In the past two years, concerns about strategic competition and the increasingly uncertain and unpredictable global order have started to take a more central place in the foreign policy and security discourses of the region.
Pacific Island leaders are highlighting the negative effects of geopolitics in ways, they were not prepared to do so previously.
Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, after coming to power at the end of 2022, has repeatedly described the Pacific as being ‘at the centre of geopolitical tensions. Major powers were, in his view, seeking to ‘polarise the Pacific into their own camps’, compelling countries to choose sides and further militarising
the region.
Samoa’s Prime Minister in a speech in 2023 also described intensification of geostrategic competition as exacerbating the region’s existing vulnerabilities. “Our Blue Pacific continent is fast becoming an increasingly contested strategic space. The question for us is how prepared we are to tackle the emerging associated challenges.”
A number of foreign policy documents have also elevated this issue. Fiji’s Foreign Policy White Paper, launched in 2024, opened by describing ‘a complicated competition for primacy between the US and China’, warning that there were significant risks of miscalculation. And to quote the 2024 Vanuatu Foreign Policy Document: “…geostrategic competition in our region has put significant demands on our diplomacy and has thrust us, unwillingly, into a situation of great power competition in our region. It has
tested the robustness and resilience of longstanding foreign policy positions and relationships…(and) poses threats to international peace and security if it is not well managed’.
At the regional level, there have been several initiatives: The Efate Declaration adopted by the Melanesian Spearhead Group leaders in 2023 highlighted ‘the risks from major power tensions’ and called for the MSG sub-region to be a zone of ‘Peace, prosperity and neutrality’. This was a prelude to the Fijian PM’s own advocacy of the Zone or Ocean of Peace concept that has subsequently been taken up by the Pacific Islands Forum. A declaration to this end is to be discussed at the next PIF Leaders’ summit in Solomon Islands in September 2025.
One of the challenges though, of confronting geopolitics in Pacific regional diplomacy, is the uncertainty about how to deal with differences that exist or may arise between the Pacific Island states themselves, particularly when it comes to entering bilateral defence and security agreements or treaties with outside partners.
We have seen a string of these in recent years between the Pacific states and Australia, the United States and China. In line with their sovereign status, Pacific Island states may freely choose their friends and determine any bilateral agreements. It is not for anyone else to make that choice for them. This is a position restated repeatedly, often as a reminder to our various external partners that the Pacific
does not wish to compromise its ‘friends to all’ policy. But being free to choose also has implications for the Pacific’s own regional peace-making efforts, potentially contributing to tensions between national and regional interests.
To draw on one analysis about Southeast Asia (which resonates with what is happening here in the Pacific): ‘Heightened geopolitical competition has led some small states to fall into a security dilemma. They are vulnerable to being coerced (or lured) to effectively take sides and they could potentially become embroiled in proxy conflicts between the major powers, resulting in wider regional
instability’.
To restate the issue, confronting geopolitics in Pacific regional diplomacy means being open to having some uncomfortable conversations, something that Pacific Island countries have preferred to avoid, in part to maintain the appearance of solidarity vis a vis external actor.
As a result, there is a lack of clear focus on how the Pacific should navigate the profound power shifts and geopolitical tensions that are increasingly impacting our Pacific. Regional strategies and approaches (including the 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy) skirt around the issues and end up making broad and ultimately bland pronouncements.
In an analysis of regional fisheries diplomacy made two decades ago, I sought to explain some of the problems and pitfalls of cooperation in this space. One of the factors that stood out was not simply a tension between sovereign’s rights or national interests (on the one hand) and regional agreements on the other. It was an absence of mutual trust and confidence between Pacific Island states. I would suggest that a lack of openness and trust is evident today in the way the region approaches or engages with issues arising from geopolitical threats and challenges.
While leaders have long lamented the reluctance on the part of major powers to ‘engage in open discussions on strategic issues and to share information’ (to quote then Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa in 2018), the same criticism or failing can be levelled against each other.
But we are beginning to make some progress. There is now a Track 2 Security Dialogue—convened at USP—to create a safe space for frank conversations about these issues and provide ideas and direction that can inform official spaces. This is a start.
The opening has also been created by Fiji’s proposal for an Ocean of Peace. This is providing an opportunity to engage members of the Pacific Islands Forum in discussions of peace and security – including the impacts of intensifying geopolitical rivalries.
But more ways need to be found to build trust and confidence between Pacific Island leaders (and between them officials) so that they have the difficult—and confronting—conversations.
Moreover, the Pacific way of ‘open and respectful dialogue’ needs to be reclaimed and harnessed for this purpose and not be used as an excuse for avoiding sensitive subjects. Some of these conversations need to be held between the Pacific Island states themselves, without other partners in the room to influence and shape the discussion. Of importance is the need to address the concern—which we now hear being
voiced—that (some) regional processes are being ‘hijacked’ by external partners to serve their own political and military agendas.
A common purpose of asserting newly acquired sovereignty, together with a common identity, united Pacific Island countries as they transitioned from colonial to independent status over half a century ago.
We are today witnessing a regional order transition of yet unknown magnitude. If the Pacific Island states are to shape this transition (and not simply react to it), they will need to come together behind a new common purpose – one that will determine their future just as profoundly as decolonization did. The drivers and enablers for this collective endeavor already exist. We are not starting from scratch. But as always, it requires political will and courage, not just rhetoric, to make it happen.
Dr Sandra Tarte is Associate Professor, School of Law and Social Sciences, University of the South Pacific. The views expressed are personal.
