Navigating geopolitial competition in the Pacific

Geopolitical competition between the West and China is creating insecurity and development problems for the Pacific region. Western countries are responding to China’s growing economic and political footprint with increased militarisation, the deployment of threat narratives and creation of a strategic alliance to engage with the Pacific Islands Forum. They want to retain strategic control of a region that is drawing closer to China, but at what cost for Pacific Islands countries? Emerging actors in the Pacific geopolitical space should understand the dynamics of this competition in order to make effective policies for the betterment of the region.

Emerging actors in the Pacific are adopting policies that entangle them in geopolitical competition between Western allies, on the one hand, and China, on the other. South Korea is one example. Its foreign policy in the Pacific interlaces its interests with the West. South Korea’s position is curious: it understands the detrimental impact that this competition is having in South-east Asia, yet is entangling itself in it in the Pacific.1 The competition in both South-east Asia and the Pacific shares similar characteristics: Western allies feel threatened by China, a country whose rise they cannot control. Consequently, they place third party countries in positions of having to support one side or the other. Third parties would prefer to co-operate with both the United States and China but are often pressed towards favouring one side. If South Korea’s intention is to foster co-operation and development in the Pacific, it is advisable to formulate and articulate a neutral policy position. There is no appetite among Pacific Islands countries for geopolitical competition in their backyards.

Dr Iati Iati is a senior lecturer in politics and international relations and Pacific security fellow of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington.

The geopolitical competition in the Pacific creates a complicated and disturbing situation for Pacific Islands countries. In the 2018 Boe Declaration, the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), the most influential of the regional organisations, recognised that a ‘dynamic geopolitical environment’ is creating ‘an increasingly crowded and complex region’.² The language veils its deeper concerns about the impact of ‘strategic competition between prominent powers’. The Boe Action Plan details these.³ The competition is a two-edged sword: Pacific Islands countries get leverage when engaging donors, but when the latter prioritise strategic goals Pacific Islands countries suffer. In this context, emerging actors like South Korea must understand the nature of this competition, if they want their policies to benefit and not harm the region. This article examines two questions that emerging actors should be concerned with: who is driving geopolitical competition in the Pacific and why?

Dominant position

The Western allies, in particular the United States, Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, have dominated international relations or geopolitics in the Pacific for over a century. Their engagement with the region is built on colonial and post-colonial ties: many have strong bilateral relations with their former colonies, involving financial and political rights and obligations. Until recently, the allies controlled multilateralism by dominating the two most important regional organisations: the Pacific Islands Forum and the Pacific Community. The allies retain considerable influence despite efforts to decolonise regionalism in line with Pacific Islands countries gaining independence from the 1960s onwards. It is difficult to say that the Western allies always act in concert, but as members of the same alliances and partnerships their policies are often aligned.

The allies are connected through various mechanisms, including the Quadrilateral dialogue (QUAD), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the Pacific Security (ANZUS) Treaty, UKUSA or the Five Eyes agreement, the Australia-United Kingdom-United States (AUKUS) group and the Partners in the Blue Pacific (PBP). Although these vary in size, scope and how they operate, one goal unites them — retaining strategic control of areas within the Indo-Pacific region by containing and controlling the rise of states that challenge their hegemony. Their treatment of the Pacific Islands countries is driven by this modus operandi. Their work on development in this region is filtered through a geopolitical lens that promotes their strategic interests, even at the expense of Pacific Islands countries.

Over the past two decades the People’s Republic of China has emerged as the single biggest challenge to Western hegemony in the Pacific. Although a relative newcomer to the Pacific, establishing its first diplomatic relations with Samoa and Fiji in 1975, it has rapidly gained popularity among Pacific Islands countries. Initially, the allies invited China to play a greater role in the Pacific, hoping it would counterbalance Soviet overtures to some Pacific Islands countries. China accepted but was less interested in this geopolitical competition than soliciting support for the one-China principle, whereby Beijing and not Taipei was recognised as the legitimate government of China. For the Pacific Islands countries, China was welcomed as an alternative development partner. The relationship between China, Western donors and the Pacific Islands countries remained largely uneventful until the 2000s.

Positive view

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, the allies retained a positive view of China. During the Bill Skate and Mekere Morauta governments in Papua New Guinea, Australia pressured that country to stay with China when it wanted to recognise the Republic of China (Taiwan) instead. When US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited the Pacific Islands Forum in 2012 (with about a 60-person delegation), she did not speak the language of competition but rather of accommodation: ‘We think it is important for the Pacific Island nations to have good relationships with as many partners as possible, and that includes China as well as the United States.’⁴ The mainstream media reflected government positions. In covering Clinton’s visit, NBC news referred to China’s economic model as being focused on ‘condition-free loans and extractive industries such as mining and timber’.5 Debt traps were not part of the conversation back then. The New Zealand Defence White Paper 2016 made mention of China, but in non-threatening terms, framing China as ‘an important strategic partner for New Zealand’ that ‘continues to build a strong and resilient relationship with China’.⁶ China, at that time, was still on the right side of the Western ledger. In the geopolitics of the Pacific, there are no angels, but framing China as the devil after the allies colonised Pacific Islands countries, exploited their natural resources and conducted nuclear tests in the Pacific is disingenuous. China’s rise can be understood, in part, as a rising great power filling a vacuum that other great powers left behind. This vacuum was created when Western powers downgraded their interest and involvement in the Pacific in the immediate post-Cold War period — the era often referred to as one of ‘benign neglect’. At a time when the Pacific’s geopolitical significance diminished, the United Kingdom closed its embassies in the region, the United States reduced its presence in Melanesia and Polynesia and focused on Micronesia and New Zealand and Australia took greater interest in South-east Asia while adopting more intrusive policies in the Pacific. At the time, China’s rise did not attract the kind of threat narratives it now enjoys.

Nevertheless, moves were afoot to hedge against a China that appeared to take a different approach to international relations in this region. Economically, China demonstrated an unwillingness to promote the neo-liberal policies developed and adopted by the Western allies. Politically, China showed that it was willing to support Pacific Islands countries regardless of whether they conformed to the ‘good governance’ standards developed and pushed by the West. China’s approach proved effective in strengthening and broadening its relations with the Pacific Islands countries, and would have given the impression that it was muscling in on what the allies considered their sphere of influence or ‘backyard’, as some like to refer to it. These developments were viewed by some in the West (a view that became more prominent over time) as China competing with the allies, and in particular the United States.

New policies

By 2018, the Western allies had a slew of new policies ready for deployment in the Pacific. New Zealand launched the Pacific Reset. Although veiled in the language of managing an increasingly crowded geopolitical neighbourhood, the intent was clearly to counter China.⁷ Australia did the same, launching its Pacific Step-up in late 2018 in an apparently co-ordinated move with New Zealand and other Five Eyes partners. Around the same period, the United Kingdom and the United States introduced their new policy approaches to the Pacific, with the Pacific Uplift and the Pacific Pledge of the Indo-Pacific Strategy respectively. The four countries’ policies were similar; they focused on increasing their diplomatic presence, increasing their aid and, for countries like Australia and the United States, strengthening security arrangements in the region. The allies are driving the geopolitical competition in the Pacific.

This competition has several dimensions: the deployment of threat narratives about China; replicating China’s development policies in the Pacific; and trying to disrupt closer Pacific Islands countries–China security relations. Western narratives about China’s aims and conduct in the region vary, but generally focus on threat narratives. The New Zealand National Security Strategy, for example, tries to link China’s infrastructure developments in the region to the creation of Chinese military bases.8 In its 2022 National Security Strategy, the United States alleges China is exporting its governance system, undermining democracy and the rule of law and spreading or encouraging authoritarianism internationally. Chinese aid is said to be fostering corruption and instability.9 In Australian white papers and Defence documents, China is described as the biggest challenge to the United States, which the Australian government considers the lynchpin of the rules-based order. Although the accusations against China are sometimes veiled in diplomatic language, the message is clear: it is a revisionist power that the allies must contain.10

The Western allies provide little evidence to support their allegations unless one counts ‘intelligence’ and unnamed sources. To be sure, China has increased its political, economic and development footprints in the Pacific, built key infrastructure such as ports, stadiums and government buildings and established new security arrangements with several Pacific Islands countries. But these are normal activities in donor–recipient relations — Western donors have done the same in the Pacific for decades. With over a century of engagement with Pacific Islands countries, the allies should understand how China’s assistance is critical for these struggling economies. That is not the case. Through a lens darkened by strategic priorities, they assert that these developments are part of China’s grand scheme to transform the regional order to one more conducive to Chinese hegemony. Their position echoes the argument made by John Henderson and Ben Reilley in their 2003 piece ‘Dragon in Paradise’: ‘China’s long-term goal is to ultimately replace the United States as the pre-eminent power in the Pacific Ocean.’11 These alarmist claims are unsupported and undermine Pacific Islands countries’ development prospects.

Key factor

Regardless of whatever its long-term plan is, China’s popularity with the Pacific Islands countries is a key factor in its growing regional footprint. Pacific Islands countries are attracted to China for the same reason that the Western allies (and others) are — it presents economic benefits that otherwise are difficult to get. Additionally, Chinese assistance is given in a way that respects Pacific Islands countries’ sovereignty and enhances their autonomy. Western donors’ assistance is often designed to transform recipient countries, using policies such as those associated with the ‘good governance agenda’. Despite its name, this agenda is primarily an avenue to convey donors’ political preferences, and whether it is good for the governance of recipient countries is of secondary importance. China does not attach such conditions to its aid. It requires recipient countries to respect the oneChina principle, and like most of the international community the Pacific Islands countries do — ten of the fourteen Pacific Islands countries have diplomatic relations with Beijing, with the oth- ers recognising Taipei. The Pacific Islands countries also have a greater say in where Chinese aid goes and how it is spent. Western allies claim that this approach leads to useless infrastructure and the building of ‘roads that go to nowhere’. But this perspective ignores the fact that China’s approach embodies a respect for Pacific Islands countries’ sovereignty and autonomy, things that the other side often overlooks.

With China in the geopolitical mix, Pacific Islands countries can also resist policies that do not fit their national priorities. In the 1990s, Australia and New Zealand took advantage of the lack of geopolitical interest in the Pacific to re-engineer regionalism. This is manifest in the Pacific Plan, which both New Zealand under Helen Clark’s Labour-led government and Australia under the Howard government pushed through the PIF. The plan failed to garner regional support because it did not reflect Pacific priorities, which were outlined in a 2004 report

— The Eminent Persons’ Group Review of the Pacific Islands Forum. The PIF endorsed the plan, despite the incongruence in positions, a testament to the imbalance of bargaining power between the Pacific Islands countries and the PIF’s metropole members. China’s presence in the region gives Pacific Islands countries greater leverage in dealing with these members, and other Western allies.

To be sure, Pacific Islands countries’ relations with the Western allies remain strong. While there are developments in Pacific Islands countries–China security relations, countries like Australia, New Zealand and the United States are the preferred security options, for now at least. In 2023 China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, presented a security deal to the ten Pacific Islands countries that have diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Pacific Islands countries rejected the offer, preferring to address security matters through the PIF. Bilaterally, some Pacific Islands countries prefer to deal with their former colonisers. Western concerns over the Solomons Islands–China Security Agreement masks the fact that they have very intrusive security deals and militarisation activities in the Pacific. After Wang Yi’s tour of the Pacific, the United States and Papua New Guinea signed the Defence Cooperation Agreement, which grants the former ‘unimpeded access’ for ‘mutually agreed activities’ (including surveillance and staging and deploying of forces) covering a key PNG naval base, seaport and airports. In co-operation with Australia, the United States is upgrading the Manus Island military facilities. These are just some of the iterations to the already substantial US military infrastructure in Micronesia. Not to be outdone, Australia has deepened its security footprint in the Pacific through major security deals with Fiji and Tuvalu. The Falepili Union signed between Australia and Tuvalu provides a favourable migration pathway for Tuvaluans to Australia. In exchange Australia gets veto power over Tuvalu’s security interests, putting into question the latter’s sovereignty. The fact that Pacific Islands countries are deepening their security relations with the Western allies, despite the inauspicious nature of some of these deals, indicates the strength of ties between them.

Turning tide

However, the tide is turning, if slowly. The Solomon Islands–China deal was established despite strong objections from Australia, the United States and New Zealand. When Fiji’s current government came to power, Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka suspended a 2011 policing co-operation deal signed with China. In March 2024, the deal was restored, but modified so that Fijian police would be trained in China, while Chinese police are not yet embedded in the Fijian force. In early 2024, Kiribati officials revealed that Chinese police were in the country working with local police. The Western allies’ control of the security regime in the Pacific is unravelling, as Pacific Islands countries look to diversify their security. But the allies are not giving up without a fight, and are deploying cautions, warnings and threat narratives about close ties with China. In response to the Kiribati–China policing co-operation, Australia’s Pacific Minister Pat Conroy warned, ‘there is no role for China in policing, or broader security, in the Pacific’.12

The allies’ intention of countering China was initially couched in rhetoric about creating a more resilient region. But with the launch of their respective new foreign policy approaches to the Pacific, the veil is off. Their engagement with Pacific Islands countries suddenly featured an infrastructure focus that was hitherto absent. After a century of operating with the Pacific, Australia made ‘infrastructure development’ a core plank of its new policy approach. At the 2018 APEC meeting in PNG, Australia, Japan and the United States announced a memorandum of understanding on a trilateral partnership for infrastructure investment in the Indo-Pacific region.13 China’s infrastructurebased development paradigm that is part of its Belt and Road Initiative was probably the motivation.

The signing of the Solomon Islands–China security agreement has spooked the Western allies further, leading to a spike in their geopolitical activity in the region. The United States has made several high-profile visits to the region by the likes of US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken and the United States second gentleman, Douglas Emhoff. Additionally, they have opened or planned to open new embassies in Kiribati, Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands. Australia’s Labor government, under Anthony Albanese, likewise responded by sending Foreign Minister Penny Wong for a comprehensive tour of the region. Not to be outdone, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta also did her rounds, although not as promptly as Wong. The Western allies clearly want to nip in the bud any further moves by the Pacific Islands countries towards China on the security front. Time will tell whether the allies can sustain this level of activity and contain or control China’s influence, or whether China’s attraction as a security partner strengthens. Whatever the case, the Western allies are now clearly competing to retain and restore their influence in a region they often refer to as their ‘backyard’.

Adverse effects

Geopolitical competition has, does and will hurt the Pacific Islands countries’ prospects for peace, stability and economic development. These countries have said that they want to work with all partners. This sentiment is conveyed through their oft spoken mantra of ‘friends to all, enemies to none’. Although simple enough to understand, it is often ignored by partners that seek to limit or control Pacific Islands countries’ relations with China. When Solomon Islands switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China, then US Vice President Mike Pence lambasted it for hurting a traditional relationship. He was not talking about Solomon Islands–Taiwan relations but rather Solomon Islands–United States relations.14 The United States’ awkward response was impervious to Solomon Islands’ economic and trade situation: China had been Solomon Islands’ largest trading partner since 2003. But such is the fate of Pacific Islands’ countries that draw closer to China: the West filters their interests through their strategic priorities. As such, any economic and development benefit Pacific Islands countries might gain from their engagement with China is often misunderstood or ignored. PIF Secretary-General Dame Meg Taylor notes that ‘it is often difficult to engage in meaningful dialogue over relations with China without being labelled “pro-China” or perhaps even as naïve’.15

Emerging powers may inadvertently entangle themselves in these efforts if they do not understand the nature of Pacific geopolitics and the core needs of the region. This is evident in South Korea’s decision to work with the Partners in the Blue Pacific. The PBP is a coalition of donors to the Pacific, comprising the United States, Australia, Japan, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. Ostensibly, the PBP is a mechanism intended to co-ordinate their assistance to Pacific Islands countries. The reality is different. The Blue Pacific is an autochthonous concept created by the Pacific Islands countries to assert their voice and rights as sovereign guardians of this region, detached from loyalties to particular donors. In line with this, they have an express desire to avoid geopolitical competition and engage directly with dialogue partners. But the PBP shows that the allies and their friends are intent on using aid and development to counter China. In doing so, they undermine the Blue Pacific narrative and Pacific Islands countries’ efforts to de-escalate this competition. South Korea’s Indo-Pacific strategy refers to Australia and New Zealand as ‘like-minded partners’ who have shared interests and values and it intends to strengthen their ‘strategic dialogue and cooperation’. In line with this, it intends to expand its support for the Pacific Islands countries through the Partners in the Blue Pacific.16 Unwittingly or not, South Korea has joined a coalition that is prioritising strategic hegemony over the Pacific’s development needs.

There are better ways for emerging actors like South Korea to engage the Pacific. There are 21 dialogue partners of the PIF, including countries like Canada, France, Japan, the United States, the United Kingdom and China. And the PIF leaders have well-established mechanisms to engage with all partners, such as the Regional Development Partner Roundtable. If partners are interested in co-ordination, these mechanisms serve that purpose. Apparently, the PBP is circumventing these. There could be several reasons why the allies and Japan have formed their own co-ordinating mechanism: they do not trust the PIF mechanisms, think the PBP is better, are turning the PIF into an arena for geopolitical competition or all the above. Long-time Pacific scholars Fry, Kabutaulaka and Wesley-Smith argue that It [PBP] effectively forms a special group of five ‘like-minded’ partners with a shared interest in displacing or competing with China. This then becomes a new grouping in the regional architecture — an inner circle — which complicates and ignores existing structures.17

If this is the case, which it appears to be, South Korea risks joining a geopolitical ‘inner circle’18 of donors who are potentially undermining the principles of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent as formulated by the PIF leaders. Good foreign policy in the Pacific requires a deep understanding of both the obvious and nuanced ways that geopolitical competition is playing out in this region.

Dominance threatened

For over a century, Western dominance in the Pacific (or their ‘backyard’) has involved keeping Pacific Islands countries in their place. This dominance is threatened by China, which gives the Pacific greater economic opportunities, more opportunities to employ their abundant natural resources for development and security diversification. Terence Wesley Smith, in his article ‘China in Oceania’, makes an insightful point that rings true about geopolitical competition in the Pacific: ‘China’s rise disturbs a situation where a small number of allied powers exercise an enormous amount of regional influence.’19 China’s motives are clear: promote the one-China policy and increase its economic and trade relations. Beyond this, there is little or no evidence that supports the kinds of claims made by the West. At best, China is opportunistic and has filled a geopolitical vacuum, and the needs of Pacific Islands countries.

Nevertheless, a threat narrative about China’s activities in the Pacific has emerged within academic and policy circles. This has snowballed and culminated in the adoption of new policy approaches from Australia, New Zealand, the United States and the United Kingdom. The Western allies have gone into panic mode, and reacted with a flurry of diplomatic activities, promises of new aid and the strengthening of military and security partnerships. The Boe Declaration lists strategic competition in the Pacific as the second most concerning issue confronting Pacific Islands countries. But who is driving it and why? The answer is obvious.

Emerging actors would do well to understand the nature of this competition if they wish to effectively engage with Pacific Islands countries. South Korea is in the early stages of engagement with this region, and its Indo-Pacific strategy has potential for constructive and productive engagement with the Pacific Islands countries. Its commitment to addressing the challenges of climate change align with PIF priorities as expressed in the Boe Declaration. However, its intention to expand its support for the Pacific Islands countries via the PBP is puzzling and potentially problematic. The PBP is a geopolitical grouping designed to counter China within the aid arena. Does South Korea intend to join the geopolitical competition? The PBP also undermines established mechanisms to co-ordinate and align donor and PIF priorities, such as the Regional Development Partner Roundtable. Does South Korea intend to work with both, and will it avoid working within established PIF mechanisms altogether? The Pacific Islands countries have a policy principle of ‘friends to all, enemies to none’. South Korea and other emerging actors might want to critically examine their chosen avenues for engaging the Pacific to determine whether these align with this principle or not.

Notes

1. Government of the Republic of Korea, Strategy for a Free, Peaceful, and Prosperous Indo-Pacific Region (Seoul, 2022).
2. Pacific Islands Forum, Boe Declaration on Regional Security, Suva, 2018 (www.forumsec.org/2018/09/05/boe-declaration-on-regionalsecurity/, acc 13 Sep 2023).
3. Ibid., p.23.
4. Anthony Quinn, ‘Clinton seeks to boost U.S. Pacific ties as China expands’, Reuters, 1 Sep 2012 (www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-asiaclinton-idUSBRE87U1BN20120901, acc 18 Dec 2023).
5. NBC News, ‘“Big enough for all of us”: Clinton says US can work with China in Pacific’, 2012 (www.nbcnews.com/news/world/bigenough-all-us-clinton-says-us-can-work-china-flna974855, acc 18 Dec 2013).
6. New Zealand Government, Defence White Paper 2016 (Wellington, 2016) (www.defence.govt.nz/assets/Uploads/daac08133a/defencewhite-paper-2016.pdf, acc 18 Dec 2023).
7. See discussion in Iati Iati, ‘China’s impact on New Zealand Foreign Policy in the Pacific: The Pacific Reset’, in Graeme Smith and Terence Wesley-Smith (eds), The China Alternative: Changing Regional Order in the Pacific Islands (Canberra, 2021).
8. New Zealand Government, Secure Together: Tō Tātou Korowai Manaaki — New Zealand’s National Security Strategy 2023–2028 (Wellington, 2023), p.5.
9. Joanne Wallis, ‘How Should Australia Respond to China’s Increased Presence in the Pacific Islands?’, Security Challenges, vol 16, no 3 (2020), pp.47–52.
10. Merriden Varrall, ‘Australia’s Response to China in the Pacific: From Alert to Alarmed’, in Smith and Wesley-Smith, pp.108–9.
11. John Henderson and Ben Reilley, ‘Dragon in Paradise: China’s Rising Star in Oceania’, in The National Interest, vol 72 (2003), pp.94104.
12. TRT World, ‘“No role” for China in policing Pacific Islands — Australia’ (www.trtworld.com/australia/no-role-for-china-in-policing-pacificislands-australia-17169878, acc 20 Mar 2024).

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