Sogavare’s Pivot to China

In mid-July, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare returned from a week-long visit to China with nine new agreements ranging from agriculture, fisheries, and maritime surveillance cooperation to a new agreement on policing – the details of which have yet to be released.

He also returned with invective toward Australia and New Zealand, accusing them of not fulfilling their development promises (a statement both governments said was simply false), and unspecified claims of “foreign interference.” It was a further sign that Sogavare himself – as opposed to Solomon Islands as a country – has completed his pivot to China.

In recent years Pacific Island countries have been able to deftly play off the strategic competition between the West and China to further their development needs. However, aside from a brief period where former Fijian Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was feeling disgruntled with Canberra and Wellington over their concerns with his delay in restoring democracy, Pacific leaders have been wary of what it may mean to get too close to Beijing. There has been an awareness that China can be an important partner, but due to the nature of the Chinese Communist Party intimacy would come at a significant cost.

This is a wariness that Sogavare has abandoned. Rather than be cautious in engaging with an authoritarian dictatorship, Sogavare has sensed opportunity. He sees a way to use China to consolidate his own power at home, and consolidate his position with regard to Australia – Solomon Islands’ largest development partner and a force that restored stability and democracy to the country after the ethnic violence that plagued the country between 1998 and 2003.

Each time Sogavare has stretched the limits of Solomon Islands’ democracy, the Australian government has meekly stayed quiet, scared that to be publicly critical of him will push him further into Beijing’s arms. Sogavare knows this, and is playing Canberra like a fiddle. He’s pushing his power further, and entrenching his relationship with Beijing in the hope of getting a rise out of Australia. Silence allows him to take bolder initiatives, but speaking up would allow him to more credibly claim foreign interference.

Alongside attempting to supplant its traditional security relationship with Australia with one with China, Sogavare has also tried to transform the public broadcaster – Solomon Island Broadcasting Corporation (SIBC) – into a government mouthpiece, while also delaying elections that were due to be held in May by claiming the country cannot afford to both hold elections and host the Pacific Games later this year.

Upon his return from China, Sogavare floated the idea of the Solomon Islands developing its own military. Presently only three Pacific Island countries have militaries: Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga (with Tonga’s being a tiny regiment of just 500 personnel). Given the remote nature of many Pacific islands, their small territories, and their most pressing development requirements there isn’t a great need for traditional militaries. But as an emblem of national power – or personal power – the desire for a military can be great. In floating the idea Sogavare’s implication was that either Australia can assist in developing a military force in the Solomon Islands, or Sogavare will turn to Beijing to help him do so.

Given that the Solomon Islands faces no external threats, an Australian concern would be that any such military would be used for primarily internal problems. Or, at worst, be used to consolidate Sogavare’s power. In response to Sogavare’s bellicose rhetoric about Australia and New Zealand, an editorial in the Solomon Times posited that “It may well be that we are the ones acting unneighborly, playing down concerns raised by our Pacific family,” and further adding that democracy “is the only system that will work in an ethnically diverse country – no one man or one party can ever command the trust and loyalty of the masses – unless of course it is done through force.”

Sogavare is a canny political operator. He is currently in his fourth non-consecutive period of being the Solomon Islands’ prime minister. Each time he loses the job he has been able to find a way to regain it, managing to maintain a presence as a major political player for over two decades. But in this period in office he has taken these skills to the international arena utilizing the great concern about the rise of authoritarian China to his country’s advantage, and to his own personal advantage.

In doing so he is playing a very rational game in seeking to maximize the resources his country can secure from strategic competition between China and the West. This is a part of the game of international relations for developing countries and no-one can begrudge them for this. However, in forging close relations with China there is a temptation to mimic the Chinese political model. It’s a way for personally ambitious politicians to increase their own power. At present the lines remain blurred as to whether Sogavare is concerned with increasing the capabilities of his country, or confirming his own grip on power.