KEY POINTS:
After the end of the Cold War and Middle East entanglements, the Pacific has receded into a mere blip on America's geopolitical radar. Its involvement in the region, except for North Korea, has seemed desultory, even in its own tiny scattered territories of the Pacific Rim.
The superpower has acknowledged that it has been spending a lot less time, effort and resources in the region than it should be, attributing it to policy priorities and budget constraints.
The perception of its relative invisibility in the Pacific has been accentuated by the high-profile wrangling for one-upmanship in the islands between China and Taiwan, and the ubiquitous influence of New Zealand and Australia across the whole area for decades.
America is determined to change the world's perception that it is a marginal player in the resource-rich and geopolitically crucial region.
Last week it hosted the Pacific Islands Conference of Leaders (PICL) a meeting of heads of government and senior officials, held every three years.
This time it was held in Washington, a departure from the tradition of holding it in a United States' island territory.
Importantly, the US named 2007 as the Year of the Pacific, and several weeks before the conference said the country wanted to reverse any perception that it had withdrawn from the Pacific.
With the Year of the Pacific theme, the US has sought to bring the importance it gives to the region into sharp focus within its own policy-making machinery as well as to get government departments and agencies - including Defence, Coastguard, Interior and the Peace Corps - to work together in what it calls a whole-of-government approach.
The region's vastness, its resource richness, its proclivity for political instability, its perceived collective weakness that can potentially be exploited by transnational terrorism and crime, compounded by America's long neglect in the region, have added to the acute sense of urgency in taking assertive steps in the Pacific.
Last year it sent Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill to the Pacific Islands Forum and indeed Hill has been hopping around the Pacific for a while, including a visit to Honiara to consider opening an office there.
He also went to Wellington, where he asked for New Zealand's "eyes" on the Pacific and generally praised the country for its long and friendly relationships with the Pacific Island states.
At last week's Washington meeting, Hill said the US would scale up its diplomatic presence in the Pacific, particularly Fiji.
But the US knows that winning over the Pacific Islands collectively will be no cakewalk - New Zealand's "eyes" notwithstanding. Despite their isolation and vulnerability, the islands have always been deeply divided.
The islands have always had difficulty seeing eye to eye: whether to support China or Taiwan; or issues on which elections have been fought and governments toppled in the Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Vanuatu; or when considering matters such as whaling, co-operation agreements like air services; or even when electing a Pacific Islander as head of the forum secretariat.
The US cannot expect smooth sailing in Pacific waters and had a glimpse of the shape of things to come at the PICL meeting in which US negative perceptions of the islands and self-absorption in its own security concerns dominated the agenda.
Tongan Prime Minister Fred Sevele criticised the inclusion of country-specific political stability issues on the agenda.
Objecting to the fact that donor countries and agencies saw it fit to discuss political developments in Fiji, Tonga and the Solomons, the three countries - supported by a few others - boycotted a briefing in which donors and affiliated organisations were to report back to the PICL on the outcome of their meeting.
Earlier, US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice came down heavily on Fiji, criticising its latest coup.
The Fiji delegation objected to that comment and received support from an unlikely quarter - US Congressman Eni Faleomavaega, of American Samoa.
Faleomavaega criticised the US for what he said were double standards when dealing with dictators. He said that if Pakistan coup leader President Pervez Musharraf could visit the US 10 times, there was no reason why Fiji's interim Prime Minister should have been prevented from attending a meeting of the PICL.
Perhaps the biggest challenge the US will face as it pursues its plans in the Pacific in the coming years is dealing with the islands' loyalties to the long-entrenched Asian powers that have been heaping their largesse on supporting nations - especially from the point of view of its own security concerns.
The episode of the Chinese satellite tracking station in Kiribati, that the US believed was keeping tabs on its Kwajalein Atoll base, is a case in point.
The entry of the US into the Pacific islands region especially with its thinly disguised, security-laden agenda, will add another dimension to the prevailing geopolitical turbulence in the area.
* Dev Nadkarni, editor of news site islandsbusiness.com, is based in Auckland
