Struggling In The Wild Western Pacific, Palau May Finally Get A New Sheriff

After years of asking, the tiny island nation of Palau may finally be getting the security guarantees it needs to enforce the law in the wild waters of the western Pacific. Palau chose a perfect moment—as the White House interviewed potential new nominees for Secretary of Defense, Palau presented the beleaguered incumbent, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, an opportunity to claim a geopolitical victory over China in the Pacific. Related by Esper’s staff as a moment of high diplomatic drama, the Wall Street Journal breathlessly reported that the Palauan President Tommy Remengesau Jr. slipped Esper an invitation to “build joint-use facilities and come and use them regularly.” 

With China besieging American influence throughout the “Second Island Chain”, any positive news deserves highlighting. But the invitation, in itself, is not news. Palau’s interest in an increased American presence is longstanding. And, despite all the current U.S. preening over Palau’s latest basing invitation, this was not, exactly, a heavy diplomatic lift. Palau has invited the U.S. military into the strategic atoll several times, only to see, time and time again, the U.S. demur.

America’s reserve, in itself, merits highlighting. Certainly, it is frustrating for China hawks that the U.S. is taking so long to move forward on Palau’s request for added American support. But America’s responsible efforts to slow the militarization of the region—until absolutely necessary—is healthy and merits wider and more positive notice in the press.

Despite an open door to Palau, the U.S. has moved deliberately in archipelago, gradually investing at a scale Palau can absorb and linking investments to concrete and measurable long-term benefits for locals. Unlike China, whose foreign development policy tends towards grabbing strategic assets after showering influential locals with cash or grand development projects that are completely out of proportion to local needs, America—in conjunction with like-minded friends—is trying to do strategic development right, engaging without subverting the local economy, government and judicial system. That merits highlighting too.

What Does Palau Want?

Palau, a verdant Micronesian archipelago, is searching for stability. It is a relatively new democracy, gaining independence from U.S. administration only in 1994. As Compact of Free Association state, the U.S. is responsible for Palau’s defense. The country’s request for additional American military support reflects not just Palau’s interest in obtaining concrete security guarantees, but also may be linked to an ongoing Compact review, a critical means to support America’s former Pacific territories.

Palau knows it needs help. The country has staked its future on tourism and fishing, but authorities struggle to secure 630,000 square kilometers of exclusive economic zone. It is hard to keep predatory “fishing” fleets at bay. Without real enforcement capability (Palau has a few patrol boats on hand to enforce its massive exclusive economic zone), territorial encroachment and illegal, unregulated and unreported fishing will become chronic problems. And as Palau just closed 80 percent of its waters to commercial fishing this year, preventing outsider encroachment into Palau’s exclusive economic zone encroachment is an absolute necessity.

Palau’s past struggles to limit territorial encroachment led to ugly international incidents. In early 2012, after watching for three days, Palauan law enforcement boats confronted a Chinese “fishing” fleet near Kayangel Atoll, killing one Chinese national and arresting 26 others. The Chinese scuttled the fleet’s “mother” ship, taking care to thoroughly destroy their vessel and eliminating all evidence of fishing or, potentially, other more concerning activities—detailed ocean-floor surveys or even outright espionage. 

As the incident unfolded, Palau endured a “very aggressive, arrogant” response from Chinese authorities, who, “wanted to interview every single fisherman…one by one without any Palauan official present.” After Chinese authorities vigorously defended the intruders and sent a charter plane to return the detained sailors to China, Palau renewed a previous invitation to host U.S. forces. 

Complicating matters, China is not the only transgressor in Palauan waters, and greater overt U.S. involvement in securing Palauan waters may lead to friction. In 2015, Palau made headlines by capturing and burning a group of trespassing Vietnamese fishing boats, only saving two from the flotilla to transport all 77 crew members in a cramped trip back to Vietnam. Key security partners like the Philippines and Indonesia are regular trespassers. Even Japan, a staunch U.S. ally, has raised concerns about Palau’s fishing ban, which could make an increased U.S. role in maintaining Palauan territorial integrity somewhat trying for an already overstretched U.S. diplomatic corps.

Basing aside, increased U.S. attention, combined with savvy investment in improving Palau’s maritime domain awareness with new radars on Kayangel (where Chinese vessels had been caught snooping in 2012), as well as Ngardumau, Angaur, Sonsorol and Helen Reef. Regular help from the U.S. Coast Guard and Seabees, as well as patrol boats from Japan and Australia, have helped to restore a measure of order to Palau’s rich fisheries and undersea natural resources.

The benefits have been measurable. In October 2019, a collaborative U.S. Coast Guard fishing enforcement exercise through the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency found no unknown vessels and identified only four violations in 131 ship inspections.  

A Multinational Opportunity

With the latest invitation, the U.S. has an excellent opportunity to build resilient regional security upon Palau’s constructive foundation. American military leaders desperately want to ask Palau to add a more militarily useful over-the-horizon radar that detects and tracks air and surface traffic earlier than Palau’s present surveillance system allows. But that immediate need aside, a collaborative approach, or a framework where Japan, Taiwan, Australia and other like-minded nations can contribute, may prove an even more solid basis for ensuring Palau’s security over the longer-term.

The refurbishment and re-opening of old Palauan airstrips offer a good opportunity for multilateral collaboration. The landing of an Air Force C-130 on an nearly abandoned airfield on sparsely-populated Angaur Island this month reinforced the potential utility of some of America’s old World War II-era bases. In this case, an old jungle airbase, tucked ten miles away from the southern edge of Palau’s main islands, right in the center of a well-monitored EEZ, offers U.S. allies enormous tactical benefits. In addition, the old airfield was already identified as a potential area where the United States could enjoy exclusive use rights—as early as the late 1980’s when Russia was the potential interloper. Palau even suggested the site as a relocation area as Japan and the United States rejiggered Japan’s American bases. In essence, Angaur Island seems open for security-oriented development. At a minimum, the island could, in relatively short order, provide a useful hub for brief forward deployments by Coast Guard C-130s or other multinational patrol craft, adding additional support to Palau’s enormous and hard-pressed exclusive economic zone.

Another area for the U.S. and other Palauan stakeholders to explore would be in boosting Palau’s ability to carry out small boat maintenance. As a potentially good benefit to the Palauan economy and a critical need if Palau intends to actively patrol their exclusive economic zone, small boat maintenance also aligns with prior U.S. investments in the archipelago. When America built the 7,000 foot long airfield on Angaur in World War II, the U.S. also installed a short-lived small boat maintenance facility. With increased emphasis on tourism, fishing, maritime patrol—and potentially even unmanned craft—it is high time for Palau’s like-minded partners to consider sponsoring a forward, small-boat maintenance shipyard, set up for the training and development of a Palauan small boat “maintenance and support” industrial base.

In closing, the Palauan invitation is a small victory that offers like-minded nations a competing narrative to China’s swashbuckling, opportunistic and ultimately unsustainable engagement in the region. But it is time to move forward with dispatch, and show the rest of the Pacific that slow, steady engagement offers a better path than the flashy and exploitative options offered by others.