US defence officials have expressed concern after key Pacific Islands announced they would be turning to China for more funding.
The leaders of Palau, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) said that without $2.3billion that is currently being held up in Congress, they are coming under pressure to turn to China for financial assistance.
Beijing is attempting to shift the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region in its favour as a funding package in Congress faces the same issue as money for Ukraine and Israel with Republicans withholding legislation in exchange for immigration reform.
In a joint letter in February, the island nations’ three leaders warned the delay in Congress had "generated uncertainty" among their populations.
There has been concern about a potential power grab in the Pacific
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Palau president Surangel Whipp told NBC that the funding block had made China look like a more credible partner to some on the tourist-dependent island of dependent island of 18,000, which is still suffering the economic fallout from the pandemic.
President Whipps said: "It creates the opportunity for the Chinese Communist Party really to erode Palauan confidence in our relationship with the United States."
Indo-Pacific experts have decried the "dysfunctional" Washington politics that have created the funding block as "short-sighted" and harmful to US national interests
Kathryn Paik, who until 2023 led the National Security Council’s portfolio for the region, told Defence News: "They’ve been able to rely on that assumption of presence and access for all of their planning. Every contingency you can imagine in the Pacific, Korea, Taiwan, everything depends on [those] assumptions of defence access."
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Palau president Surangel Whipp pictured with then British PM Boris Johnson
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Drew Thompson, a former US defence official and now senior visiting research fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, told The Telegraph: "Congress is shortsighted for not funding these things but really the Biden administration is at fault for not making the case to Congress, not prioritising this."
Senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute Dr Euan Graham said: "It’s a dereliction of duty from the US Congress if they don’t recognise the national interest here."
"The importance of the Pacific island compact states simply in positional terms is continuing to grow so if the US wants areas where it can disperse its forces in a conflict and potentially surge reinforcements through then the whole reason for the compacts is a recognition that they are important staging posts."
The announcement comes as the US is already building a radar installation on Palau.
Earlier this week, the United States cautioned Pacific Islands nations against assistance from Chinese security forces after it was reported that Chinese police are working in the remote atoll nation of Kiribati, a neighbor of Hawaii.
Kiribati's acting police commissioner Eeri Aritiera said last week uniformed Chinese officers were working with police in community policing and a crime database program.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said: "We do not believe importing security forces from the People's Republic of China will help any Pacific Island country. Instead, doing so risks fueling regional and international tensions."
