the Chinese’s top priority has always been trade and commerce. Aside from some border disputes, China had never colonized another country, unlike the Americans, Europeans and Japanese.



Portugal was the first European power that started the first phase of European colonization of Southeast Asia with the conquest of the Sultanate of Malacca in 1511. The Netherlands and Spain followed and soon superseded Portugal as the main European powers in the region when the Dutch East India Company took Batavi (now Jakarta) in 1619 while Spain began to colonise the Philippines in 1599.



Britain, in the guise of the British East India Company, began the colonization in the region when Captain Francis Light founded the settlement of George Town in Penang Island in 1786. American colonization of the Philippines – spanning 48 years – began with the cession of the Philippines to the U.S. by Spain in 1898 and lasted until the U.S. recognition of Philippine independence in 1946.



The last colonial power was Japan during the World War 2. From the 1500s to the mid-1940s, colonialism was imposed over Southeast Asia by seven major colonizers. In comparison, in the 1400s, China possessed the greatest naval fleet in the world, up to 3,500 ships at its peak (the U.S. Navy today has only 430). China could easily colonize the entire Southeast Asia, but it didn’t.



The Chinese military expansion is largely to protect and defend its national interest and to prevent from being invaded or colonized again. As the world’s second largest economy, it’s vulnerable to threat from foreign powers without a strong military force. However, its increasingly military prowess is being seen as a challenge to the U.S. global dominance instead.



China’s economic power is bringing the nations from Central Asia to the Middle East and Africa under its influence, tilting the balance of global power. While President Xi Jinping believes the West is waning and the East is rising, the U.S. and its deputy sheriff Australia are simply jealous and flabbergasted of the rising super power, so much so they would do anything, including bullying Solomon Islands.