The events of today’s story take place on March 13th, 2023,
when my wife and I went out for pizza and in turn accidentally witnessed Chinese government
officials talking to a Micronesian governor about obtaining help in their coming war for Taiwan.
And what's worse, the pizza wasn’t even all that good.
Today’s episode takes place on the island of Kosrae. Which I understand
is a very obscure place, so perhaps it’s best I start with a bit of background.
The word Micronesia means two things: it’s both a country and a region. The country,
called the FSM, or more formally, the Federated States of Micronesia,
is a collection of loosely united islands formed around semi-independent tribal kingdoms. It would
take an entire video at least as long as this one to even begin to explain the complexity of their
politics but for the sake of simplicity, I’m going to summarize their system as… fractured.
But speaking of fractured, the FSM is also only one of a number of countries
that make up the region of Micronesia. It's the historic homeland of the Micronesians as
you might imagine. And not that there’s going to be a quiz on it or anything, but the other
countries that comprise this region are the Kiribatis (otherwise known as the Gilberts),
the Marshalls, the Marianas, Nauru, and Palau, which itself had originally been a state in the
FSM until it declared independence in the 90’s. And although on paper none of those except the
Marianas are directly controlled by Washington, in practice, it would be fair to say that since
the second world war every single country in this region, at least geopolitically speaking, exists
because of and at the mercy of the United States. Or at least they did.
Ok - back to dinner. It’s not even 5pm and my
wife already wants to eat. I’m going to call her Kata from now on, because that’s her name. Kata
is a high maintenance woman, by which I mean after three nights in a row of the same fish
burger at the same hotel restaurant she asked if I wanted to try the island’s other restaurant.
I know. She’s a diva. But that’s just Kata. Also, she’s not an 1800’s protestant,
so I don’t really understand why she eats so early, but we’ve been married long enough that
we’re well accustomed to each other’s forms of crazy and so at 4:50 on the dot, we’re both
walking down the road to the only other restaurant on this island. It’s called ‘the Bully Hayes’,
which feels like a bold name for a restaurant because he’s a famous turn of the century rapist,
although I suppose he must have been a big fan of pizza because that’s what they serve.
The Bully, the restaurant, not the man, is run as part of Kosrae’s second hotel,
a series of relatively well-maintained cabins called the Treelodge Resort. A resort that as
it turns out, kind of contains a little bit of drama all its own. Sort of a story within
this story. Of all the people who I spoke to on Kosrae virtually every single of them went well
out of their way to tell me that at least as of this filming, that resort is now being run by
the government. Or more specifically, the family of the new lieutenant governor. I believe that
they own the land beneath it in a tribal sense, although I don't actually know that for certain,
that's just what people said. But what I do know is that they definitely weren’t the ones who built
it. Few would say exactly what happened, but this is a small island and nobody wants that
blowback. So I did a bit of snooping online and as it turns out, you can still see the drama laid out
on their Facebook page in the form of a heartfelt message to the foreigner who’d built the place,
saying it was a shame that the new owners stole it from him for the Covid money.
Rule number one of stealing a resort is that you're going to want to get the Facebook password.
But the point of me reveling in this small-island drama isn’t because I really actually care who
runs the place. I’m sure it sucks for the old owner, but that’s not exactly my battle. The
reason I mention it is because it means that I wasn’t super surprised when I showed up and the
governor’s truck was in the parking lot. And you could tell it was his truck for
two reasons, too: one, it was parked across like 2 and a quarter spots,
which feels like a real governor thing to do, and then two: his license plate said “governor”.
And here’s the thing about opportunity, right? It knocks all the time. The trick
is just being able to see it in that license plate. And on Kosrae, on March 13th, 2023,
nothing could have knocked louder than that plate. Because four days earlier, David Panuelo,
then president of Micronesia, had written the most politically important letter in that nation’s
history. He’d denounced China and recommended whoever succeed him swap over to supporting
Taiwan formally. It was a scathing denunciation of foreign interference twelve pages long.
In that letter, he claimed that China was undertaking a deep and prolonged attack on
his democracy. He said they were bribing politicians, buying them fancy trips to
mainland cities, providing them targeted aid before elections, and when that didn’t work,
following their leaders to other countries and threatening them. He would later follow up and
say that they’re even possibly even bringing in guns. Pohnpeians would even show me that the roads that they
were building as aid were being constructed suspiciously identically to landing strips.
And the reason for this targeted harassment, at least according to President Panuelo,
was because they wanted a new ally in their coming war for Taiwan. Or at the very least to disallow
ships from the US ships from transiting through their waters in the case of that shooting actually starting.
Which as you might imagine, would be pretty bad for Taiwan. But what
might not be so immediately clear is just how bad it would be for everybody else.
Because after Fiji, the Kiribati, and the Solomon Islands have all made clear moves towards China,
not to mention the Triad’s attempted takeover of Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia have
never been more important to US policy. Losing control of this region, losing the ability to
transport troops and supplies through these waters, would effectively force a bottleneck of
any US supply routes to Asia. US bases in South Korea, Taiwan, Okinawa, Japan, the Philippines,
Kwajalein, Guam, Hawaii. It threatens them all. Not to mention, of course, the countries that host
them. For China to be able to diplomatically take these islands would be a huge deal . It would mean
Chinese military influence stretching from Hong Kong to Honolulu. It might not have been in so
many words, but that’s what that letter said. And there’s no way a superpower like China is
just going to let that happen without some form of response.
Ok, it’s 5:10 pm and we’re entering the Bully Hayes, again, the restaurant, not the man. It’s
empty, of course, no Micronesian eats this early. Well, empty except for one table. At the head of
the room, four people sit around chatting. Two of them Micronesians: one, clearly the governor,
that much is obvious from his demeanor, and his aide. A man I would later learn to be a
member of his family. Which if you understand Micronesia, totally makes sense. Especially
in Kosrae. You're talking about an island with a few thousand people, and family means everything
to Micronesians. It’s a very understandable thing. It's a small scale corruption that
nobody would ever expect to be different. But on the other side of the table are two
Hawaiian dressed, very articulate, and clearly important Chinese dignitaries. They speak,
well actually only one of them ever speaks, but when he does so he speaks in fluent American
accented English. You can imagine that his assistant is not a member of his family.
So we sit down, and against my every instinct I shut up. Kata knows the plan, I don’t need to say
it. We sit close enough to listen but not so close as to make it look deliberate. We tend the sort of
terse conservation that only two people married for fifteen years can achieve. And in turn,
we hear every word they say, even as they speak so softly it becomes a near-whisper.
But beyond that, I was a bit confused about what I was supposed to do. Really,
if anything at all. Because it wasn’t like they were doing something exactly illegal, at least in
the sense that anyone would ever follow up on. But at the same time, this was something worth
witnessing. This was geopolitics in action. It was a back-room deal happening right before my eyes.
And so I channeled my inner Bond, I suppose. And I had Kata take some stereotypical tourist photos
of me with them over my shoulder, I recorded a bit of audio that turned out to be useless.
Not really sure why, or for who. At one point I even got up to go introduce myself to the governor,
to congratulate him on his recent win, just so I could be sure that it was him. Again,
not really sure for who. But what would you have done? I’d never been a spy
before. I didn't really know the protocol. Even before I was in my seat the man in
the Hawaiian shirt was already changing the topic of conversation away from the
letter. And not even tactfully, either. I’d describe their style of conversation
as similar to like a theme park employee entertaining a lost child. Asking stuff like,
how many people does your island have? Do you have boats here? Were you occupied by the Japanese?
Were they brutal? Which is a weird question for a theme park employee. But looking back,
I don’t think they asked a single thing that they didn’t already know the answer to. For example,
they literally watched the governor order pork and then seconds later asked if Micronesians ate pig.
Yet even within all that, some of those questions still found a way to indict. For example, whenever they
asked him “have you ever been to China?”, they did so in such a quiet tone it might as well have
been silent. That Hawaiian shirted man anytime he said China they’d drop the volume of that one
word to a third of the rest of the sentence. It was uncanny. And yet, the governor did not seem to
pick up on that because he responded loudly with yes, he's been there three times and he's hoping
that they’re going to bring him back again. Yet as inane as their questions were,
with all the deflecting they actually helped prove a great deal they’d been meaning to hide.
Because pointless though they might have been in one respect, in another they kind of allowed
me to carve away all the other options for why those specific men would be having that specific
conversation. Given the questions that they asked, they definitely couldn't be here to invest in the
economy. They weren’t businessmen. They weren’t tourists. They weren’t scientists. They weren’t
engineers. They weren’t even philanthropists or teachers. The questions that they asked made all
of that impossible. Because nobody in their right mind wouldn’t already know the answers
if they had even a penny on the line. It’s like if an NBA point guard kept asking what
the rubber egg was. It just didn't make sense. Simply put, the men in those Hawaiian shirts
did not want me to overhear them talking about that letter. It’s just they didn't
seem to tell the governor their plan. Because as soon as their food arrives,
he starts trying to drag the conversation back to the topic at hand. Not once, not twice,
but three separate times he attempts to bring back up that letter. Never anything too direct,
just a way to try to get their old conversation back on track. Stuff like “so how exactly do
you want me to handle the Panuelo situation?” or “the attorney general is flying in tomorrow, he
and I can discuss what to do about your problem”. And yet, the only thing that those delegates will
ever say on the topic of that letter after the initial sentence I sit down to is that they’re
going to be going to Chuuk state tomorrow, and they expect a similar outcome as here.
And so eventually, with their food finally eaten, the man in the Hawaiian shirt suggests continuing
their conversation by the Governor’s vehicle or perhaps in the quiet of the delegate’s room.
From there, the furthest that I could follow them turned out to be the bathroom, and then I just
sort of had to stand there peeing. Not something they often show you in the Bond films. Although,
from the window of that bathroom, I could see the governor and the main delegate walk off together
in discussion, while the two aides stayed behind to exchange phone numbers. And then from there,
Kata and I quickly paid our bill so that we could hopefully walk past them and hear something,
but it didn't work out. Life as it turns out, not a movie.
The next day, the delegates’ flights got cancelled, as flights in Kosrae often are,
and they ended up forced to stay another day. Two, actually, although they won’t know that
until the next day when their flight is cancelled a second time. But to fill that void, they’re
given a personal tour of the island by their new friend, the governor. And since it’s a tiny place,
we ended up meeting them again a bunch of times. We met them at breakfast, dinner, the clam farm,
and twice just walking around. And every single time we did, the governor loudly
introduced them to everyone there. Bigwig Chinese government officials, he'd says. Super important.
And here just to visit him. It was a lot to take in.
Which is why I did what I suspect any normal person would do in that environment, and I went
out to a park, found some guys drinking, and got drunk with them. And after a couple of drinks feeling
a little bit loose, I ended up telling them the story of what I'd seen. And as I did, you could
literally see the lights turn on in their brain, the Eureka moment that they were all having. And
their turned to me in excitement and said, just a few nights ago, in fact the night that letter
dropped, they'd been out drinking with a friend of theirs, a family member of that governor. And he'd
been bragging. He'd been bragging that China was pissed and that they were coming quote ‘to make
things right’. And what he bragged about was that when they were coming here, it was to see
his family. Because now, his family was in power. And in hearing my words, those boys also said,
well, you should get in touch with the president. And one of them happened to
have a family member who worked I suppose in the central government in Pohnpei,
and he gave me their contact information and said, send them a text with everything you just told us.
Which even in a drunken state, felt like a pretty big decision.
Because even though joke, to send that text, to make this video, was a really
hard decision. It isn't as if I expect to be assassinated or something ridiculous like that,
but at the same time, this is, kind of… war. It's just it also isn’t really my war.
And in making that decision I suppose in a tiny way I faced what all of our
societies are facing right now. Especially the democracies. How much do we risk for Taiwan?
The fact is while I don’t personally agree that Taiwan is China’s natural right any more than I
do Hawaii is America’s, it’s not like my opinions will stop an army. That’s what naval corridors do.
And that’s really why Micronesia matters. In fact it's kind of why Taiwan matters. Headlines aside,
this is not just about any specific island, this is about control of the entire ocean. This is
about funneling the US navy down considerably smaller lines of engagement. It's to open them
up to submarines and missiles that they can’t easily avoid. It’s meant to weaken South Korea,
Japan, Okinawa, Guam, and the Philippines and recreate the great Chinese sphere of influence
that up until a few hundred years ago had always dominated this region. And it isn’t
only happening in the FSM. The norms of our world are being rewritten over pizza in every
back corner of every Pacific island right now from Taiwan to Tahiti. That’s just how it is.
And so I sent that text. Not because I support the American domination of the
Pacific. Or the Kuomintang or even the status quo. I know that the only reason that this
video says Chinese spies instead of American or Taiwanese, or even Japanese for that matter,
is because those are the ones that I happened to sit down next to. Because this took place in 2023,
and that’s the opportunity that was knocking. There’s a cold war happening in the Pacific.
Today. It’s not yet being fought with guns, thankfully we’re still at the
stage where it’s just steak dinners and trips to Hainan. But it is being fought.
Through competing stores that dominate the economies. Through infrastructure projects
that look great for an ambitious politician. Through aid strong enough to land an airplane.
But every day it leans more towards those guns. I’m not saying you have to agree with Taiwanese
democracy just because I do. Frankly these days it seems like most people’s politics are just utopianisms
that they’ve sharpened into knives so that they can feel self-righteous stabbing you. Certainly
the status quo is by no means a blessing, I get that. But it’s the sudden shifts that I
personally fear the most. Because history tells us that when there’s a vacuum things tend to suck.
I personally wouldn’t even really mind if China economically eclipsed the United States
just so long as it didn’t lead to war. I wouldn’t mind if Taiwan reunited with China just so long
as it was their decision. And I definitely don’t mind when Micronesians play the two superpowers
off each other to get a bigger payday. That’s just playing your position. But that said, imperial
transitions rarely happen peacefully. Individuals do matter. Even on a geopolitical scale.
When I sent that text, my contacts in the capitol confirmed that it was exactly what
I’d imagined it to be. They said they’d handle it behind the scenes, in what way I can’t say,
and then that was the last I ever heard of it. My story over just as soon as it began. It was kind
of anti-climactic, really. Something they never show you in the bond films.
But make no mistake, Micronesia matters. And an American Pacific is by no means a guarantee.
One of the very first things that Panuelo’s replacement did after taking office was to
reconfirm his country’s positive relations with China. Which I'd argue was a smart move. Because
opportunity knocks all the time. And this is his. Far be it from me to say who should control
the Pacific but all I know is that we should pay attention when winds change in the ocean.
Because I don’t know about you, but personally, I’d rather not have to weather that storm.
This is Rare Earth. And this is a pretty good pizza.