During a trip to the Maldives on Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced plans to open the first U.S. Embassy in the country as the United States seeks to check China’s growing influence in the region, and as small island nations increasingly find themselves caught in the crosshairs of an escalating geopolitical tussle between Washington and Beijing.
The announcement, which follows the signing of a new defense agreement between the United States and the Maldives, a string of islands in the western Indian Ocean, comes as the country has been drawn deep into China’s so-called debt-trap diplomacy and is estimated to have racked up some $1.4 billion in debt to Beijing.
