WASHINGTON D.C. — The Heritage Foundation asked me to keynote a recent roundtable on its “Pacific Pivot” paper on Pacific Island strategic challenges.  I had planned to critique the paper, but coincidentally, the APEC summit in Peru, in which President Biden’s performance was derided by the media, took place. At the same time, China’s President Xi Jinping was lauded, prompting me instead to refocus my remarks on what the U.S. might do to regain the mantle of leadership relinquished at the end of World War II. 

Xi’s Lima APEC appearance was tied neatly to his ribbon cutting at the new CCP-financed, $3.5 billion mega-port at Chancay, just 45 miles away. While great for China’s trade in South America, it also gives the Chinese Communist Party or CCP a firm foothold for naval and military forward positioning in the Western Hemisphere, a troubling development. Xi does not like us being in Guam, we did not like the Soviets being in Cuba, and I sure do not like the CCP being in Peru.

So, it seems to me it is time to develop Heritage’s “Pacific Pivot” into a Pacific Charter, like the Atlantic Charter concluded before America entered World War II.  However, while that document was meant to guide our actions in a war underway, a Pacific Charter should be designed to prevent the start of worldwide conflict in this century.

In the 80 years since WWII, our Pacific multilateral priorities have focused on Micronesian countries and territories to the west of Hawaii north of the equator. South of the equator, Australia concentrated on Melanesia, and New Zealand and France looked after much of Polynesia. 

Xi’s Peruvian ribbon-cutting opened a new bridge across Pacific islands, waters, and airspace to facilitate trade and strategic competition to all of South America. That includes a straight line from China to major markets and strategic locations in Latin America running straight through the Samoan 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 U.S. Mainland to and through Hawaii and west to Asia, but in the context of the new geopolitical realities forced upon us by CCP, American Samoa, the only U.S. soil anywhere in the Southern Hemisphere, is in the huge Polynesian Triangle that lies to the east and south of the Melanesian and Micronesian Pacific sub-regions. The smaller triangle at its heart, linking the Samoan and Tongan islands to eastern Fiji’s Lau group, is in the center of the direct path from Shanghai to the new CCP-built port in Peru.

While regional counter-positioning by the U.S. and its allies in two groupings has concentrated on the traditional first and second island chains around China, and we have secured our position through strategic alliances in Micronesia, China’s interests in South America have largely gone unchallenged.

Throughout this region, CCP state enterprises exploit subversive, comparative advantage in competition with democracies through unlawful political and economic warfare. The threat that competition could lead to confrontation, aggression and warfare grows yearly.

Since APEC in Lima, current international dynamics make it seem the world is becoming even more dangerous, a global phenomenon perhaps comparable to the rise of Hitler in the 1930’s. Hence, Churchill and FDR responded with the Atlantic Charter.  The success of that “Atlantic pivot” as a declaration of democratic rights for all peoples depended on victory in what became a global war.

In 2024, we are well into 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. That noble past now beckons us to a different, hopefully peaceful, but equally determined endeavor to resist the forces of tyranny. 

Can a united Pacific community composed of freedom-loving peoples in free enterprise nations from the Pacific Rim to its center, with democratic models of self-government, now summon resolve equal to the competitive challenge we face from CCP and prevail against weaponized political warfare waged by CCP?  Despite our best efforts, going back to President Nixon’s “opening to China,” CCP-ruled China has resisted joining the ranks of mainstream nations seeking comity and reciprocity in international commerce.

My proposal for a Pacific Charter would give concrete meaning to the Heritage Foundation’s Pacific Pivot. It envisions America and its allies on the Rim and beyond adopting commitments to keep our Blue Continent safe, peaceful, united and free of great power rivalries and incursions into the region.

Just as President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill aboard the U.S.S. Augusta in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, in August 1941, signed that historic document, which devised a plan to end World War II, I call on policymakers in the incoming Trump administration and Congress in a bipartisan way to work together with our allies and Pacific nations to develop a Pacific Charter as a declaration of peace, not war, to be signed by President Trump and the other leaders aboard a U.S. vessel in Pago Pago Harbor no later than the fall of 2028, if not before. 

That is my challenge to all.   

(Congresswoman Uifa’atali Amata is the vice chair of the House Foreign Affairs IndoPacific Subcommittee for the 118th Congress and served as chair of the IndoPacific Task Force for the Natural Resources Committee.)