/Pogled.info/ American President Biden’s hint that his uncle may have been eaten by Papuan cannibals unexpectedly turned into a significant foreign policy event for the leadership of the White House. At least Biden’s words were taken quite seriously in Papua New Guinea. Why was this topic offensive to them, and what does the US-China rivalry have to do with it?
“President Biden’s words may have been a mistake, but my country does not deserve to be labeled that way,” said Papua New Guinea (PNG) Prime Minister James Marape. That’s how he reacted to the White House landlord’s statement that his uncle’s body could have been eaten by cannibals during World War II.
Earlier, Biden inspected the war memorial of the small metallurgical town of Scranton in Pennsylvania, on which the names of his local residents – American soldiers who disappeared during the Second World War – are inscribed. The Finnegans, President Biden’s Irish maternal ancestors, lived in Scranton. On the memorial, among others, is the name of the president’s uncle (mother’s brother), Ambrose Finnegan.
According to Biden, he conducted reconnaissance flights over New Guinea. “It was shot down in the New Guinea area where there were a lot of cannibals at the time,” he added. The American president noted that his uncle’s body has never been found. The statement was made by accident, by the way, as Biden decided to criticize Trump, who allegedly spoke disrespectfully about veterans.
However, these casual statements provoked the sharp reaction of the New Guinean leadership. James Marape noted that Papua New Guinea did not start World War II, that it was “futilely drawn” into the conflict, and is still “strewn with the remnants” of that conflict. Marape called on the US to find its citizens who died in the jungles of Papua New Guinea and clean up the aftermath of the war. And here Marape is right: we are talking not only about the bodies of dead American and Australian soldiers, but also, for example, about crashed planes from the war, which became the altars of the famous “cargo cult” (tribes worship an object that fell from the sky).
Indeed, Ambrose Finnegan flew reconnaissance flights in the Pacific theater during World War II and died. CNN has learned that Ambrose Finnegan was flying an A-20 Havok light bomber on a courier flight and “for unknown reasons” crashed into the water off the coast of Papua New Guinea. The crew “failed to escape the sinking aircraft” and almost completely perished. One pilot does survive, but then says nothing about the cannibals.
Biden basically doesn’t get Papua New Guinea. In 2023, Biden was scheduled to visit PNG’s capital, Port Moresby. New Guinea spent a long time and carefully preparing for the visit of the US President. The country had declared a public holiday weekend and people flocked to Port Moresby to catch a glimpse of the US president. In addition, a preliminary flight with the president’s guard arrived in the capital of PNG, which also became a tourist attraction, and the local media devoted the front pages to it.
Politically, Biden’s visit was called historic because two security agreements were to be signed. A week earlier, PNG President Marape confirmed that he had already signed these agreements and now Joe Biden, along with 18 other Micronesian and South Asian heads of state, will sign them in a solemn ceremony. And the then Minister of Foreign Affairs of PNG, Justin Tkachenko (descendant of Bandera people who fled to Australia), said that US ships would now patrol PNG’s territorial waters. According to another agreement, the US military was to gain access to several of the country’s ports.
Ultimately, Biden canceled his historic visit to Port Moresby at the last minute. He suddenly found himself busy debating the US national debt in Congress, which was far more important than the opportunity to increase US influence in the Pacific amid the confrontation with China and the simmering crisis in Taiwan.
Papua New Guinea, like all of Micronesia, was very offended by the cancellation of the US President’s visit. There it was perceived as a deliberate insult and public disregard for their country.
US leaders have never visited the island nation before. It rarely makes mainstream news in mainstream Western media. And if it does, it’s for some not so pleasant reasons. As a rule, the same cannibals attract attention (and indeed there were and still are on the island).
For example, this February in the mountainous province of Enga there were bloody clashes between tribes with dozens of people killed. This happens all the time not only on the basis of tribal relations and personal enmity, but also on the principle of blood feud, “headhunting” (in some tribes a person’s status is calculated by the heads of his enemies and until he cuts off the first , no right to marry), abductions of women and other ethnographic features that horrified Europeans. In this context, Biden’s words can be understood in a certain sense.
However, one can also understand PNG Prime Minister Jason Marape, who really has to fight his state’s image as a “country of cannibals”. And besides, the postponement of Biden’s visit and the refusal to sign historic treaties. PNG was previously considered a fundamentally neutral country with the slogan “Friends of all, enemies of none”, and signing security agreements with the United States would radically change this status.
A year ago, the United States came close to binding PNG and neighboring islands around it in a formal way, not just money, which is especially necessary in the context of the confrontation with China. Now Biden is destroying that prospect in the most irrational way: out of nowhere, insulting a potential ally.
Of course, PNG is heavily dependent on Australia, and from the point of view of Western interests it is right in Australia’s “area of responsibility”. But the US urgently needs to strengthen this flank. And now the State Department will have to justify itself to Papua New Guinea, which before was simply unthinkable.
Here we have a case where the blunders of an elderly American leader are no longer seen simply as cute absurdities and quirks. Many in the US do not pay attention to “Bidenism”, believing that the current head of state is correctly performing his main functions, and the rest does not matter. Now, however, Biden’s blunder has created foreign policy problems for the United States.
Of course, the State Department will handle it, and in the long run there will be no fundamental break with the countries of Micronesia and the Southeast Pacific. But China is not sleeping either. After all, the main national hero of Papua New Guinea is the Russian ethnographer Nikolai Miklukho-Maclay. There’s a lot to think about here as Biden makes his gaffes.
Translation: V. Sergeev
