Forget about getting caught in the crosshairs, we’re stuck on the seesaw

Pacific Reflections By Gabriel McCoard

Forget about getting caught in the crosshairs, we’re stuck on the seesaw

I am not predicting the breakup of the Federated States of Micronesia. This should not be confused with a prediction that the Federated States of Micronesia will not break up.

Let’s start with a brief recap of what has happened in the world in the past few weeks.

India and Pakistan started bombing each other. Then stopped.

The economy was heading into a recession. Until it wasn’t. Then it was. Then it wasn’t. The stock market plunged, then soared. Then plummeted. Then skyrocketed.

Trump threatened tariffs of the global-order-changing kind. Then changed his mind. Then changed it back again. Then reversed.

The president’s approval plummeted, then rebounded.

And Chuuk's election chaos presented an existential threat to the FSM, until it didn’t,  while leaving the tensions that caused it in the first place churning just beneath the surface.

A recent edition of the Pacific News Agency Service’s PacNews, a primer of recent news matters from the region, popped into my inbox a few days ago. The first article was from the Pacific Island Times.

Rep. Ed Case of Hawaii reintroduced the “Our Pacific Partnership Act” in the U.S. House of Representatives. Per the article, this legislation would “mandate the Department of State to institute a clear and comprehensive strategy to enhance the United States’s diplomatic posts, defense posture and economic engagements with the Pacific island bloc."

Congratulations, dwellers of the Pacific. You are now a bloc.

Perhaps a surge of excitement is in order. Perhaps, nearing a decade and a half after Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State penned in the pages of Foreign Policy that the U.S. “stands at a pivot point” in the Asia-Pacific region, the U.S. is finally serious about the hearts and minds of Pacific Islanders.

Perhaps now we’re serious about the soft-core corruption of unbuilt roads and unsafe drinking water, the endemic poverty and underdevelopment in the world’s most aid-dependent region that might very well be China’s best pick-up opportunity in the global chess game of influence.

And let’s not forget my favorite target: the international community, whatever that is, that turns elected officials from modest villagers trying to improve the community to global jetsetters.

Perhaps now the U.S. will take the Pacific seriously.

Or perhaps not.

If this legislation sounds familiar, it's because it is. Rep. Case introduced the bill last term, before last year’s elections. It passed the House, then fizzled in the Senate. Bicameralism in action.

Maybe congressional interest in the region will be different this time. Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Iowa’s Joni Ernst are sponsoring it in the Senate. That officially makes it bipartisan.

But the headline said it all: "US lawmakers renew call for increased engagement with Pacific island region amid Trump’s retreat mode." The lead sentence further cites Trump's “erratic foreign policy and faltering interest in the region.”

This reminds me of a seesaw, also known as a teeter-totter, a piece of playground equipment. A seesaw is basically a long board, elevated and secured at its center. One person sits on each end, and as one side rises, the other falls until that side's rider kicks off the ground to rise, sending the other down.

We begin to see a new future for the Pacific, until inertia kicks in and the status quo rises.

There is, however, one way to torture a rider on a seesaw. Pile a bunch of people on one end, leaving a hapless child dangling in the air until the moment everyone jumps off and the hapless child, no match for gravity, crashes to the ground.

A little bit of chaos can be a good thing. It can force people to find better ways of doing things. A little chaos, that is.

The only problem is that those who bring chaos don’t typically have to live with their creation.

The clash for influence often depicts nations in the crosshairs of a gun, an image apt, for say, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine. I’m seeing it as a seesaw.

Both bring their own chaos. Just look at elections in Chuuk.

Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard@hotmail.com.

 The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions and beliefs of the Pacific Island Times.

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