The Pacific Ocean Of Peace An Idea Whose Time Has Not Come

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One is hard-pressed to name a recent example of American coercion of anybody in the region or of US-caused instability.

Rather, China's attempts to do in the Pacific region what the Japanese did in the 1920s and 1930s (but without any of the positive aspects) and create vassal states, are the major sources of coercion and instability in the Pacific today.

Just one example, recall China's repeated use of“tourism” as a weapon to collapse the Palau economy and coerce the government of Palau.

Additionally, its efforts to interfere with the recent PIF meeting in Palau extended to personally threatening Palau's President Surangel Whipps Jr. and close family if they did not follow Beijing's dictates regarding Taiwan's participation in the PIF.

Another huge source of instability and societal destruction throughout the region is Chinese organized crime and corruption (including flooding the region with drugs) that is part and parcel of the Chinese Communist Party's modus operandi for gaining influence. As is the“elite capture” Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale spoke about recently.

For more, read then-FSM President David Panuelo's public letters detailing Chinese coercion and subversion in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and you'll have a point-by-point indictment of the PRC and its efforts to dominate, disintegrate and destroy a nation's consensual government and sovereignty.

The 2025 Annual Report of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission's section on the Pacific Islands gives myriad more examples of unilateral unrestricted warfare attacks by the PRC.

The attacks are pervasive and evident across society, economics and politics in the Pacific. As another example, Chinese attempts to subvert Pacific media are well documented in a 2026 Center for Naval Analysis (CNA) report.

This is not“rivalry.” This is an attack by one nation against the democratic, economic and social institutions of many others across the region.

Retaining agency

One also hears complaints that Pacific Island nations are losing“agency” and unable to set limits on foreign military activity - that, it is argued - makes them pawns in the putative great power rivalry.

Besides the fact expanding Chinese military activities in the region are seldom mentioned, this is an implicit charge that the United States and“the West” are dominating national sovereignty and causing trouble. And if the Americans in particular would just pare down their activities, or even better leave, and stop threatening everyone by their very presence we'd have“peace.”

Central American Marxists and European Leftists in the 1980s used a variation of this argument too. However, the Pacific Island countries need some military capability - even if all other militaries magically disappeared. That's the reality.

Otherwise, for example, their fish stocks will be plundered and transnational organized crime will set up drug transshipment points on their islands. Do you want the Chinese Coast Guard protecting your fish stocks from illegal Chinese fishing fleets?

Pacific Islands citizens and leaders are already quite capable of choosing who they want to deal with to provide defense and military support if they don't want to create their own capabilities.

They have plenty of agency, and if you read the Compact of Free Association (COFA) agreements between Republic of Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the United States, they also have the right to shape (and deny) local activities of the US military.

The same goes with nations where the Australians operate - even if there's no formal agreement.