Article: US-Pacific Relations: Pacific-Minded (The World Today)

Cleo has just published an analysis of geopolitics in the Pacific for in Chatham House's magazine The World Today. You can see it online here. And below:

In early March, United States (US) Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made unusually direct comments to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about America's position in the Pacific. "Let's just talk straight real politik. We are in competition with China," she said. All over the Pacific, China is trying to "come in behind us and come in under us."And it is working. China's influence in the island nations of the Pacific is growing dramatically, and the repercussions are global.

But the fault does not lie completely with the US, and the win is not completely China's. The door for China's dramatic increase in influence in the island nations of the Pacific was opened by decades of mismanagement of Pacific affairs by western allies Australia and New Zealand. And if the US and the west want to regain ground, the two Pacific partners are going to have to rethink how they engage with the region.

It should not have come to this.

Article: Kingdom of Tonga, The Pacific, And Geopolitics, part 1 (Tonga Chronicle)

Part One of Cleo's series on Tonga, the Pacific, and geopolitics has appeared in the Tonga Chronicle. An excerpt:

While many in the region consider themselves a backwater, that is inaccurate. From a geopolitical perspective, the nations of the Pacific offer (among other things):

• Sea-lanes and ports in relatively calm waters (increasingly important as China in particular increases trade with South America);
• Access to fisheries (something increasingly important as the Atlantic is fished out);
• Agricultural exports (especially important, as concerns over food security increase in    countries such as China);
• Unknown but potentially valuable underwater resources;
• Geostrategic military basing sites;
• Crucial votes in international fora (Pacific Island countries represent around a dozen votes in the UN – a substantial voting block).

Given what is at stake, other nations are understandably keen to take advantage of discontent with traditional partners to advance their own position in the Pacific.

For more, click here. 

Article: Pacific Geopolitics (Tonga Chronicle)

Cleo's latest Tonga Chronicle column is about how foreign policy decision permeate life in the Kingdom. An excerpt:

Nuku’alofa, Kingdom of Tonga – All Tongans feel the effects of foreign policy, whether it is when shopping for New Zealand products in Chinese shops, or applying for loans at an Australian bank, or paying for energy imports from the Middle East, or going to a hospital built by Japan, or having to fly through Auckland to visit relatives in the US.

Foreign policy decisions that affect Tonga are made all the time. But often, those decisions are not made in Tonga. Someone in New Zealand decides how many Tongans get seasonal worker visas. Someone in Australia sets import regulations that can limit Tongan exports. Someone at the World Bank writes conditions for funding that will keep the Tongan government solvent. Someone in Beijing decided the loan for rebuilding downtown would be paid back in Chinese currency.

Every day, and in many ways, foreign policy pervades, and shapes, life in Tonga. But, often, Tonga isn’t in control of that policy.

For more, click here.

Article: (Huffington Post) Cleo Paskal writes on 'Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else'

Cleo Paskal's latest Huffington Post blog entry is called: Why the West Is Losing the Pacific to China, the Arab League, and Just About Everyone Else. An excerpt: 

Nuku'alofa, Kingdom of Tonga. The small South Pacific country of the Kingdom of Tonga has been busy. In a two-week period around the start of September, separate military delegations from the US, New Zealand, Australia, UK,  and the UN stopped by for a visit. The French sent a frigate and a military aircraft. China sent two warships.

Why all this activity in a country of 100,000? There is real concern that the West may be losing critical influence in the Pacific, while others such as China, and even the Arab League, are dramatically extending their reach. The implications are global, and may already have affected UN Security Council voting. It wasn't always this way. The Pacific is the West's to lose.

For more, click here.