Tug-of-war is not an Olympic sport, but it should be.
Let me explain.
In the latest challenge to Western influence in the Pacific, an island republic of low-lying atolls vulnerable to climate change, which a few years ago switched allegiance from Taipei to Beijing, is holding national elections. As the aid-dependent nation with a low standard of living gets even closer to China, a shadow of uncertainty is being cast over regional peace and security.
Wait, I need to be more specific. That happens every year. Several times each year, I think. The Solomon Islands? New Caledonia? A semi-autonomous zone in the Marshall Islands? The Federated States of Micronesia? Palau?
I’m referring this time to Kiribati, which started its voting in national elections just as a major international meeting was concluding.
Kiribati began its first round of voting on Aug. 14, highlighting a tense question—still unanswered—that the Pacific knows best: Will China upend the existing security regime in the Blue Continent?
Best-case scenario for the West: The candidate cozier with China loses, creating confusion about its continuing relationship with its closest benefactor, Australia. Worst-case scenario for the West: The candidate friendly to China wins, throwing its relationship with Australia, its closest benefactor, into uncertainty.
All on the heels of the Olympics.
If you’re not familiar with the Olympics, it’s like the Climate Change Conference of the Parties, only with the promise of soft-core diplomacy through sport. Officially, it’s a global athletic competition whose goals include encouraging effort, preserving human dignity and developing harmony. Athletes who refused to share a medal did not at all taint this spirit of cooperation and dignity, while nations in conflict remained in conflict.
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The potential for conflict must be why nations in the world don’t compete in the Olympics. Instead, athletes who are members of their National Olympic Committee compete. I was confused too, especially with the national anthems and the tallies of medals by nation.
Then again, the U.S. has not been at war since the 1940s. Plenty of authorizations of military force, but not a single declaration of war since 1942.
Every few months we realize—again—that the Pacific is the rope that both China and America now pull in their tug-of-war for influence.
Different characters, same script. Shifted alliances between Taiwan and China. Lack of transparency in national government. Agreements for Chinese police officers to maintain order.
Politics of family and clan networks and cronyism. Heavy levels of national debt. Subpar medical care. Lack of medicine. High cost of living. National coffers filled with aid donations, if anything. Outmigration for education, employment, healthcare.
Island politics, in other words.
Enter the security fear. Against this backdrop lies the specter of a not-too-distant island within easy reach of Hawaii. Kiribati has an extended economic zone of millions of square miles of ocean. Cities in Hawaii and population centers in Kiribati are another story. Not an easy reach for a traveler, but perhaps an intercontinental ballistic missile would disagree.
There is no Compact of Free Association for Kiribati. Before World War II, it was a British protectorate. After the war, it resumed that status until independence in 1979.
That same year, the U.S. and the Republic of Kiribati entered into a Treaty of Friendship, which went into effect four years later. In its three pages, Kiribati agrees not to let third parties use its territory for military purposes without consultation. The treaty specified a 10-year lifespan, after which either party could withdraw. Strategic deniability on the cheap, with the possible annoyance of a democratically elected government terminating a treaty under its own terms.
A story not unique to this atoll. Decades of development aid have brought continued poverty. Lost in the economic development shuffle has been economic development. Foreign educators are more concerned with sociology than safe drinking water.
Is it any wonder that people might want something different?
The geopolitical tug-of-war will continue. As for the two nations in a direct match of physical gruel, it was an Olympic event from 1900 to 1920.
Let’s end the illusion and bring it back.
Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard@hotmail.com.
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