HONIARA, Solomon Islands: A top US diplomat warned the Pacific Islands of a new struggle against violent power-hungry regimes on Sunday as she visited the Solomon Islands to mark the 80th anniversary of World War II's Battle of Guadalcanal.
With China's military launching war drills around Taiwan and Russia bombarding Ukraine, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman struck out at a new crop of world leaders who are reviving bankrupt ideas about the use of force.
Sherman said some around the world had forgotten the cost of war or were ignoring the lessons of the past, as they attended a dawn memorial service in the Solomon Islands.
She attacked leaders who believe that coercion, pressure, and violence are tools to be used with impunity without citing any leader by name.
Sherman is leading a US delegation to the Solomon Islands to mark the anniversary of the Battle of Guadalcanal.
The brutal seven-month land, sea and air fight between Allied and Japanese forces killed tens of thousands of troops, mostly Japanese, and was a turning point in the war.
The State Department number two urged the region to push back, as it depicted the situation today as carrying faint echoes of the fight against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in the 1930-40s.
She said we remember how bankrupt, how empty, such views were then, and remain today.
Today we are engaged in a different kind of struggle that will last a long time to come.