The Global Magnitsky Act incorporates a legislative mechanism for forcing the executive branch to determine whether particular individuals and entities should be sanctioned for engaging in corruption and human rights abuses.
Following the inauguration, the Trump administration will be committed to countering revisionist authoritarian powers who are working hard to bring an end to American hegemony in the Pacific islands region.
However, that will take time as the new administration needs to appoint key staff and develop a new strategic plan. Through the Global Magnitsky Act, the U.S. Congress could help to affect immediate change in the status quo in the interim. All that would be required would be joint requests for Magnitsky determinations from the chairperson and the ranking minority member of particular committees of jurisdiction in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate.
The Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act (Global Magnitsky Act) provides permanent statutory authority for the U.S. president to “impose economic sanctions and deny entry into the United States to foreign persons identified as engaging in human rights violations or corruption.”
Under the Global Magnitsky Act, the chairperson and ranking member of particular congressional committees can require the executive branch to “determine whether named individuals or entities have engaged in certain sanctionable conduct and report on whether it intends to impose sanctions on them.” Those committees include the House Committee on Financial Service, House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and Senate Committee on Foreign Relations.
The Trump administration seems destined to make the Pacific islands region a much greater national security and foreign policy priority than the Biden administration.
While Democratic political elites say they are proud of the record of the Biden administration in the region, Republican political elites counter that “great power competition between the U.S. and China requires elevating the Pacific islands to a higher level of importance when considering resource allocation.”
That will prove costly as the failure of the Biden administration to engage the region during its first year in office gave rise to a transactional dilemma across the region. As a consequence, it will be exponentially more expensive for the Trump Administration to maintain American hegemony across the region during its second term in office.
The U.S. government should avoid another post-inauguration delay in regional engagement in the Pacific islands region. While the Trump administration may be primed to move quickly on Pacific issues, it will still take time for the new administration to set its agenda, formulate its policy options, and decide upon its strategic plan.
In the interim, the Magnitsky committees of jurisdiction should take action to change the status quo in Pacific affairs. Working with civil society, federal agencies, and allied governments, those committees of jurisdiction should identify a list of individuals and entities suspected of committing corruption and human rights violations.
Those investigations should focus on two kinds of individuals and entities. The first kind refers to individuals and entities residing in countries that are aligned with China, including citizens of Kiribati and the Solomon Islands. The second kind refers to individuals and entities working for security sector entities that are suspected of committing human rights overseas. That would include Fijian military veterans who have served as private military contractors in third countries. Armed with those lists, the chairperson and the ranking minority members could move quickly to invoke Section 1263(d) of the Global Magnitsky Act.
Michael Walsh is a senior non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. He served as the chair of the Asia-Pacific Security Affairs Subcommittee of the Biden Defense Working Group.
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