The US Must Win the Great Game in the Pacific
America’s contest with China will be decided in lots of places — including Tonga this week, and the Pacific this decade.
Welcome to Nuku’alofa, Mr. Campbell.
Photographer: Katalina Siasau/AFP via Getty Images
Don’t be so consumed by the race for the White House or by the conflicts in Ukraine, the Middle East, the South China Sea and Africa that you risk overlooking Tonga. Instead, hitch a mental ride with Kurt Campbell, America’s deputy secretary of state, as he alights this week in that archipelagic kingdom for a summit of the Pacific Islands Forum. The purpose of his trip is to woo that club’s 18 members while — as usual these days — outcharming a top diplomat from China who’s also in attendance.
Campbell and that envoy from Beijing, Qian Bo, are each showing up in Nuku’alofa with a bagful of carrots and sticks to make the case that their respective nation is the better partner for Pacific nations. In that way, the forum, in what is a peripheral region on most maps, has become central to the geopolitics of our time.