KEY TAKEAWAYS
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Last week, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) met in Nukuʻalofa, Tonga, to discuss the challenges affecting the region. The PIF is an intergovernmental organization with the purpose of enhancing cooperation among the countries and territories of Oceania, including Australia, New Zealand, 14 independent Pacific Island countries, and France’s territories of New Caledonia and French Polynesia. China and the United States interact with the PIF as dialogue partners and the Pacific Islands have emerged in recent years as another arena of great power competition. The U.S. attained a relatively unheralded win at the summit, with two of its Pacific territories, Guam and American Samoa, having their status elevated to that of “associate members” of the PIF.
USIP’s Gordon Peake, Camilla Pohle and Andrew Scobell explore how key issues were discussed at the forum, including climate change, China, policing and violence in New Caledonia.
Pohle: The Pacific Islands, most of which are low-lying and all of which heavily depend on marine resources, are especially vulnerable to the effects of climate change, including sea-level rise, coastal erosion, biodiversity loss and extreme weather. As a result, they are becoming increasingly impatient with Australia’s fossil fuel use — including its staggering coal and gas exports and the continued opening of new projects — and are calling on Canberra to set a deadline to end its reliance on them.
This is not the first time that Pacific Island countries have criticized Australia, which is the region’s largest donor, for its dependence on fossil fuels, and while the United States is not on par with Australia in terms of regional aid and PIF membership, there are lessons to be learned. Australia’s climate and energy policies shape its regional reputation, and the same is true for the United States.
Last week, Australia ratified an agreement with Tuvalu offering permanent residency to its citizens affected by the climate crisis. But this doesn’t change the fact that Australia is the third biggest fossil fuel exporter in the world, behind Russia and the United States. Tuvalu’s climate change minister, Maina Talia, said on the sidelines of the PIF that “opening, subsidizing and exporting fossil fuels is immoral and unacceptable.” Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine warned that “action starts at home” as Australia puts itself forward to host the 2026 U.N. climate change conference.
Meanwhile, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres visited the PIF this year — his second time doing so — to draw attention to the climate crisis. He urged the biggest carbon emitters to phase out fossil fuels, warning that in the Pacific Islands, “All the standard measures of environmental indicators — like sea level, like sea-surface temperatures, like ocean acidification — all of these have been accelerating.” Guterres emphasized that the Pacific Islands are in “grave danger” from the climate crisis and need more financial support to invest in adaptation and resilience.
Scobell: Beijing’s envoy to the PIF, Qian Bo, played hard ball, successfully pushing to keep Taiwan’s name out of the PIF joint communique. The deleted sentence is: “Leaders reaffirmed the 1992 Leaders decision on relations with Taiwan/Republic of China.” Officially, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) participates in the PIF as a “dialogue partner.” Meanwhile Taiwan participates as a “development partner” under the name “Taiwan/Republic of China” on the basis of the 1992 PIF decision.
On the surface of it, the mostly small island states that dot the Pacific Ocean would seem to be far removed from the machinations of great power competition between the United States and the PRC. However, a deeper dive reveals that Pacific Island countries find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of two rivalries: first, between the United States, U.S. allies and partners, and the PRC, and second, between Taiwan and the PRC. The PRC is focused on these countries because in recent years these two rivalries have both been heating up across this vast maritime region.
Pacific Island countries find themselves squarely in the crosshairs of two rivalries: first, between the U.S. and its allies and partners, and China, and second, between Taiwan and China.
The first set of rivalries is over geostrategic influence and economic resources. The United States and key allies like Australia, Japan and New Zealand have long been some of the most influential outside powers with extensive webs of diplomatic, security, economic and people-to-people networks in these island states. As the PRC’s economic reach has expanded and its strategic competition with the United States has heightened, the Pacific Ocean has grown in importance. Beijing looks to increase its influence and presence in the region, at the expense of the United States, and tap the region’s array of rich resources, including fisheries.
The second rivalry pits the PRC against the island of Taiwan. While the lion’s share of attention over PRC-Taiwan rivalry zeroes in on elevated gray-zone provocations in the Taiwan Strait that physically separates the two, the Beijing-Taipei rivalry also plays out globally in the diplomatic realm. This competition is especially fierce over the dozen states around the world that continue to maintain ambassador-level diplomatic recognition with Taiwan. In the Pacific, there are three: the Marshall Islands, Palau and Tuvalu.
The PRC has long insisted that any country that establishes formal diplomatic relations with Beijing must first break diplomatic ties with Taipei — what Beijing dubs the “one China principle.” In recent years, the PRC has ratcheted up its diplomatic offensive to bribe, cajole or coerce Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic “allies” to switch recognition and vociferously battles anything — even seemly innocuous mentions — that implies Taiwan is an autonomous international actor.
Peake: The most eye-catching announcement emerging from the summit was the Pacific Policing Initiative, which Australia will back to the tune of $300 million over the next five years. It will include a new training hub for Pacific police in Brisbane, four hubs in the region and a stand-by group of officers able to deploy rapidly. The U.S. has tended to do less in terms of support to law enforcement in the region, happy to cede the ground to Canberra.
At face value, the idea is that if police get more training, they’ll be able to discharge their responsibilities better. The reality is that Pacific police are already well-trained. As one former senior Australian officer observed wryly, “Someday someone will land on the moon and find Pacific police up there doing training.” The initiative does not address more debilitating causes of police incapacity, such as lousy pay and anemic domestic budgets.
The real cause behind the Pacific Policing Initiative announcement is Australia’s concern about China encroaching on Canberra’s traditional domain.
The real cause behind the announcement is Australia’s concern about China encroaching on Canberra’s traditional domain. China is training and arming police in Solomon Islands, and there have been instances in Fiji and Vanuatu where Beijing has carried out extra-territorial policing, rounding up its own citizens and shipping them back to China. In strategic terms, the new policing initiative is about Australia marking its territory and seeking to shrink China’s room for maneuver.
Regional leaders recognize that China’s foray into policing is a of concern for Australia, and accordingly, see the leverage it offers them. When a Pacific leader says Chinese policing support is being considered, Canberra promises more assistance to rebuff it.
A growing regional concern is transnational crime. Fiji has been identified as a transshipment crossroads, Chinese triads have operated in Palau, and China-linked drug trafficking operations have flown out of Papua New Guinea. In each of these countries, investigative journalists have identified strong connections between transnational crime and members of the political elite. The major reason why police aren’t investigating this sort of crime owes less to the absence of training and more to the cramped and unconducive political settings of which they are part.
One of the summits unscripted moments involved the Pacific Policing Initiative, as journalists captured video of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese telling U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell how thrilled he was that the initiative had gotten off the ground and joking that the two countries might consider splitting the cost. “We’ve given you the lane, so take the lane,” Campbell said.
The U.S. will be keeping a close eye on how impactful this initiative will be. The Chinese reaction has been publicly muted, with envoy Bo noting that his country’s support to Pacific policing was merely in “initial” stages. There is nothing about the Pacific Policing Initiative that inhibits Pacific police from receiving assistance from elsewhere either, suggesting that major powers will continue to shower attention in the hope of both accruing influence and, more silently, keeping tabs on what’s going on.
Pohle: As countries like Australia and China pursue their interests in the region, Pacific Island leaders have their own priorities, and in recent years they have repeatedly expressed concern about developments in New Caledonia. This has intensified since May, when the French territory was engulfed in a level of violence unprecedented since the 1980s. The unrest occurred in response to a constitutional amendment, which has since been shelved, that would have undermined the political representation of New Caledonia’s Indigenous Kanaks, who overwhelmingly support independence from France.
PIF leaders have been pushing for a fact-finding mission to the territory to help resolve the crisis. But the visit, which they wanted to conduct before the PIF, was deferred because of disagreement over its purpose between France, the forum and the New Caledonian government. New Caledonia has somecontrol over its foreign policy — including full membership in the PIF, a status usually reserved for sovereign countries — but the current crisis is testing the bounds of that arrangement. France wanted the PIF mission to simply denounce the violence, whereas the PIF, in agreement with New Caledonia’s pro-independence parties, also wants to propose solutions to the unrest.
The PIF appears to have won. At last week’s meeting, forum leaders and the French government agreed to “terms of reference” for the mission, which will include fact-finding, calling for peace and stability, and reporting back to the PIF with recommendations. No date for the trip has been set.
Most members of the PIF were former colonies themselves and sympathize with the Kanaks’ desire for self-determination. Tongan Prime Minister Hu‘akavameiliku Siaosi Sovaleni said in his opening address to the forum, “We must honor the vision of our forefathers regarding self-determination, including in New Caledonia.” This comes after the U.N. Office of Human Rights expressed concern over the situation of the Kanaks and France’s attempts to dismantle a historic agreement that has provided a framework for New Caledonia’s decolonization over the last two and a half decades.