Page 14 - IB March 2025

Analysis Analysis

CONFRONTING GEOPOLITICS IN

PACIFIC REGIONAL DIPLOMACY

By Sandra Tarte Pacific states and Australia, the United States and China.
In line with their sovereign status, Pacific Island states
In the past two years, concerns about strategic competition may freely choose their friends and determine any bilateral
and the increasingly uncertain and unpredictable global order agreements. It is not for anyone else to make that choice
have started to take a more central place in the foreign policy for them. This is a position restated repeatedly, often as a
and security discourses of the region. reminder to our various external partners that the Pacific
Pacific Island leaders are highlighting the negative effects does not wish to compromise its ‘friends to all’ policy. But
of geopolitics in ways they were not prepared to do so being free to choose also has implications for the Pacific’s
previously. own regional peace-making efforts, potentially contributing to
Fiji’s Prime Minister Rabuka, after coming to power at the tensions between national and regional interests.
end of 2022, has repeatedly described the Pacific as being ‘at To draw on one analysis about South East Asia (which
the centre of geopolitical tensions’. Major powers were, in his resonates with what is happening here in the Pacific):
view, seeking to ‘polarise the Pacific into their own camps’, ‘Heightened geopolitical competition has led some small
compelling countries to choose sides and further militarising states to fall into a security dilemma. They are vulnerable
the region. to being coerced (or lured) to effectively take sides and
Samoa’s Prime Minister in a speech in 2023 also described they could potentially become embroiled in proxy conflicts
intensification of geostrategic competition as exacerbating between the major powers, resulting in wider regional
the region’s existing vulnerabilities. “Our Blue Pacific instability’.
continent is fast becoming an increasingly contested strategic To restate the issue, confronting geopolitics in Pacific
space. The question for us is how prepared are we to tackle regional diplomacy means being open to having some
the emerging associated challenges.” uncomfortable conversations, something that Pacific Island
A number of foreign policy documents have also elevated countries have preferred to avoid, in part to maintain the
this issue. appearance of solidarity vis a vis external actors.
Fiji’s Foreign Policy White Paper, launched in 2024, opened As a result, there is a lack of clear focus on how the Pacific
by describing ‘a complicated competition for primacy should navigate the profound power shifts and geopolitical
between the US and China’, warning that there were tensions that are increasingly impacting our Pacific.
significant risks of miscalculation. Regional strategies and approaches (including the 2050 Blue
And to quote the 2024 Vanuatu Foreign Policy Document: Pacific Strategy) skirt around the issues and end up making
“…geostrategic competition in our region has put significant broad and ultimately bland pronouncements.
demands on our diplomacy and has thrust us, unwillingly, into In an analysis of regional fisheries diplomacy made two
a situation of great power competition in our region. It has decades ago, I sought to explain some of the problems and
tested the robustness and resilience of longstanding foreign pitfalls of cooperation in this space. One of the factors
policy positions and relationships...(and) poses threats to that stood out was not simply a tension between sovereign
international peace and security if it is not well managed’. rights or national interests (on the one hand) and regional
At the regional level, there have been several initiatives: agreements on the other. It was an absence of mutual trust
The Efate Declaration adopted by the Melanesian Spearhead and confidence between Pacific Island states.
Group leaders in 2023 highlighted ‘the risks from major power I would suggest that a lack of openness and trust is evident
tensions’ and called for the MSG sub-region to be a zone of today in the way the region approaches or engages with issues
‘peace, prosperity and neutrality’. arising from geopolitical threats and challenges.
This was a prelude to the Fijian PM’s own advocacy of the While leaders have long lamented the reluctance on the
Zone or Ocean of Peace concept that has subsequently been part of major powers to ‘engage in open discussions on
taken up by the Pacific Islands Forum. A declaration to this strategic issues and to share information’ (to quote then-
end is to be discussed at the next PIF Leaders’ summit in Samoan Prime Minister Tuilaepa in 2018), the same criticism
Solomon Islands in September 2025. or failing can be levelled against each other.
One of the challenges though, of confronting geopolitics But we are beginning to make some progress.
in Pacific regional diplomacy, is the uncertainty about how There is now a Track 2 Security Dialogue—convened at USP—
to deal with differences that exist or may arise between the to create a safe space for frank conversations about these
Pacific Island states themselves, particularly when it comes to issues and provide ideas and direction that can inform official
entering bilateral defence and security agreements or treaties spaces. This is a start.
with outside partners. The opening has also been created by Fiji’s proposal
We have seen a string of these in recent years between the for an Ocean of Peace. This is providing an opportunity to

14 Islands Business, March 2025