President Joe Biden shakes hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping before a bilateral meeting, Saturday, Nov. 16, 2024, in Lima, Peru.
THE Heritage Foundation asked me to speak at a recent panel discussion on its Pacific Pivot paper on the strategic challenges of the Pacific Islands. I had planned to criticize the newspaper, but coincidentally, the APEC summit in Peru, during which President Biden's performance was ridiculed by the media, took place. At the same time, Chinese President Xi Jinping was praised, prompting me to refocus my remarks on what the United States could do to regain the leadership it abandoned at the end of World War II .
Xi Lima's participation in APEC was closely linked to his inauguration ceremony at the new CCP-funded, $3.5 billion megaport in Chancay, just 45 miles away. While beneficial for China's trade in South America, it also gives the Chinese Communist Party or CCP a solid foundation for advanced naval and military positioning in the Western Hemisphere, a worrying development. Xi doesn't like us being in Guam, we don't like the Soviets being in Cuba, and I certainly don't like the CCP being in Peru.
It seems to me, therefore, that it is time to develop the Pacific Pivot of Heritage into a Pacific Charter, like the Atlantic Charter concluded before America's entry into World War II. However, even if this document was intended to guide our actions in an ongoing war, a Pacific Charter should be designed to prevent the outbreak of global conflict this century.
In the 80 years since World War II, our multilateral priorities in the Pacific have focused on the Micronesian countries and territories west of Hawaii, north of the equator. South of the equator, Australia focused on Melanesia, while New Zealand and France looked after much of Polynesia.
Xi's inauguration of the Peruvian ribbon opened a new bridge between the islands, waters and airspace of the Pacific to facilitate trade and strategic competition with all of South America. This includes a straight line connecting China to key markets and strategic locations in Latin America, passing directly through the Samoa Island chain that includes American Samoa, the home of the American people I represent in Congress.
My islands may seem remote to those traveling from the US mainland to and through Hawaii and west to Asia, but in the context of the new geopolitical realities imposed on us by the CCP, American Samoa, the only soil American in the southern hemisphere, are in the immense Polynesian Triangle which extends to the east and south of the Melanesian and Micronesian subregions of the Pacific. The smaller triangle at its heart, connecting the islands of Samoa and Tongan with the Lau Group of eastern Fiji, lies at the center of the direct route from Shanghai to the new CCP-built port in Peru.
As the regional counter-positioning of the United States and its allies within two groups has focused on the traditional first and second island chains around China and we have consolidated our position through strategic alliances in Micronesia, China's interests in South America have remained largely unchallenged.
Throughout this region, CCP state-owned enterprises exploit a subversive comparative advantage in competing with democracies through illegal political and economic warfare. The threat that competition could lead to confrontation, aggression and war increases every year. Since APEC in Lima, current international dynamics give the impression that the world is becoming even more dangerous, a global phenomenon perhaps comparable to the rise of Hitler in the 1930s. Consequently, Churchill and FDR responded with the Atlantic Charter. The success of this Atlantic pivot as a declaration of the democratic rights of all people depended on victory in what became a world war.
In 2024, we have entered the Pacific century. The lessons of our own history demand a solemn commitment to freedom under the rule of law for the nations of the world. This noble past now invites us to a different, hopefully peaceful, but equally determined effort to resist the forces of tyranny.
Can a united Pacific community, composed of freedom-loving people in free-enterprise countries from the Pacific Rim to the Center, with democratic models of self-government, now demonstrate a resolve equal to competitive challenge we face from the CCP and prevail over the armed political war waged by the CCP? Despite our best efforts, since President Nixon's opening to China, CCP-led China has resisted joining the ranks of dominant nations seeking comity and reciprocity in international trade.
My proposal for a Pacific Charter would give concrete meaning to the Pacific Pivot of the Heritage Foundations. It envisions America and its allies on the Rim and beyond adopting commitments to keep our blue continent secure, peaceful, united, and free from great power rivalries and incursions into the region.
Just as President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill aboard the USS Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941, signed this historic document, which outlined a plan to end World War II , I call on policymakers in the new Trump administration and Congress for a bipartisan way to work with our allies and Pacific nations to develop a Pacific Charter as a declaration of peace, not war, to be signed by the president Trump and other leaders aboard a U.S. ship in the port of Pago Pago no later than the fall of 2028, if not sooner.
This is my challenge to all.
Congresswoman Radewagen serves as Vice Chair of the House of Representatives Indo-Pacific Foreign Affairs Subcommittee for the 118th Congress and served as Chair of the Indo-Pacific Working Group for the Natural Resources Committee.
