Austin Meets With Papua New Guinea Leaders About Boosting Military Ties

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met with leaders in Papua New Guinea on Thursday to discuss expanding military ties after the two countries signed a Defense Cooperation Agreement that will give the US access to bases in the Pacific Island nation.

The two nations also signed a maritime surveillance agreement allowing the US Coast Guard to patrol Papua New Guinea’s Exclusive Economic Zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from its coast. Austin announced that a US Coast Guard Cutter would be arriving in August.

PNG Prime Minister James Marape has faced some domestic backlash for inking the DCA, which has yet to be ratified by the country’s parliament. At a press conference with Austin, Marape insisted the deal was not about the US preparing for a future war with China.

“I want to give assurance to everyone here, including our friends from Asia, that this is not about setting up for war, rather, it’s about setting our presence for nation-building in Papua New Guinea and this part of planet Earth and Indo-Pacific,” Marape said.

Marape noted that the US has military bases much closer to China and Taiwan. “They have bases in Philippines, in Korea, elsewhere, much closer to China than PNG. My audience here in PNG are quite hyper-sensitive to these sort of questions, and they may misconstrue that Secretary Austin and the US defense is building up an offensive base,” he said.

Despite Marape’s assurances, US military officials have made clear that they are expanding in the Pacific to prepare for a future war with China. Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of the US Pacific Air Forces, recently told Nikkei Asia that the purpose of expanding in the region was to give China more areas it would need to target in a potential conflict.

“Obviously we would like to disperse in as many places as we can to make the targeting problem for the Chinese as difficult as possible,” he said. “A lot of those runways where we would operate from are in the Pacific Island nations.”

The US deal with Papua New Guinea is seen as a response to China signing a security agreement with the Solomon Islands. The US and Australia reacted so harshly to the Solomon Islands’ deal with China that the Pacific Island nation’s leader said he felt he was being threatened with an “invasion.”

Marape said China didn’t care about Papua New Guinea’s deal with the US. “When we were signing the DCA with USA, Chinese government through the embassy here did relay to us they have no issue whatsoever with us signing the DCA with USA,” he said.