This Is the Latest Move in US' 'Anti-China Pacific Push'

Vanuatu, the South Pacific island nation, will soon have a United States embassy. In its continuing bid to counter the increasing influence China has in the Pacific, the US announced the move Friday, Reuters reports. "Consistent with the US Indo-Pacific strategy, a permanent diplomatic presence in Vanuatu would allow the US government to deepen relationships with Ni-Vanuatu officials and society," the State Department says in a statement. Vanuatu, with a population of 319,000 spread across 80 islands, has diplomatic relations with the US, but the US is currently represented there by the American ambassador in New Guinea, the AP reports.

"Establishing US embassy Port Vila would facilitate areas of potential bilateral cooperation and development assistance, including efforts to tackle the climate crisis," the State Department statement says. US embassies Pacific island nations of Kiribati and Tonga are also planned, and after being out of the Solomon Islands for three decades, the US earlier this year reopened its embassy there. A US embassy in the Maldives is also opening soon, and the US is working to shore up its ties with the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia as well. (More Vanuatu stories.)