The last time most Americans paid attention to the Solomon Islands was in the middle of World War II, when the United States and Japan waged a prolonged naval battle in the waters and skies surrounding Guadalcanal. That grinding fight had outsized strategic effects—halting the Japanese advance into the South Pacific, ensuring that allied nations such as Australia and New Zealand were neither surrounded nor cut off from supply by hostile forces, reversing the war’s momentum in the Pacific, and providing a base to launch a counteroffensive against a totalitarian enemy. Pointing to the hundreds of small islands spread across the Pacific, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt explained to the American public that while they might “appear only as small dots on most maps . . . they cover a large strategic area.”
That large strategic area, key to fighting and winning World War II, suffered from considerable neglect over the last several decades as U.S. strategy and policy focused elsewhere. That now must change. In April, the government of the Solomon Islands announced that it had signed a tentative security pact with China, and in late May, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi traveled to the region in an effort to secure more agreements from Pacific Island countries. The Solomon Islands security pact contained vague and expansive language that appears to open the door for China to play a role in quelling internal unrest in the Solomon Islands by allowing Beijing to deploy Chinese police and military forces at the Solomon Islands’ request to “maintain social order.” The pact, and potential future deals with other Pacific Island states, could undermine regional security by extending the reach of the Chinese military, giving it access to a critical maritime chokepoint, and thrusting the Pacific Islands into the middle of a globe-spanning geopolitical competition.
