China’s newly-signed security deal with the Solomon Islands is positioning the archipelago state at the center of global strategic disputes between China and Western powers. This has important implications for Africa and other regions in the Global South.
The fight started in late March when a draft security agreement between China and the Solomon Islands was leaked. Clauses that seem to allow Chinese military vessels access to harbor facilities in the Solomons sparked fears that a Chinese base could follow.
The island state is about 3,200 kilometers from Australia and stretches across a strategic shipping and communication route to the Asian Pacific. Australian and New Zealand officials raised fears that a Chinese presence there would impact their freedom of movement.
Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare rejected the criticism as an imposition on his country’s sovereign right to choose partners. On Wednesday, he also rejected the idea that the security agreement would lead to a base: “It will not be in the interest of Solomon Islands to host any naval or military base of any country, because that will immediately make the Solomon Islands a military target for other countries.”
That prediction is already coming true, with the issue prompting expanded cooperation agreements between New Zealand and Fiji, as well as Fiji and Australia.
The controversy has many parallels with the recent flurry of rumors emanating from the Pentagon that China is planning a military base in the West African country of Equatorial Guinea. Like with the Solomons, the possible base was portrayed as a fundamental shift in the regional security balance, despite the fact that in both cases a single Chinese base would be far outnumbered by U.S. and allied military installations in the area.
These controversies highlight how the rise of China as a naval power is reshaping Western relations with the Global South:
Implications of the Solomons Controversy for the West’s Relations with the Global South:
- THE ‘OUR BACKYARD’ PROBLEM: In both cases, Western reactions to rumors of a Chinese base inadvertently revealed how low these countries rank in Western priorities. While the outrage was clad in the language of global security concerns, it also revealed that Western countries have for long taken cooperation from these governments for granted. Australian officials have repeatedly referred to the Solomons as ‘our backyard,’ and West Africa has occupied a similar position in relation to Europe. This complacency dovetailed with disinterest in the demands of these countries, for example on climate change.
- GLOBAL SOUTH SECURITIZATION: The controversies seem to signal that however a ‘new Cold War’ shakes out, it will echo the previous Cold War in one respect: framing ties between the Global South and the Global North through a military lens. Global South countries have a strong demand for development cooperation and this frequently provides a platform for their engagement with China. However, Western responses have so far tended to focus narrowly on the military aspect of the relationship and to dismiss the reasons behind these countries’ choice to deal with China as them being tricked by Beijing.
- BARGAINING POWER: While the previous Cold War had ruinous effects on the Global South, it also afforded some governments a limited amount of power to play off geopolitical rivals against each other. The current controversies raise similar possibilities, but they also show how constrained these governments’ options are. For example, the United States made anti-piracy cooperation with Equatorial Guinea dependent on the country rejecting Chinese overtures. That said, existing restrictions on the authoritarian country already limit U.S. leverage and further opens the door to China.
