The US has accelerated its security and cooperation agreements in the Indo-Pacific region in recent months, renewing strong ties to the Philippines, enhancing cooperation with Australia, and negotiating wide-ranging defense and cooperation agreements with Papua New Guinea. But even as the US courts the region, Asian and Pacific countries must weigh the costs and benefits of their alignments in a complex security, economic, and environmental interests.
While there are no official details about the agreements, they include targeted economic support, efforts to fight climate change, disaster relief assistance, as well as an expanded US military presence over the next 10 years and support in policing illicit activity like illegal fishing in the country’s immediate vicinity. Papua New Guinea, like many countries in the broader region, has a strong trade relationship with China but values its non-aligned status and commitment to its own domestic priorities above “great power” competition.
Papua New Guinea President James Marape insists that the defense agreement is just an update of a previous defense pact and that his country will not be used as a US base in a conflict between the US and China. “We have a healthy relationship with the Chinese government and they are an important trading partner,” Marape said during a joint press conference with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in the capital, Port Moresby, last week.
The leaders of 14 Pacific Island nations were in Port Moresby last week as part of a regional partnership with the US, aimed at deepening economic and security ties to help fend off what President Joe Biden called China’s “economic coercion” in the region at a White House summit last year.
Efforts to court nations in the Pacific Islands also comes on the heels of renewed defense cooperation with the Philippines. That partnership withered under former Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, but the Enhanced Defense Cooperation…
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