One device was to strengthen overlapping minilateral alliances, reminiscent of AUKUS and the Quad. Others had been newly created, such because the Indo-Pacific Financial Framework for Prosperity (IPEF).
After the shock of the China-Solomon Islands safety deal in Could 2022, the Biden administration elevated its diplomatic and financial engagement with Pacific Island international locations. President Joe Biden twice hosted Pacific Island Discussion board (PIF) leaders on the White Home for US-Pacific Summits in 2022 and 2023. The US additionally introduced the US-Pacific Partnership Technique, a roadmap for strengthening cooperation.
Over the previous 4 years, there have been an uncommon variety of high-level political visits to Pacific Island international locations, together with visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris, and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin, who was in Fiji in early December. The Biden administration additionally elevated its diplomatic presence, opening embassies in Tonga, Kiribati, Vanuatu and Solomon Islands, and a US Company for Worldwide Growth (USAID) workplace in Fiji.
After support cuts within the years earlier than, Biden introduced a US$810 million support package deal over 10 years, together with US$130 million for local weather change initiatives. This funding nonetheless has not obtained full congressional approval and its future underneath Trump 2.0 stays unclear.
In March, Biden renewed the Compact of Freely Related States (COFA), asserting an unprecedented package deal of US$7 billion over 20 years for the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia. The US has a long-standing particular relationship with these three strategic international locations within the Western Pacific, which obtain the lion’s share of US Pacific support and funding. COFA will proceed to permit the US to offer defence, deploy forces and function bases there.
