Mike's Minute: America might be able to help in the Pacific

Forget Greenland – in our own backyard we have growing action in the Pacific between America and China. 

This is not breaking news, but the US is trying to renew its strategic compact ties with places like Palau and the Marshall Islands, and testimony in front of the House Committee on Natural Resources suggests China is waging a sustained influence campaign aimed at weakening democratic institutions and strategic alignment in the Pacific. 

Now this is all good news for us, given it felt like America wasn’t that overtly interested in the Pacific these past few years. 

But Trump seems active everywhere, so the more they are alert to what's going on, the better. 

The downside though is that there appears nothing we can do. Despite the efforts of us and Australia, too many Pacific nations have gone, to a degree, with China and that is for the simple reason of money in whatever form. 

Places with no dough tend to like a large cheque and when our moderate sized cheques got replaced with much bigger cheques the writing was on the wall. 

The Cooks is your best and closest example. We can withhold aid until we are blue in the face, it is not going to make a jot of difference. 

Enter Winston Peters, who I always thought has got the advantage of experience in matters like this and it has, and is, making him a very able Foreign Minister. 

But he has come on this show a number of times and argued the value of friendship. 

As I have pointed out the cold, hard reality of Chinese money and promises, he has countered with what seems to be the genuine belief that friendship matters. 

I fear that’s an old man talking. His view is muddled by a bygone era, hope and good vibes. 

It would be nice to think friendship was a thing, but it doesn’t beat dollars. 

Some in the Pacific will still say it could have been different if we and Australia had been more generous over the years, but I don’t believe that for a minute either. 

China is here and they are shopping. The upside is America, at last, has not just woken up, but they might just be awake and alarmed enough to do something about it. 

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