In the Pacific, US bureaucracy messes up against PRC influence operation

I have no idea what the U.S. State Department was thinking. But if the goal was to help honest people in a highly strategic country that is also a close ally protect themselves against Chinese influence operations, they really messed up.

And State wasn’t the only one. Department of Justice did as well. And Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Odd thing is, they all might have thought they were doing the right thing.

I better explain and you can decide for yourself.

BACKGROUND

From an American perspective, this story starts almost exactly eighty years ago, with Operation Flintlock.

What is now the Pacific Island country of the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) had been under Japanese control for three decades. During that time, and especially in the lead up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, key atolls were militarized and hardened, forming the outer perimeter of Japanese defences. One was Kwajalein Atoll—one of the largest atolls in the world.

At the end of January 1944, after one of the most concentrated bombardments of the war thus far, an amphibious assault force of tens of thousands of Marines and Sailors took on the Japanese at Kwajalein. Almost all the Japanese were killed. The Americans took the islands and advanced west from there.

After the war, Kwajalein and rest of the former Japanese Pacific islands fell under United Nations control, became the only “strategic” Trust Territories and were given to the United States in trust.

In 1986, Marshall Islands became independent and entered into a deep defence relationship with the U.S, called the Compact of Free Association (COFA). Two other former Japanese Pacific islands areas did the same, the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.

Through the COFAs, the three countries voluntarily agreed: “The Government of the United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defense matters in or relating to the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia [and Palau].”

Also, citizens from the Compact countries can live and work freely in the U.S. and they serve at very high rates in the U.S. military.

The Compacts extend the U.S. defensive perimeter roughly from Hawaii to Guam and the Philippines. The relationship underpins the U.S. defence architecture in the Pacific. And it still includes a major base on Kwajalein that is critical for U.S. missile testing.

HERE COMES THE PRC

Given how important the relationship is to the U.S., it is no surprise that there have been well funded and focused PRC-linked influence operations in the region to try to weaken those ties, especially as the Marshall Islands also recognize Taiwan.

While tying specific operations to the Chinese government is always tricky, one in particular certainly wouldn’t have displeased Beijing.

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