A Sea Change in the Security of the South Pacific
Small countries have been caught in the current of great power politics.
By Jacob L. Shapiro
Concluding today is the 49th Pacific Islands Forum, an annual three-day summit that has gone broadly unnoticed by much of the world. The few headlines that managed to creep their way into continental news agencies concerned a minor spat between the host, Nauru, and China, whose delegation eventually walked out of a meeting Sept. 4. Most overlooked the fact that forum members agreed in principle to jointly augment the national security of Pacific island nations.
The agreement, called the Boe Declaration, has been in the works for a few months. Australia and New Zealand, the two strongest forum nations, hinted in July that a new regional security architecture would be announced at the recent summit. Outspoken advocates of the declaration, Australia and New Zealand want to strengthen the forum to counter China’s growing economic influence in this part of the world. Until recently, the biggest threats to the forum were run-of-the-mill internal problems such as civil unrest and natural disasters. But Canberra and Wellington want these island nations to prepare for worse.
The new declaration itself, like others before it, is almost uniformly unremarkable. It repeats previous declarations and offers platitudes about cooperation and information sharing. It identifies no country as a threat – if anything, parts of it are as much a criticism of U.S. efforts to undermine international institutions as they are a defense against Chinese intrusión.
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