KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Last week, Pacific Island leaders flew to Tokyo for the Pacific Alliance Leaders Meeting (PALM), a summit between Japan and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). The meeting, which has occurred every three years since 1997, is designed to elevate Japan’s engagement with the forum and address common challenges, including climate change, fisheries and development.
In recent years, it has also become a mechanism to counter China’s influence. At the conclusion of the summit, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Pacific Island leaders signed a joint declaration opposing “any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by the threat or use of force or coercion,” a thinly-veiled reference to Beijing that immediately drew criticism from China’s Foreign Ministry. The declaration came after Solomon Islands and Vanuatu both released statements the week before supporting China’s “reunification” with Taiwan.
But the PIF itself, which will convene in Tonga next month, has its own priorities separate from geopolitical competition. Key issues raised in Tokyo included the unfolding situation in New Caledonia and Japan’s release of treated nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima power plant into the Pacific Ocean. On the surface, these issues may appear to have little to do with the United States. But they actually highlight two crucial problems that any external partner engaging in the Pacific Islands must understand and contend with: colonial and nuclear legacies.
As the United States and Japan compete with China for influence in the Pacific Islands, a strong relationship between Japan and the PIF supports U.S. interests. Since 2018, Tokyo has increased diplomatic visits to the region while opening new missions in Kiribati and New Caledonia. Japan’s assistance in the past has mostly focused on development, health, education, climate resilience and other sectors, while security has been less of a focus.
Last week, in a move to strengthen security ties, Tokyo and Pacific Island countries announced a joint action plan for increasing port calls by Japan’s Self-Defense Force and fostering cooperation between Coast Guard agencies. Japan also announced new efforts that are consistent with the PIF’s 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and tailored to the needs of recipient countries, including airport terminal and bridge upgrades, fisheries assistance, telecommunications and cybersecurity support, and the provision of disaster preparedness equipment.
However, strains persist in Japan-PIF relations. At the last PALM in 2021, Pacific Island countries fiercely opposed Japan’s plan to release treated wastewater from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean. Despite years of protest from regional leaders and civil society, the wastewater release began in 2023. The International Atomic Energy Agency says Japan’s policy meets international standards and will have a “negligible radiological impact” on people and the environment. Some Pacific Island leaders now consider the release safe, while others have expressed disappointment — asking why the water cannot be stored in Japan and raising concerns that even “negligible” amounts of radiation can cause harm.
The Pacific Islands’ collective anti-nuclear stance is the result of nuclear testing. During the Cold War, France tested nearly 200 nuclear weapons in French Polynesia, the United States tested 67 nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands, and the United Kingdom and the United States tested 33 nuclear weapons in Kiribati. The Pacific Islands Forum itself was originally created in 1971 out of opposition to French nuclear testing, and successfully protested Japan’s dumping of nuclear waste into the Mariana Trench in 1979, resulting in an eventual building of ties between Tokyo and the PIF. The Treaty of Rarotonga, or the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, came into force in 1986.
In this context, it was agreed that the Fukushima wastewater release would be a “standing agenda item” for future dialogue, reflecting the PIF’s intention to monitor it. Kishida sought to personally reassure leaders of the plan’s safety during bilateral meetings. This is also a far cry from 2021, when Tokyo resisted Fukushima’s inclusion on the PALM agenda at all.
Starting in May, unrest in New Caledonia — a Pacific territory of France — has left at least 10 people dead and hundreds injured in the territory’s worst instability since the 1980s. The violence was sparked by a French constitutional amendment that would have effectively expanded the voting power of the territory’s loyalists at the expense of the Indigenous Kanaks, who overwhelmingly support independence. The amendment was shelved ahead of France’s legislative elections in June, but that hasn’t lowered the temperature.
New Caledonia’s political polarization has been intensifying for years. The territory held three independence referendums between 2018 and 2021, and while the first two high-turnout votes resulted in narrow decisions to remain part of France, the final referendum was boycotted by pro-independence parties because of the timing, leading to a landslide vote for the status quo with only 44 percent turnout. Pro-independence parties are still seeking an independence referendum that they consider to be an accurate expression of the will of the people — and they have strong regional support.
At last week’s summit, the prime ministers of Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu called New Caledonia’s third referendum “illegitimate, null and void” and urged France to hold another vote. The leaders called for a joint U.N. and regional mission to New Caledonia to assess the situation and propose a solution.
Pacific Islands Forum Chair and Cooks Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown echoed similar concerns about New Caledonia’s final referendum — as the PIF has in the past — and confirmed that the forum hopes to send a fact-finding delegation. Likewise, New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters raised questions about the legitimacy of the vote and said the PIF could be a “constructive force” in resolving the situation in the French Pacific territory.
The Pacific Islands will always have their own agenda, separate from the geopolitical interests of major powers.
If the summit in Tokyo indicates one thing about next month’s PIF and beyond, it is that the Pacific Islands will always have their own agenda, separate from the geopolitical interests of major powers. To win the current competition with China, the United States and its partners will need to show that they can better address regional priorities. Decolonization and denuclearization will remain high on that list. It’s not a coincidence, either, that these issues often go together. The Pacific Islands became nuclear testing grounds during the Cold War precisely because they were controlled by external powers. While climate change and other challenges will remain forum priorities, observers shouldn’t be surprised to see these other issues take center stage.
Among the major countries engaging in the region, all except New Zealand have received criticism for their nuclear policies. French and U.S. nuclear testing in the Pacific continues to cause intergenerational displacement, environmental contamination and numerous health problems. In 2021, Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom sparked outcry from Pacific Island countries over an agreement to share nuclear submarine technology, which some regional leaders saw as undermining the Treaty of Rarotonga and making the region less safe.
For its part, China also uses nuclear-powered submarines and releases treated nuclear wastewater into the Pacific Ocean in higher volumes than Japan — all while amplifying narratives about Fukushima. While this might appear like an opportunity for the United States and its partners to engage in point-scoring against Beijing, nuclear issues should be discussed with the utmost sensitivity in the Pacific Islands. Seeking to portray China as a bad actor on nuclear safety is sure to anger many in the Pacific who are still suffering from the fallout of nuclear testing.
To portray China as a bad actor on nuclear safety is sure to anger many in the Pacific who are still suffering from the fallout of nuclear testing.
Meanwhile, among the major countries engaging in the region, all except China have past or current territories there. Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom formerly controlled more than two thirds of now-independent Pacific Island countries. Japan controlled large swaths of the Pacific between World War I and World War II. And after WWII, the United States controlled Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands until their independence.
These dynamics are crucial for the United States and its partners to consider when engaging in the Pacific. Today, Australia still retains a few small territories in the region, while New Zealand and the U.K. each retain one. France and the United States currently control the most landmass and maritime space, with three dependent territories each, plus the U.S. state of Hawai‘i. As Japan, the United States and their partners promote the language of the “free and open Indo-Pacific,” Pacific Island nations may begin to question how this rhetoric relates to regional independence movements.
Perhaps China’s greatest advantage in the Pacific Islands is that it is not a current or former colonial power. In recent years, some observers have warned about what they call China’s neo-colonialism, but such rhetoric falls flat in a region still undergoing — sometimes violently — the process of decolonization. Western concerns about China’s coercive practices and potential military expansion beyond the first island chain are legitimate. But framing China’s rise in the Pacific Islands as colonialism is more likely to shift the regional conversation toward the United States’ own military buildup and U.S. policies toward its own Pacific territories instead.
In recent years, including at the Pacific Islands Forum, U.S. representatives have spoken of the United States as a “Pacific power” and a “Pacific nation,” alluding to its territories and Hawai‘i, to its Pacific Islander diaspora, and to its long-standing ties to the region. While such comments are well-meaning, they may result in unintended consequences, because they are not always perceived in the way that the U.S. government would like them to be. Pacific Island countries do not see the United States as part of the region, but as an external power. Rather than using terminology with controversial connotations, the United States would probably be better off emphasizing initiatives that are tailored to the needs of the Pacific Islands — much like Japan did at the PALM — while treading carefully on nuclear and colonial legacies.