Understanding the defence pact

PAPUA New Guineans are bitter this week because many feel their government has pulled a fast one on them by signing a defence cooperation treaty with the United States.
Geo-political strategists and thinkers would not be surprised at all.
The die was cast a long time ago when the predictable bipolar division of the east and west disintegrated with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s and countries and regions began to form themselves into regional economic alliances.
Germany and Japan had emerged from the devastation of the World War Two as economic giants, thanks to the grand Marshall Plan.
But their wings were severely clipped.
After the war, the victorious allies led by the US ensued that the constitution of the two aggressor nations would forbid military spending above one per cent of each country’s budgets.
So economic giants they are today but they pack no punch.
Not so for many other nations of the world.
The ancient nation of China is one such nation.
It was basically ignored by the West as a wayward and awkward dragon with too many people under a repugnant and repressive communist regime.
China withdrew into itself, locked down its borders, set a one child per family policy and began a series of tough social and economic reforms.
When it broke onto the world stage again it was transformed.
It had become an economic giant with two billion people able to support its domestic economy and sprawling industries requiring raw materials from around the world.
It was classified as an emerging economy so it enjoyed such benefits as was accorded nations under that classification and grew unhindered.
Undeterred by any security restrictions as those affecting Japan, it grew the Red Army as it wished and as it could afford.
And quite suddenly, it emerged as a big economic and security contender on the world stage.
This is all background but the contention for dominance in the Asia-Pacific and the world was displayed in full in the statements by Chinese President Xi Jinping and the then US vice-president Mike Pence at the Apec (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) Summit in Port Moresby in 2018.
President Jinping spoke of China’s one belt one road initiative, proposing to retrace the Chinese silk trade route again with one difference, this time it would be by air and sea routes as well.
It offered trade, aid and technological support to all who were willing. Pence announced the US Indo-Pacific strategy, roping India across the South East Asian Peninsula into the Pacific.
It was a good strategy but came belatedly to those nations who had long felt abandoned or ignored by the US.
Impoverished nations from all corners of the world, including from the Pacific rushed to take China’s offer.
This began a contest for dominance in the Pacific that this week saw the US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stand in for President Joe Biden to sign a security pact with Papua New Guinea.
It would be proper for the government to inform its people of the geo-political push and pull factors because there is much to be gained from either side in this contest, but there is much danger as well.