Hoping DOGE’s Scalpel ‘Doesn’t Hit an Artery’: Cleo Paskal Warns About Dangers of Potential Cuts in the Pacific
- EPOCHTV
- 9 minutes ago
- 29 min read
From cutting programs under the U.S. Agency for International Development to putting Voice of America employees on paid administrative leave, the Trump administration and its Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have been aggressively seeking to reduce government spending on international initiatives.
But some such spending may be worth keeping.
Watch the video:
Cleo Paskal, senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, breaks down how certain U.S. measures in the Pacific are vital to deter increasing Chinese encroachment in the region, but they may not be well-understood.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Cleo Paskal, such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
Cleo Paskal:
Always great to be here. Thank you for having me.
Mr. Jekielek:
A lot of unusual things have been happening with respect to different tools of U.S. foreign policy. USAID is being cut down dramatically. Most recently, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia are being reduced down to their statutory spending requirements. I see a lot of narrative out there that basically the axe is being taken to U.S. foreign policy initiatives. What’s your take?
Ms. Paskal:
It’s a complicated and evolving picture. There are a few, so I’m looking mostly at the Pacific region. But just to say that there are entire countries like India that are very happy to see USAID go, because they think that some of that activity was targeted at their leadership. So the sense that all countries are angry and heartbroken about it is not accurate, but there are some where this is going to hurt. And so this kind of hammer vs. scalpel is going to be very important. Figuring out what works and what doesn’t is going to be very important.
And I’m hoping that what we are in is a transition phase where there is this pause or whatever it is, and then there’s going to be a readjustment that’s more in line with the sort of things that are good for U.S. power. But just for an example, because you talked about the media stuff, there’s been some excellent reporting in the Pacific coming out of VOA. There have also been some very peculiar pieces coming out of Radio Free Asia around, for example, Palau. We’re using specific examples to get an idea of what it means.
Palau has a huge number of challenges that it is countering. The president of Palau gave the national security coordinator the right to go after people who are overstaying their visa, misusing their visas, in some cases almost literally breaking down doors, rolling up Chinese illegal gambling organizations, getting all sorts of very dubious people out of the country. But Radio Free Asia chose to write during that same period about unexploded World War II bombs being a huge problem and not cover that.
Now, there are some unexploded World War II bombs, but in terms of what’s important as a story coming out of Palau is not accurately being reflected. There are other stories about, you know, teenagers in Palau, anti-US militarization, but there aren’t stories about how, at the inauguration of the president of Palau, the foreign minister of Japan sat next to the foreign minister of Taiwan in a show of solidarity, which is huge geopolitical signaling.
So the coverage has been unusual in certain locations, and I’m not saying this about those particular stories, but as you know, there have been a lot of concerns about penetration, targeted penetration into those reporting agencies by people who have interests that are not aligned with U.S. interests. So a reassessment is not a bad thing. We'll see what happens during the rebuilding phase.
Mr. Jekielek:
To your point, one thing that someone alerted me to was that Voice of America has never actually covered this forced organ harvesting issue that the Chinese regime has been involved in for decades, like not even one time. I guess the idea is, I mean, I’m thinking about Ted Lipien’s work. You know, he’s been arguing that there needs to be reform in these agencies for a very long time. But now he’s also saying, you know, he thinks what’s happened is going too far.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, and we'll see what happens next. Kari Lake initially talked about setting up a dedicated unit within VOA to investigate Chinese illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive activity throughout the region. VOA is very well placed to connect the dots. It’s hard for, you know better than anybody, when you cover the CCP, your advertising can get cut, you know, you’re marginalized, you’re discredited.
So imagine if you’re a little newspaper in Solomon Islands and you want to cover what China is doing in your country. It’s nearly impossible. And I’m using that as a specific case because there is a very good news organization in the Solomon Islands, called In-depth Solomons. They’re having a hard time now. They can’t do that type of coverage. They’re not going to be able to get local advertising to support themselves. So they were doing what basically VOA should have been doing anyway, but they were doing it on the ground in their own voice and with incredible courage. And some of those journalists have now been laid off.
And what typically happens in those situations is the pro-PRC government offers them a job within the government. Come and do marketing for us or come and do PR for us. And you’ve got a journalist who has a family, their parents might need medical care, their kids need school fees, and the source of funding has been cut off. They need to survive. So they get diverted into the system. They know that it doesn’t make them feel good, but they need to be a good parent, they need to be a good child, and this is their only option for doing it. So that’s an example of where the cuts are directly hurting Chinese coverage.
For example, they broke a story about how the minister of police in Solomons had a bank account with a Chinese national and the son of the former prime minister of Solomons, which is the one that switched the country from Taiwan to China, in Singapore. That is an incredibly important piece of information that changes the way you look at policing, for example, in Solomon Islands. It wouldn’t have happened if they wouldn’t have been getting funding from the U.S.
Now, there have been different sorts of funding to achieve very specific political goals, and that’s the problem. It sort of all became kind of enmeshed. And hopefully this is a process of disaggregating and figuring out what is supporting freedom around the world, both with USAID and with VOA, and creating structures that are going to reinforce
that going forward.
Mr. Jekielek:
One of the things that was brought to my attention by Michael Pack, who had run USAGM for a bit under Trump 45, was just a lot of really bizarre anti-American content, which makes no sense, obviously, in such media.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, and what happened to him is that he was kept out of office. He was appointed and he was kept out of office for years, right? They wouldn’t approve him, they wouldn’t put him in. And so I think that part of this is a reaction to that perceived overreach on the other side. You know, the American people voted for change and you’re not going to let us do it. So we’re going to get rid of the organizations that are blocking that. If you’re going to continue to maintain control over them and not reflect the will of the voter, this is sort of the Trump administration line, then why should we continue to support you? You’re not doing what the voters voted for.
It’s described sometimes as the deconstruction of the administrative state, but the question is, you know, is there also sort of a reappropriation of the mechanisms of state that they think are under this, under the executive, as opposed to this unelected bureaucracy. That’s the whole language around it, right? This is really a fight about what government is and who controls government and the role of the voter vs. the role of the bureaucracy. And it’s spinning out into all areas, including obviously this.
Mr. Jekielek:
I remember President Trump, you alluded to this earlier, right? It was a scalpel, not hatchet, if I believe is the term. So that’s kind of what you’re hoping for here, I guess.
Ms. Paskal:
Well, yeah. And then after the scalpel, you do some suturing, you get some antibiotics, and then you get up and running, right? So we’re in this cutting phase, but the question is, okay, then what? If you’ve excised what you consider to be the cancer, right, are you then going to put it, put the body politic in a position to be able to get up and running again? Or are you going to let it bleed out?
Mr. Jekielek:
I mean, to use the sort of, well, I mean, there’s arguments about this, right? Is there a place for U.S. media? Is there value to those U.S. media? And, you know, which is, you know, some people would just say this. That’s just U.S. propaganda. Why should we have that?
Ms. Paskal:
So I think that what they’re terming as propaganda, if it’s done right, if you’re just telling the American story truthfully, then that is incredibly powerful and gives hope to a lot of people. So it’s not about that. And this is and this is actually a lot of what it was originally was what was founded during the Cold War, was to get out the American story. Or it’s not. You know, it’s not, you know, the U.S. is perfect. And in fact, when talking about how to work towards a more perfect union, the imperfections involved in that are also part of the inspiring truth.
Even the U.S. isn’t perfect, but it has these structures in place that the founders put in, these checks and balances. And so maybe why doesn’t our country have that? You know, how can we work through some of our problems? But second of all, it cuts through a lot of the propaganda that you’re getting, the anti-American propaganda that you’re getting from the United Front organizations, for example, or things like that. We, I’m talking about sort of the free world, Canada is free, has something that the CCP doesn’t, which is we have truth on our side.
So the more that you talk about how things really are, the better. And it gives hope to honest people in other places that there is another model than this just continuous degradation of the institutions trending towards a CCP-ification, where you can’t trust your judiciary, you can’t trust your police, you can’t trust, you know, the U.S. is going through some internal issues like that now, but the fact that it’s all out in the open gives you hope.
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, I actually talked about this precise principle in a recent interview where I was in the hot seat because there’s a lot of reasons to be unhappy for, you know, I think this is kind of probably one of the most bipartisan, there’s a lot of people that are unhappy about what’s going on in the u.s perhaps for different reasons right and a lot of those people I’ve noticed in some cases have very dark thoughts about it like actually America is the problem in the world and if anything you know the the current reality is sort of a testament to the fact that things change mechanisms of change exist and it’s a not not a one-way ticket if, it’s a validation of the fact that there’s something special here.
Ms. Paskal:
Sometimes it’s helpful to hear what other people think about the U.S., right? I’m a Canadian, and I’ve learned an enormous amount about how the U.S. operates over the last 10 years, just by how this has been all fought out in public. And it’s been painful. You know, people have ended up in jail, you know, censored. It’s been, it has been a very painful process. But you see change. You see that the system can adapt and change. And who knows where it’s heading, but it’s kind of inspiring.
In my country, there are some very serious issues that don’t get debated like this at all. And the media environment is much more closed. It can be very difficult to bring up topics that are sensitive. I’m from Quebec. With Quebec separation, you just can’t talk about how there is no logic to it. Just by me saying that out loud would make it difficult for me to operate in Quebec. Somebody will now clip it and bring it back home and I’m going to have to deal with that for the next 20 or 30 years.
I was involved in some of the consultations around Scottish independence.
And they looked at things like, OK, how are we going to do a foreign policy? How are we going to do currency? What are we going to do about our border? Quebec has never done any of that. So it’s just emotive control of the population. The reason that I’m going into the bizarreness of Quebec separation as a policy is because it’s an indication of how crazy but mature U.S. debate is. We could talk about any of the sorts of similarly sensitive issues, even a close neighbor, is difficult for an American to, I think, comprehend.
So, yes, America is chaotic and hopefully self-adjusting and moving towards that more perfect union and something that is a system that I learn from every day and respect and admire. And I think that there are a lot of people around the world who feel the same way. And yes, there’s a lot of negativity domestically. And I think that there are a lot of foreign elements that push that narrative, especially through social media, for their own ends.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right. I want to talk about Canada. Of course, viewers know I’m also Canadian. This is a great opportunity for us to discuss Canada becoming the 51st state. The reason I mention this is because, well, we’ve been talking a lot about 80-20 issues in U.S. domestic policy, for example, men and women’s sports. That’s an 80-20 issue with 80% of Americans not into seeing that happen. So an 80-20 issue for Canada is Canada not being the 51st state and Canada maintains sovereignty. And President Trump’s repeated assertions that Canada could or should become a 51st state has become a massive issue in Canada. It’s a big talking point. Everyone’s buzzing about it. And it’s completely changed the political ecosystem, frankly.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, and this is one of the reasons why I brought up the Quebec thing. In the same way that Quebec isn’t going to go independent, Canada is not going to become the 51st state just for sheer structural reasons. And I don’t think it would be good for the U.S. from a Trump administration perspective because we‘d be the biggest state, we’d have more representatives in Congress than California would, and they wouldn’t be MAGA voters, it would completely destabilize the U.S. political system from the inside. The Republican Party doesn’t want D.C. to become a state because it would put in a couple of more Democrats into the House. Imagine 30 or with those six million French Quebecers, about half of whom would then want to separate from the U.S. It’s a poison pill politically to bring it.
So it’s structurally a non-starter, what would be involved in terms of the referenda and passing through parliament and all that sort of stuff. So it’s like Quebec separation. It becomes this storm, this strawman dang in the system, right, that obscures what’s really going on. And I think what’s really going on is the U.S. is saying, your border is insecure, you are a security threat in a whole bunch of different ways, and we’re protecting you and have been for a long time and we want this sorted out. But what do you think?
Mr. Jekielek:
I think that’s a big part of it actually. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that America is in the process of resetting its trade relationships and of course trade and security are closely tied in every scenario. And America obviously has these odd trade relationships where it would, in one direction, practice essentially free trade, and in the other direction would get very protectionist policies. Canada is probably much less of a practitioner of this asymmetry than other states. I mean, Communist China is an example. I think Japan kind of started it back in the day. But nonetheless, that exists. So there is even that dimension. Trump talks about reciprocal tariffs, right? This idea is, why does it make sense for you to have these uber-protectionist policies in one direction and not in the other, right? Again, even though the scale, I think, in Canada is less than probably most other countries.
Ms. Paskal:
So just to jump in on that, a big part of that is the, at least in one sector, Quebec dairy farmers.
Mr. Jekielek:
Dairy is one of these highly protected, exactly.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, and they’re protected for domestic political reasons over the Quebec independence stuff, right? So Ottawa doesn’t want to annoy Quebec because Quebec will throw a tantrum, potentially politically. And so we have a parliament. Quebec elects people into the federal parliament, into the national parliament, whose pretty much only platform is Quebec separation. Right. The Bloc Québécois platform is that we don’t want to be part of Canada. So they’re taking up these seats in parliament, but they’re functionally not part of the national discussion. They’re just about if you don’t give us what we want, we’re going to stir up this. It’s like taking parliament hostage on certain topics.
And one of them is these dairy farmers. We could get into the maple syrup mafia as well. The point is that we do this, and the U.S. trade negotiators know it. We pretend that the U.S. is being irrational when we’re doing it for the same narrow, venal, domestic, political reasons that the U.S. would do something around some specific local market issue around soybeans or something else.
Mr. Jekielek:
It’s fascinating to me because there’s these security issues where President Trump seems to be using tariffs as this tool and rhetoric as a tool to try to correct some actually pretty significant security problems that he views, and possibly also these tariff asymmetries, these protectionist asymmetries. But using this rhetoric of the 51st state. Former Prime Minister now, Justin Trudeau, talked about how Canada is this post-national, I think that was a term used, a post-national state. So he was proud of the idea that there isn’t a strong national identity, kind of an odd thing. But there is a kind of national identity. And I think it’s very interesting to me that President Trump in the U.S., by using this rhetoric of the 51st state, catalyzed the one thing that’s possibly the most powerful in the Canadian identity, which is we’re not American, and don’t even suggest that.
Ms. Paskal:
Part of that comes from fighting against manifest destiny for a huge chunk of time. You know, there were very serious periods, like the War of 1812 is obviously one of them, where the relationship between what is now Canada, I mean, Canada didn’t exist during the War of 1812, and the U.S. didn’t exist the way it does now, but the idea of the border being potentially changeable as the U.S. was moving west and expanding and changing its border is something that has been part of Canadian concern for a very long time.
And part of the reason for the Alaska Purchase in 1867, which is the same year Canada confederated, was because Seward’s idea was if you have California and you have Alaska, you can move on the British colony that is in between and grab the whole West Coast. And to compete against that, what’s now British Columbia said, OK, we'll join the rest of Canada if you build a railway so you can get troops out here to defend us against this American pincher move from the North and the South. So it’s been a part of U.S.-Canada relations for a long time. But what’s happened is Canada got very comfortable with the U.S. not being an aggressor, but with being a protector.
Now, we’re going back to older discussions from the U.S. side saying, why are we protecting you? And if we are going to be protecting you, and functionally, the U.S. military in the Arctic, in the Pacific, is doing the heavy lifting for Canada. At the same time, and I don’t want this piece to be missed, because it was one of the first things that President Trump brought up, Canada is allowing criminal activity in Canada that spills over into the U.S., including around fentanyl.
Calvin Chrustie testified at the Cullen Commission three years ago, that as a retired RCMP over a decade ago, they were seeing the Sinaloa cartel, the Chinese triads, and the Iranians working out of the port of Vancouver, and that Vancouver was an area for crypto money laundering. I mean, they knew there were these problems. Sam Cooper writes about this very well. We have been and are and continue to be a security risk to the U.S. We are a net security detractor, not a provider. So I think that when you combine both those external threats, but also the internal threat that the U.S. is posing to the U.S. I’m in some ways grateful that the Trump administration brought this up in the hope that Canada will start to get its act together for the sake of Canadians.
Mr. Jekielek:
So talking about the Pacific and DOGE cuts as well, I can’t help thinking back a little while when it was almost the case that the COFA countries, the three compact countries in the Pacific, I’m going to get you to tell me all about them, that play an incredibly important part of the U.S. security posture in the Pacific, almost were defunded. And so I was thinking about DOGE and how, you know, it’s already been said that there’s been certain things that have been cut that shouldn’t have had some things have been brought back, right? So maybe let’s talk about, you know, that whole realm, like, because this is something we wouldn’t want to see that same scenario happen again, probably.
Ms. Paskal:
Right. So just very briefly, the compact countries are Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia, and Marshall Islands. And the compact refers to a very unique agreement made between each of those countries and the United States at the end of the Cold War. This zone goes across the center of the Pacific. In the 20s and 30s, so the U.S. had Guam and the Philippines along the coast, but Japan controlled the center of the Pacific.
These countries that are now Palau, Federated States of America, Indonesia, Marshall Islands, and the Commonwealth of Northern Mariana, so Saipan, Tinian, that whole zone was controlled by the Japanese.
The U.S. strategic thought was, okay, we’ve got Philippines and Guam, so we can keep off the coast. We can keep any problem off the coast of Asia and we have Hawaii as a fallback position, so we’re good. But the U.S. didn’t have the middle. And Japan did, you know, civil-military fusion in the middle. And when it hit Pearl Harbor, it very quickly took the Philippines and Guam, and it cut the U.S. off at Hawaii. After 100,000 Americans died, liberating those islands, so these are, so Palau is the Battle of Peleliu, Federated States of Micronesia is Truk Lagoon, Marshall Islands is Kwajalein.
After the U.S. fought and died across that whole area after the end of World War II, they said, we’re not going to do this again. And a lot of the people who went to Congress had fought in that war. And so the question was, and this is a perennial question for the U.S., because the U.S. is actually not a comfortable colonial power. There’s elements in Congress who consider not only isolationists, definitely not comfortable with colonialism.
How do you make sure that the center of the Pacific isn’t a threat to you while not being a colonial power?
And the way that they threaded that needle was they set up the Congress of Micronesia, where representatives came from all across that region. And the end result was that what’s now the Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, which is Saipan and Tinian and some other islands, voted to join the United States. and they became part of the United States. And the other three countries voted to go independent. But they signed this compact with the U.S. The compact ties the countries together.
So people in those countries, they’re independent. They have their own citizenship. They have their own passport. But they can live and work in the U.S. They have the U.S. Postal Service as domestic mail. They have the support of the FAA. They have all sorts of federal government services that are normally only seen in the U.S. just for these three countries. So that’s how the needle was threaded, because along with that came U.S. strategic denial. So it’s a very unique, elegant solution that was born out of blood and suffering of those Pacific Islanders and of the men, almost all men, who went into Congress to create this deal.
The issue with DOGE is there’s very little awareness of this. And we saw that, as you said, parts of it needed to be renewed recently. And it took a lot of education in Congress, including through work that you did and also many others, for members of Congress to understand how unique this relationship was. Now, once they understood, that was the only thing that got funded during that period. Ukraine, Taiwan, Israel, all of that got stalled, but the compacts got funded because there was huge bipartisan support for continuing this relationship.
Now, where you’re getting these machete cuts across the systems, it’s not clear if they know how this is going to affect those relationships. So for example, the post office. The discussion is about cuts to the post office. The post office hates having to service the compact states because they lose money, right? They’ve been funded by Congress to do it. But if there isn’t awareness of this relationship, then it might look like something that’s easy to cut.
Mr. Jekielek:
Right. Because there’s this awareness of this broader deal, right? That the U.S. gets this massive security perimeter and it’s in response to paying for this stuff.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes. And you don’t want to end up like we did in the late 30s, where you’ve got these Americans or American territory sitting out on the edge of Asia—Guam and the Commonwealth and Northern Marianas and nothing in the middle. Toshi Yoshihara did a very good study on this. He studied the Pacific War very carefully . When it goes into a place like Solomon Islands, you see it targets the same locations where there were bases or where there were runways.
In the Solomon Islands, the Chinese are now rebuilding Henderson Airfield, which so many Marines died to protect. They’re putting in ports. They’re putting in Huawei towers. You know, they’re getting through political warfare and placement that has the potential to be switched very quickly from commodity to strategic asset. And they’re trying to do that in these three countries. Two of them recognize Taiwan, so they have an added layer of defense.
But they’re still trying to do things like push in Chinese tourists. They did this in Palau. Build up the economy, pull the tourists, and say, if you don’t de-recognize Taiwan, then we’re going to continue with this crashing of your economy. That’s also why, for example, they’re very happy to let Chinese organized crime operate in these locations because it weakens governance, it increases corruption, and it makes it easier for the Chinese to exert political leverage.
Mr. Jekielek:
And so very briefly, a strategic denial. Can you define that for me?
Ms. Paskal:
Sure. So that means that the U.S. can block the militaries of other countries from operating in that region. So that whole center zone with Palau, Marshall Islands, Federal States of Micronesia, the U.S. can say, we don’t want Chinese warships pulling into port, for example. So that’s actually the more important element, the strategic denial element, then the sort of emplacement element, keeping the area clean of aggressive foreign
militaries and allowing that ability to freely move back and forth across the region. The problem with that in a Chinese context is they use non-military ships in a military capacity. So their fishing fleet can actually be just as destructive for the security of a country as one of their warships.
I would argue for the expansion of the definition of defense and security of the Compacts of Free Association well beyond kinetic warfare. So that includes these unrestricted warfare elements that we’re seeing the Chinese employ in the area. So I would say bribery, going after corruption, getting rid of those Chinese organized crime gangs that do the sort of foot soldier work of some of the CCP infiltration activities, that should all be considered going after or be the responsibility the U.S. has to secure the defense and security of the compact states.
Mr. Jekielek:
I can’t help but remember my interview with President Panuelo, former president of Federated States of Micronesia, talking about how when he would go to these international conferences, the Chinese ambassador would be walking with him and telling him what he has to do. He had that kind of brazenness. Of course, he didn’t respond to that. And this is in a country which has this deep tie to the U.S. I think it kind of illustrates the brazenness, but second of all, the deep interest in the CCP and building control in these places.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes. And on the funding part, I mean,this is something that Grant Newsham has said also, you know, that it might cost you whatever it is, a hundred million now, but it’s going to cost you a hundred billion and who knows how many lives later on if you let these relationships fall apart. From a strategic aspect, they’re people there that have trusted their lives to the U.S. and they serve in the U.S. military at very high rates. They contribute to the defense of their nations and to the defense of the mainland. And it’s a relationship unlike any other.
There’s a bizarre aspect to this, which is that these three countries plus the U.S., like Guam and Commonwealth of Northern Marianas, are actually under the Department of Interior. The Secretary for Interior, Secretary Burgum, is sitting on the National Security Council because of the National Energy Security, National Energy Emergency that was declared. So he’s sitting on the NSC.
And one thing that might be very helpful is to expand his role, since his department is also responsible for this area, to also make sure that they can coordinate across the interagency to make sure that the cuts aren’t affecting the relationship with these compact states and with the territories, and at the same time, aggressively go after the strategic corruption that China is forcing into these countries to destabilize them.
Mr. Jekielek:
This is what I was going to say. The unspoken thing here is that there’s this giant blank check waiting on the desk of every politician in these three countries, right? They’re just waiting for that moment when the U.S. withdraws to take advantage.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, because they know their geography. They know how vulnerable the U.S. is if it doesn’t have strategic denial in the Central Pacific. They saw how the U.S. was concerned by the Spanish and the British and the French and the Japanese. And there was that kind of famous exchange between the then commander of U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Keating, an unnamed Chinese official who said, well, we'll take Hawaii West and you take Hawaii East. And it’s not going to stop at Hawaii, right? But that messaging around Hawaii tells you that they’re thinking along these terms. And what happens to those Americans sitting out in Guam? That’s west of Hawaii. So part of the problem is the mental map that the U.S. has of what the U.S. is.
Mr. Jekielek:
Because if I may, just because of, I mean, partially just because of the maps that we’re used to looking at from the time we’re children, right?
Ms. Paskal:
Yes. What are they centered on? That the National Geographic map, not the Royal Geographical Society, but the National Geographic map, what’s in the center?
Mr. Jekielek:
Yes, Europe, obviously, that’s what we grew up with, right? Yeah. But I think you’re about to tell me that the Pacific is really where the center is, right?
Ms. Paskal:
If you’re drawing a map of the United States, it goes from the East Coast or Puerto Rico to Guam and the Commonwealth and Northern Mariana Islands. Those are the boundaries of the United States. That should be in the center of your map. And then you can see how important that whole center of the Pacific is. We talk a lot about the first island chain and the second island chain, as if it’s Star Trek and you can magically teleport to the chain, right? You need to get through the center of the Pacific. And again, that’s why those visionary diplomats from both the region and the US in the 70s and 80s put together the compacts so that you can get across the middle and the middle can be safe. It’s not just about what the U.S. needs.
Those three countries, the elders of those countries who signed those agreements and the voters of those countries, the compacts were agreed by plebiscite by the population, had lived through horrific war. They didn’t want to do it again. They know how important their geography is. And they thought their best bet was to be part of what I think is actually the original conceptualization of a free and open Indo-Pacific, which allows what the U.S. always wanted from the Pacific, going right back to the beginning, trade. It wants to be able to freely trade in the Pacific.
And for that, security and trade is closely tied. There needs to be security, but it’s not an exclusive security, which is the Chinese conceptualization. It’s one in which everybody can benefit and prosper and there can be growth and you don’t have to worry about whether that Chinese port is bringing in drugs to destroy your society so that they can have more leverage over your politicians so that they can then turn that port into a military base.
That’s the circle or the cycle that some of these countries are currently going through. I mean, reductionist, obviously, but that’s the use of unrestricted warfare and entropic warfare, or I think the Chinese call it disintegration warfare, in order to achieve those results. And that is very actively happening now in those across the Pacific and especially in those U.S.-aligned states.
Mr. Jekielek:
So for the benefit of our audience and myself, if you could, you know, just in practical terms, what do all these different pieces of the puzzle look like in terms of this encroachment, in terms of this influence, in terms of this military-civil fusion that you mentioned?
Ms. Paskal:
One of the interesting things about looking at the Pacific Islands is because they’re so small, the layers of bureaucracy are so small, you can see how the Chinese operate. You can see what their toolkit is, what mechanisms of state they target, and towards what end. And I would argue that in a case like Solomon Islands, for example, which some say, oh, you know, the Chinese have taken it, so there’s nothing you can do. There are so many good, honest people there. That is a betrayal of everything that this country stands for and turns it into a toolkit for how you liberate a country from Chinese influence.
Okay, so you know this is the site of Guadalcanal. Over you know 82, 83 years ago it needed to be liberated from kinetic warfare. Now it needs to be liberated from unrestricted warfare. What does it look like? It’s a very good case study because in 2019 it switched recognition from Taiwan to China. So you have sort of a starting point, and you can see what they went after.
They went after policing. They started affecting the judiciary. They started trying to get involved in independent elections and politics.
So the case study of it is somebody who you spoke to, Daniel Suidani, who was the premier of Malaita province. And he encapsulates what the Chinese will do to somebody who tries to stand up to them using their proxies. His province, when the switch happened to China, said, we don’t want any CCP-linked businesses. We want a moratorium on CCP-linked businesses operating in our province because we have concerns over it turning into a police state.
We have concerns over freedom of religion. We have concerns over the environmental effects. And that was all based on what he had seen around him. And they put out this Auki communique, which is, if anybody wants to understand the Chinese, don’t go to a think tank in D.C. Go take a look at the Auki communique. He just kind of lays out the problems. It’s quite a document. What did you find that stood out for you?
Mr. Jekielek:
For me, it’s the many different points of attack working in conjunction to completely subvert a society, if that makes sense.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes, and they knew it and they were standing in the way. So what happened? He needed health care. The federal government and the federal government was very, very pro-PRC, declined to pay for his health care unless he let in the Chinese companies. He said no. And for anybody who ever says, you know, that, oh, they’re all corrupt anyway, you’ve spoken to some of the great leaders, President Panuelo, and obviously, Daniel Suidani. These are people who are willing to put their life on the line for freedom and for their people. He ended up getting health care in Taiwan, so that one didn’t work.
Then they paid off through proxies enough of his parliament to get him out as premier. Then the national government took away his elected seat, saying he didn’t recognize the one China policy, so therefore he was an agent of Taiwan. That court case, he went to court and that has now been declared illegal. But he was taken out of his domestic parliament while that happened, and all sorts of policies could go through because they put in people who were pro-China.
So he won on principle, but on the ground, things started to change. He held the line about the Huawei towers going into his province. As soon as he was taken out, the Huawei surveyors started going in. Recently, he was arrested on very dubious charges. And it shows that, first of all, very few people are standing up for him from outside the country. The lawfare is wearing them down, bankrupting them. If they weren’t people of incredible internal strength, they would have buckled a long time ago. And at the same time, they’re dealing with issues like the locals don’t have the medicine to survive an operation.
So the allies like Australia, they’re coming in with over $100 million for policing efforts to support the same police that are arresting Suidani, but they’re not coming in with the money for the hospital. I like the Filipino term, ICAD, the illegal, coercive, aggressive, and deceptive Chinese activity, the same time as building up things like the health system, these very, very good people have nowhere to turn. And the country just starts to disintegrate from the inside.
The Chinese can point to Suidani and ask, do you really want to be like this guy? He can’t get health care for his family. He’s constantly getting arrested or going to court. He’s not going to be premier of his province. Or do you want to take a bit of Chinese money and go take your sick wife to Australia for health care?
Mr. Jekielek:
It strikes me as odd at first glance that Australia kind of isn’t pulling its weight here? Is that how you view it?
Ms. Paskal:
Australia is part of the problem. It’s more than that, because they claim a privileged position as interlocutor between the U.S. and the Pacific. And we saw this with, there was a hot mic episode with Dr. Kurt Campbell and Prime Minister Albanese, where the Australians are pushing this Pacific Policing Initiative. And Dr. Campbell said, oh, we were going to do that, but Kevin asked us not to, meaning Kevin Rudd, the Australian ambassador to the U.S. So we’re going to give it to you. With wanting to be the interlocutor, the Australians think that it makes them look more important in DC, and so it gives it more weight. But they can’t deliver.
I’m going to give you two macro-level strategic examples of this. Australia signed deals with Nauru and Tuvalu, where they were called compact-light deals, where Australia took very high levels of, they call it mutual consent for things like foreign affairs or strategic denial, things like that. So in theory, in these cases, the U.S. would have to ask Australia if it wanted to do military exercises with Tuvalu or Nauru. So it took those rights.
And in exchange, it implied it would take some responsibility for defense. Australia couldn’t even shadow those Chinese ships had sped up, the Australian ships didn’t have the fuel capacity and the refueling capacity to be able to shadow them properly. So they can’t protect seemingly their own continent, but they’re telling the U.S., don’t worry, we’ve got Nauru and Tuvalu covered. And by saying that, it means bureaucrats here can go, okay, we don’t have to do it. So it leaves them effectively open.
Mr. Jekielek:
From the perspective of the CCP, if I’m hearing this right, they basically have a lot of opportunity in these areas.
Ms. Paskal:
Yes. But part of the problem is by Australia filling that space, that it can’t, it’s taking rights without the responsibilities. And also on the Nauru and Tuvalu deal, the other thing that is very problematic is those are country-to-country deals. The real compacts were done by plebiscite, by referendum. The people were involved. These are just, we signed a deal with these governments, and so that’s it, which again creates a precedent for the CCP.
So when the CCP signs a deal, government-to-government deal, with another country, they can say, look, Australia did it. You know, what’s wrong with our deal? And we’re going to offer Nauru or Tuvalu just slightly more, and we'll do a better job of protecting you or delivering if there’s a typhoon or this or that.
So part of this is Australia is wanting to look important to DC. Part of it is Australian arrogance. Part of it is an attitude in Australia that is condescending at best towards Pacific Islanders. Part of it, I think, is their intelligence community prefers to deal with corrupt people because they think it gives them leverage. My argument for that is if they’re corrupt, the Chinese are going to be able to corrupt them more. So all you’re actually doing is protecting Chinese assets.
And we’ve seen that, I think, in play in places like the Solomon Islands, where there are people who, leaders, who are taking Chinese money and very likely laundering it through Australian bank accounts and real estate, which means that if the Australian government wanted to, it could help liberate Guadalcanal from this Chinese activity just by doing what it’s supposed to do, which is clean up its own banking system and make sure that corruption isn’t permitted within Australia and yank the visas.
If you take the Chinese money and you sell out your country and your people, you can’t visit Australia. Forget your kids going to university in Australia. We’re going to seize your beach house. We’re not going to allow your blood money to be part of the U.S. system, the Australian system.
The U.S. can do it too in other locations. For example, what’s coming into the Commonwealth under the Marianas in Guam.
Australia talks a lot about whether we’re going to buy a submarine or the whole AUKUS thing. If they really wanted to protect their regional security, they'd go after Chinese strategic corruption and the people who are taking it and give room for honest people like Daniel Suidani to be in a position to build up his country in a way that is conducive to freedom and prosperity over the long term.
Mr. Jekielek:
Cleo, this has been another fascinating discussion. Any final thoughts as we finish up?
Ms. Paskal:
I think that a good chunk of what we’re talking about now may be out of date in three months. Things are moving so quickly. And I’m hoping that discussions like these that can inform the debate, which you do so well, make sure that when the scalpel is applied, it doesn’t nick an artery.
Mr. Jekielek:
Cleo Pascal, it’s such a pleasure to have you on the show.
Ms. Paskal:
Thank you. Always great to see you.
댓글