Esper visit to tiny Palau highlights US-China competition

WASHINGTON: No nation is too small or too distant from Washington, it seems, to be excluded from the Trump administration’s campaign to counter China’s efforts to supplant America as the dominant Pacific power.
Evidence of this is Defense Secretary Mark Esper’s decision to fly nearly halfway around the world partly so he can spend several hours in Palau, a Pacific archipelago of barely 20,000 people southeast of the Philippines.