Peddling influence in the New Cold War

Pacific Reflections By Gabriel McCoard

How does a country know when it’s won the war for influence?

Consider an American attorney working for the legislature of a sovereign nation—if in name only—a nation not of his birth, forged from American victory decades earlier, watching U.S. TV as a major event in the Middle East unfolds in real time.

It was through Voice of America Television that I found out Benazir Bhutto had been assassinated. I was hardly an expert on Pakistan, but the news of a violent attack on the first female prime minister of a Muslim nation was not something to miss.

I was new to the islands and, oddly enough, lacked a computer but not a television. That brief broadcast was a line not to home, but to a world my aspirations still sought.

I had heard snippets of VOA history before and recalled from childhood reading that as the Iron Curtain closed across Eastern Europe, American broadcasting provided a voice free from Soviet propaganda. (Mind you, in my childhood, I was equally skeptical of the American propaganda machine—but that’s the contrarian in me.)

Other than that evening, I had never thought much about international broadcast journalism (internet access, without a doubt, but radio and television not so much) until I heard that VOA had become the latest assassination by funding cut, coming out of Donald Trump’s “screw you, I don’t care” foreign policy. Actually, that’s his domestic policy as well.

Through a Pacific Island News Agency bulletin, I learned that VOA and its regional arms, including Radio Free Asia, were next on the chopping block. Staff in Guam are now joining legions of other federal workers being thrown into economic limbo as their jobs are eliminated or their funding is cut.

I understand. It’s fun to stick it to your opponents. And let’s be honest, the Left can be annoying.

Every institution deserves to have its roots shaken from time to time. Most NGOs fall victim to their own foregone conclusions, a de facto jobs program for a specific demographic cultivated from within their own ranks, each holding the proper opinion honed from specific schools. Our social betters, in other words.

But let’s not fool ourselves over what’s at stake. This isn’t post-election giddiness.

The emerging consensus for the New Cold War stemming from the Trump administration’s pullback from everything has identified the winners: China and Russia.

The same news bulletin shared other news that is now taken for granted: foreign investment in the islands is tainted by characters working for the Chinese

government or a controlled proxy, sometimes with shady underworld connections, aiding their home governments in gaining a foothold in— name the place— Palau, the Marshall Islands or the Federated States of Micronesia, to spread influence and possibly get a shift in allegiance away from Taiwan.

The government denies it, sometimes going so far as declaring an individual a wanted criminal, and the narrative of the grand fight for influence in the New Cold War continues.

And the locale in question? Mere backdrop to investment. Elected officials shrug their shoulders at their own decision-making. Half a century of big national tutelage, with bogus investment laws and zero oversight.

Palm trees and influence peddling.

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It’s easy to forget there’s more to sovereignty than flying off to the UN General Assembly meeting.

If this is success, perhaps failure won’t matter.

And so, VOA joins USAID and a vast number of other agencies, all possessing the original sin of governmental parentage. Anything with public finance is guilty, regardless of how many times members of both parties voted to extend its life or give it money. Or ignore the structures that review agencies for fraud and waste, like, say, Inspectors General.

If America’s objective is to withdraw from the influence game, then let’s at least acknowledge what could be at stake for America’s national security. 

So how do we know when we’ve achieved peak influence?

When the intended objects of your nation-building brush the Starbucks from their teeth with Crest toothpaste? When they use your money, first by accepting your nation-building largesse, then with the literal adoption of your money as a proxy currency?

By these measures, America won the hearts and minds of most of the world decades ago.

Then again, America thought it won the Second Iraq War because a mob pulled down a statue of Saddam Hussein. It took eight years after that for U.S. forces to withdraw.

Maybe it’s easier to know if you’ve lost.

Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard@hotmail.com.

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