Chequebook diplomacy: The battle for influence in the south Pacific

At the handover ceremony, which took place at Austal Shipyard (Henderson, Western Australia), Minister for Defence Linda Reynolds said the replacement of the earlier-model Pacific patrol boats marks a crucial phase in Australia's $2 billion, 30-year commitment to the region under the terms of the Pacific Maritime Security Program. 

"Australia and Fiji have a long history of warm and productive relations and have worked closely in pursuit of common goals and values for decades,” Minister Reynolds said.

“It is in the spirit of this partnership that we hand over the RFNS Savenaca to one of our closest regional partners. We will continue to work with Fiji on our shared commitment to a support a region that is strategically secure, economically stable and politically sovereign," she said.

The Chinese link

The link to China's growing influence in the region – and successive governments commitment to the "Indo-Pacific pivot" – are too conspicuous to miss. A 2016 ABC report noted two key figures for that year:

• China's two-way trade with the Pacific islands has almost doubled in just one year; and
• China has provided $US 1.8 billion in aid over the period 2006-2016, making it the Pacific's largest foreign sponsor behind Australia. Raising more than a few eyebrows abroad. This aid includes US$175,000 worth of quad bikes gifted to Cook Island parliamentarians. 

This is to say nothing of China's aggressive low-interest loan program, which has ramped up increasingly across not just Africa and Asia, but also the Pacific. Of course, the debate over whether these assistance programs are benign (driven by domestic economic pressures in the search for an expanded consumer market), or malignant (driven by a desire to counterbalance Sino-Chinese tensions in the South China Sea) is far from settled. 

From an Australian standpoint, however, an economic evaluation does need to be made as to whether these programs serve their intended purpose, and to whether our soft power in the region is waxing or waning under these circumstances. The previous iteration of the program saw Australia provide patrol boats free of charge to 12 Pacific nations. The largest donations were to those with close strategic or cultural links to the Lucky Country – like Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga. We did, however, also supply the Pacific Class vessels to smaller nations like Palau, Tuvalu and Vanuatu.

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The "new" program (expanded as of 1997) includes provision to Timor-Leste; as of financial year 2017-18, Australia had also begun to roll out a civilian-contracted fixed-wing program. Perhaps somewhat tellingly, the reasons given for this second component include a reference to "enhancing the capacity of our Pacific island neighbours to locate and stop illegal activity within their exclusive economic zones". For nations sitting in geopolitical flashpoints near the South China Sea such as Timor-Leste and Palau (which lies close to Guam), this could capture Chinese territorial incursions. 

Reverse auctioning

Against the backdrop of significant Chinese investment in the region, Australian analysts must be careful to ensure targeted support in this region is not allowed to give way to a reverse auction with a country we cannot outspend. This can lead to interesting approaches – in February last year, Department of Communications and Arts secretary Mike Mrdak told a Senate hearing that our Pacific neighbours will soon experience "the full suite of programs available on Australian networks". Not some sort of Canberra double-speak, this really means that the government is looking to expand Australia's entertainment offerings to the Pacific islands, in a bid to curb China's growing influence in the region. 

Vanuata Daily Post gave this idea short shrift. In an opinion piece penned shortly after the announcement, one contributor said:

"Pacific islanders aren't likely to be very fussy about how that comes about. But if the goal is helping Pacific islanders know more about Australia – and helping Australians know more about the Pacific – then a different approach is needed."

Writing in The Conversation, UTS academic Helen Vatsikopoulos was another voice to give this idea short shrift. In an article titled 'As Australia's soft power in the Pacific fades, China's voice gets louder', she makes the case that the axing of the Australia Network – the ABC's short-wave radio broadcast covering the Asia-Pacific – has been one of the factors playing into the downfall of our soft power influence in the region. The axing of the program in 2014, which would have run a $223 million cost over 10 years, was justified as a necessary budget cut by the Abbott government to reign in the national deficit. But that cost pales in comparison to the $2 billion Pacific security program, which it might have served as a perfect complement to.

Lamenting its downfall, one former head of the Australia Network said that "where once Australia was a brand in Asia, people knew what the Australia Network was, they knew what Australia was, it's lost – its' gone".

Vatsikopoulos, like many others, compares China's Central Global Television Network (CGTN) to a form of "informational warfare," or CCP propaganda. The network now broadcasts to 1.2 billion people around the world (including the south Pacific) in the six UN languages, and actively recruits Western media presenters to lend it an air of credibility to listeners in these nations.  

Additional options

Though Australia ranks highly in terms of soft power, it is on a distinctive downward trend. In the 2018 Soft Power 30, the country listed as ninth; though a commendable achievement, it should be noted that this puts us four places behind our 2014 score. DFAT reports have since been launched into the issue (including the Soft Power Review), which largely dovetail with this conclusion. 

As noted in the 2017 Soft Power Review, "Our region is changing quickly and Australia's ability to build partnerships with other nations and people is becoming increasingly important. Rapid globalisation and technological advances are changing the way influence is exercised. Social media and digital platforms in particular have empowered individuals and non-state actors to shape outcomes on issues of importance to Australia."

It is not enough to simply pay lip service to this idea. Though the supply of patrol boats has been, and remains to be, a crucial component of our foreign policy strategy, there is a host of complementary, cost-effective programs that would further round the tactic out. There is no clear limit or form to how this might be achieved, either; one of the more imaginative approaches (published in The Diplomat), included leveraging the growing popularity of rugby league and the NRL in the south Pacific island states.

Though this might seem almost farcical at first, consider that just last month the inaugural World Nines Confederation Cup was hosted in Samoa. The event was funded entirely by Chinese investment, and played in a stadium built by Chinese money. For two countries with comparable per capita incomes, it seems remiss to suggest this to be anything but a play for influence. 

These questions will continue to grow in importance over the coming years for Australia, especially as Pacific leaders to begin to fully comprehend the goldmine they might be sitting on. 2014 saw President Xi Jinping visit Fiji to sign a memorandum of understanding with perhaps one of the closest strategic partners of these nations, and Australian intelligence sources have indicated that China may be looking to build a military base in Vanuatu. Though both countries have denied the claim to date, it is clear that the flashpoint will continue to heat up.

To prevent it boiling over, we cannot afford to spend money indiscriminately. Soft power programs such as the patrol boats concept need to be supported by the full range of diplomatic options available. 

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