The battle of Guadalcanal
For Australians of the Second World War II generation, the name Guadalcanal engenders immediate thoughts and emotions about some of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific. Located as close to Cairns as is Brisbane, the island of Guadalcanal was the location of the first land counter offensive against the Japanese advance into the Pacific following the naval battles in the Coral Sea and at Midway. For six bloody months, beginning in August 1942, allied forces led by the United States fought the Japanese to claim the island. Some of the most intense fighting was around the Henderson Airfield which the Japanese had commenced construction in 1942. In February 1943, the Japanese abandoned their attempts to retake the island after tens of thousands of troops had been killed or wounded and dozens of ships destroyed. Guadalcanal is better known today as the largest of the Solomons Islands. Henderson Airfield is now the Honiara International Airport at the nation’s capital city.
The Solomons has had a chequered history of ethnic conflict since becoming independent of the United Kingdom in 1978. Major conflicts between 1998 and 2003 led to the Australian led Regional Assistance Mission to Solomon Islands [RAMSI] involving a contingent of 2,200 police and troops. More recently, Australian Federal Police and Defence Forde personnel were deployed under the 2017 Bilateral Security Treaty following further civil unrest. Despite this assistance and significant aid over four decades, the current Prime Minister, Manasseh Sogavare, has a noted antipathy towards Australia.
Sogavare is a divisive figure in the Solomons. He has switched support for various leaders over the years, and manoeuvred his way into the prime ministership on four occasions. Allegations of lying to colleagues about various issues continue to dog him. His decision to ditch formal recognition of Taiwan in favour of China in 2019 is the cause of ongoing tensions in the Solomons especially with the pro-Taiwan Malaita islanders.
Last week’s decision by Sogavare to ban visiting US and UK naval vessels, and then others including Australia, is another cause for deep misgivings in the West about his embrace of China. The irony was that the US Coast Guard vessel was engaged in policing the regional fisheries, of which China is the biggest violator. Sogavare invited Chinese police to the country which many believe is a step towards the imposition of martial law should ethnic tensions arise. He has signed a deal that will enable a Chinese naval presence. He has threatened the media about criticism of his government, including revelations that the Chinese provided funds to 39 of the country’s 50 Members of Parliament who supported the prime minister. He has entered a deal to borrow almost $100 million from the Chinese to build a Huawei phone network. It has been reported that a Chinese state-owned company is in negotiations to purchase a deep-water port and airfield. Mr Sogavare is also attempting to change the constitution to delay elections due next year on the pretext that the country can’t afford to hold both the elections and the Pacific Games, despite a CCP grant of some $30 million for the Games. In August, the Australian government announced a grant of $17 million to support the 2023 Pacific Games in Honiara.
Photos of Sogavare dressed in a Mao suit inspecting a Chinese Guard-of-Honour should have sounded the alarm bells in the West. Taking a leaf from Xi Jinping’s playbook, Sogavare says one thing and then does the opposite. All was fine when he and Anthony Albanese hugged. The Solomons would never allow the Chinese to establish a military base, but then allied ships are banned and the Chinese negotiate to purchase a port!
Australia needs to act decisively. Diplomatic sweet talk will not convince Sogavare. Instead, Australia – and the US – should make in crystal clear that elections must be held and that any MPs found to have accepted Chinese bribes will be sanctioned. Our representatives should also reach out quietly to the opposition parties. Australia also needs to increase its broadcasting into the region including the Solomon Islands. Sogavare is deeply unpopular with many of his own people.
Australia should also upgrade its diplomatic representation in the Pacific. The challenges of dealing with the Solomons is a clear signal that we now have an aggressive Chinese competitor is our front yard. Australia should propose, along with New Zealand, a new Pacific grouping akin to an ASEAN, based on a shared democratic, economic and strategic vision for the region. Unlike the various European nations, including the UK and France, which have had historic connections to the Pacific and wish to support an international rules-based order, China seeks to create a series of vassal states forever indebted to the CCP. It is currently wooing other Pacific nations. Even Timor Leste has reflected a willingness to be courted by the CCP with President Jose Ramos Horta saying the nation would turn to China if Timor Sea gassed is piped to Darwin.
The death of the last Soviet President, Mikhail Gorbachev, last week, attracted much positive comment in the West about his part in the dissolution of the Union. Amongst the generous eulogies two significant voices were missing: Vladamir Putin and Xi Jinping. Putin, who did not attend Gorbachev’s funeral, blames the last Soviet leader for the demise of the Union as he seeks to recreate the great Rus empire. In Xi’s opinion, Gorbachev was a failure. His greatest fear is that the Chinese Communist regime suffers the fate of the Soviet state, citing it as a ‘cautionary tale.’ Xi is dedicated to avoiding what he regards as the mistakes of the Soviet leaders, whom he believes departed from the true Marxist-Leninist model. The recent official history of the CCP notes that Russia’s October 1917 revolution was the process by which Marxism-Leninism was brought to China, and laments the ‘demise of the Soviet Union and the drastic changes in Eastern European countries.’
This column was originally published as ‘Australian Notes’ in the Spectator Australia.
