Over the past decade, the Pacific Islands region has captured renewed attention in Washington, Canberra and numerous other capitals both within and outside of Asia. Yet despite there being no shortage of Pacific-focused initiatives, ideas and programming coming from external partners, geopolitical tensions across the Pacific have continued to increase. As the United States, Australia and other partners race to outmanoeuvre China through various configurations of security deals, these partners must demonstrate a clear difference between Chinese and US and partner engagement, and the benefit of looking to the United States and other like-minded countries for development and security needs.
To do this, partners must ensure engagement is more consistent and reliable, despite changes in administration or conflict elsewhere around the globe. But beyond reliability, partners must reckon with the growing securitisation of the Pacific, and the perception that the United States and its allies are in a constant tug of war with China over Pacific islands that would prefer to remain largely out of the fray. By broadening traditional definitions of security — and incorporating Pacific security priorities into the calculus — partners have the opportunity to craft a more meaningful, and ultimately more effective, strategy for the region. Western partners should also strive to support national and regional resiliency; when done sincerely, paints a direct contrast to Chinese engagement, which often lacks transparency and thrives in an environment of weaker governance.
The risk of sporadic engagement
The Pacific is not a new space for Canberra and Wellington, but what was once a region that occupied primarily development-minded assistance has evolved into an arena where engagement is informed by defence and security concerns, largely driven by China’s increasing ambition across the Pacific. For other partners such as the United States and Japan — who have long had a presence but perhaps not as close an eye on the region — interest has increased due to China’s continuing outreach to Pacific nations, actions that the United States and others view as a direct threat to their own national interests.
As a result of rising geopolitical tensions, the last several years have seen a series of surges and ebbs in Pacific engagement. In an effort to demonstrate the ability of like-minded partners to deliver for the region, the United States and its partners have rolled out a series of collaborative initiatives, including the 2022 Partners in the Blue Pacific, which aimed to increase coordination among development partners; efforts like the Quad Indo-Pacific Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) project, which, while still nascent in the Pacific, aims to bolster MDA in critical maritime arenas; and US-Japan-Australia cooperation on subsea cables. While some of these efforts have reaped real results, such as the success in funding the East Micronesia Cable in the Northern Pacific, others have had less tangible success, raising questions on how seriously Pacific nations should dedicate limited resources and time to supporting these periodic initiatives.
Similarly, the types of programming and areas of focus have also oscillated depending on election cycles, political leanings and external world events. The United States is the most egregious perpetrator of wildly shifting engagement priorities, the most obvious example being the pendulum swing from prioritising climate change engagement under President Biden to expelling all mention of climate and clean energy from US policy documents under President Trump. But the United States has left the Pacific in the lurch in other areas as well, including when most Pacific nations were slapped with high levels of tariffs on “liberation day” in April 2025, despite Pacific entreaties to the United States to enhance economic and investment ties. Diplomatically, too, the Pacific has been left confused by full-throated US efforts to increase diplomatic presence — including opening three new embassies and establishing the first-ever US Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) envoy — only to shortly thereafter shutter USAID programming (which subsequently removed numerous US diplomats from the region) and recall several US ambassadors. In fact, as of June 2026, the United States has no ambassadors in the entire Pacific Islands region.
China is aware of this perception of the United States as a fair-weather partner and is quick to amplify this opinion in its own messaging with the region. Pacific leaders have also echoed this sentiment, such as when Prime Minister Marape of Papua New Guinea (PNG), commenting on the US tariff announcement, notedthat PNG would continue to work with partners like China that “have treated Papua New Guinea with respect, honor, and fairness,” or when Prime Minister Rabuka of Fiji simply stated that “the world is bigger than the United States.”
The race to outmanoeuvre China in the Pacific
As China continues to push for presence and influence across the region, the United States, Australia and others are scrambling to block China’s inroads. For Australia, this has meant the incorporation of security provisions into various bilateral treaties and agreements — even relatively unrelated sectors such as sports have been securitised, as occurred in the Rugby deal between PNG and Australia, where substantial Australian support for PNG Rugby and sports was intertwined with limits on PNG’s security engagement with other countries. In the aftermath of China and the Cook Islands elevating their relationship to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in February 2025, New Zealand strove to re-establish itself as the primary security partner for the Cook Islands, signing a defence and security declaration in April of this year. For the United States, this shift has involved directly reducing or eliminating assistance deemed “soft power” — such as education or health — while maintaining or increasing security or defence engagements.
As the Pacific becomes elevated in the consciousness of national security professionals across Washington, Canberra and elsewhere, this trend towards securitisation is perhaps inevitable. As security concerns more closely drive development efforts and western countries look to counter China’s growing influence in the region, the natural default has been to prioritise defence and security programming across the Pacific, leading to an arms race of security agreements, arrangements and Memoranda of Understanding.
However, the race to outmanoeuvre China can add to the perception that Pacific nations are simply pawns as China and the United States vie for advantage. While Australia and New Zealand have endeavoured to balance security engagements with other, more traditional development efforts, the United States under the second Trump administration has been particularly blunt about prioritising security in its engagement. From early 2025 onward, the US foreign assistance apparatus has been directed towards implementing President Trump’s Executive Order on foreign aid, which states that all assistance should be aligned with US national interests and values. When the Trump administration incorporated the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) into the Department of State in 2025, it cancelled almost all USAID programming and dismissed most USAID government employees, justifying the move by stating that the majority of USAID funding was not “aligned with the core national interests of the United States.”
While it is natural for a state to ensure that its foreign assistance is aligned with and in support of its own national security interests, the timeline within which one considers ‘national interests’ may affect the type of engagement a country pursues abroad. If national security interests are defined only in the short term — such as 3–5 years — then it is logical to prioritise ‘hard’ security measures, such as building out dual-use infrastructure, bolstering police and law enforcement relationships and hardening digital architecture.
Yet when national interests are considered in terms of decades, not months or years, the health and strength of overall nation-to-nation relationships matter greatly. Building and maintaining influence requires a long-term, strategic view of country engagement, the foundation of which is working collaboratively with a host nation across all sectors, from traditional security needs such as defence and policing to less traditional but no less important security needs such as health, education and environmental protection. This is, in a sense, soft power in the service of hard power.
It is here that the recent narrowing of US engagement in the Pacific appears short-sighted — and potentially harmful to long-term US national security interests. By ignoring or de-prioritising Pacific security concerns such as climate change, deteriorating health systems and limited educational opportunities, among others, the United States risks being viewed through the same lens as China; a large, transactional power that is willing to use the Pacific islands for its own short-term needs.
Resilience as foundational to security efforts
In order to counter the narrative that the United States is no different from other great powers looking to extract resources and concessions from the Pacific, it is not enough to reverse course on implementing ‘soft power’ programming such as health and educational initiatives. The United States and other like-minded partners should allow for a broader definition of security, one that recognises and incorporates security concerns from all sectors of society, including those in the Pacific.
As partners broaden their definition of security, it becomes clear why supporting Pacific resilience should be foundational to partner engagement. Resiliency enables stability, independence, and the ability to have agency both within the Pacific and beyond. It encompasses more than just good governance and the promotion of democratic norms; it also includes the resilience of economic systems, the protection of the cyber domain, and ensuring free and independent media.
Promoting resiliency is also where western powers can demonstrate the most significant divergence from Chinese engagement. For China, gaining access and presence often requires the erosion of good governance and national resiliency to create an environment more favourable to Chinese influence. Whether through co-opting Pacific media to dictate coverage deemed favourable to Beijing, or by pursuing opaque security arrangements, Chinese engagement often depends upon coercion, co-option and leverage.
Priority areas for bolstering Pacific resilience
A recent CSIS report compiled essays from young leaders across the Pacific, each outlining a key security challenge facing their nation or region and proposing options for external partners like the United States to collaborate on these threats. These essays laid out a broad range of security issues facing the region — from cyber threats and dark fleets to health security and natural disasters — and gave just a sampling of how Pacific nations are viewing national security threats, and how partners can more effectively cooperate with the Pacific to tackle what are oftentimes shared challenges. For example, tackling transnational and organised crime is a priority for both the Pacific and the United States. Once simply a throughway for drugs en route to Australia or New Zealand, Pacific islands are becoming an opportune drug market in and of themselves. With smaller populations and minimal enforcement and rehabilitation mechanisms, the incursion of drugs has disproportionately affected Pacific societies, threatening social cohesion and putting enormous burdens on local and national governments.
Policing remains a highly contested geopolitical arena in the Pacific, as China has continued to expand its law-enforcement presence through opaque deals, training, and surveillance in nations like the Solomon Islands and Kiribati. Australia and New Zealand have responded primarily through the Pacific Policing Initiative, which supports Pacific-led capabilities for law enforcement and was endorsed by the Pacific Islands Forum in 2024. Beyond Micronesia, US engagement in the policing sector has been more limited, and is viewed separately from its defence initiatives such as the United States–Papua New Guinea Defense Cooperation Agreement.
As Pacific states rapidly come online and connect with the broader world, cybersecurity is also a top concern. Preventing and tackling cyber threats is critical to protecting key infrastructure such as banking and health facilities — sectors that often lack redundancy in small nations and are therefore critical vulnerabilities. Similarly, as one of the most disaster-prone regions of the world, frequent tropical cyclones, tsunamis and earthquakes have the potential to wipe out entire economic sectors and drastically increase the financial burden of Pacific governments. Yet crafting effective solutions to these challenges requires working directly with national and local officials and experts, and an understanding of existing regional architecture already at work in this space.
The Pacific itself has produced numerous regional documents, including the overarching 2050 Strategy for a Blue Pacific Continent, which clearly lays out regional priorities such as enhancing support for education, research and technology capabilities, bolstering national and regional resilience to natural disasters and approaching partnerships from a lens of people-centred development, among others. In 2024, the Pacific produced an accompanying 2050 implementation plan, which provides a roadmap for partners from around the world to follow when engaging with the Pacific.
One of the most effective vectors for bolstering national resilience is through support for free and open media. The Pacific is already home to various national and regional news outlets, as well as several media forums and non-profits that support independent journalism, yet Pacific media is under threat, not just from external coercion, but also from lack of funding and resources. Over the past several years, China has continued to expand its footprint in the Pacific media landscape in ways that attempt to shape the information environment in a way that favours a Chinese narrative and often lacks transparency. Yet at the same time, the ability of the United States to promote a free and open Pacific media sector has been greatly reduced with the reduction in support for Voice of America and other media platforms like Radio Free Asia. Other partners like Australia remain somewhat active in this space — although Australia, too, has received some criticism for failing to provide continuing support for regional news services.
Other resiliency efforts, including reinforcing cyber protections, ensuring secure and affordable banking, and strengthening a government’s ability to evaluate and assess foreign direct investment proposals, are also critical and provide societal stability to support strong and enduring democracies. Programming along these lines should not be viewed in isolation, but instead as mutually supporting other security-related initiatives.
On the regional level, good governance and resilience often mean successful cooperation on regional security needs. Partners can support these efforts by helping to implement and use effective information-sharing mechanisms — such as the regional Forum Fisheries Agency, which provides real-time information on fishing fleets and vessels in the region. As transnational threats, including drug trafficking, accelerate, there is a growing need for effectively collecting, analysing and sharing intelligence, both among Pacific countries and between the region and external partners.
Rethinking regional engagement — the value of mini-lateral engagement
Lastly, Pacific nations and external development partners should maintain the flexibility to form bespoke, fit-for-purpose partnerships around shared interests and concerns, particularly in the security space. Many Pacific watchers — this author included — have promoted the idea that stronger engagement with the PIF should be central to a development partner’s regional strategy. The PIF, as the primary organising body for the Pacific, helps create and sustain regional architecture, articulate Pacific objectives and guide how external partners engage with the Pacific. As with ASEAN and other similar bodies, there is strength in unity, and the PIF can provide individual countries with a supportive backstop when pushing back on initiatives that seek to divide the region or strong-arm nations into unilateral agreements. For example, when former Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi table-dropped a mini-lateral security arrangement during a regional visit in May 2022, the Pacific largely rejected the initiative, which had not been pre-coordinated through the PIF.
Yet while incorporating a strategy of working through and with the PIF is important, it is also critical to recognise the incredible diversity and differing views that exist from region to region and even country to country across what is a vast expanse of the globe.
There is space — and often a need — for bespoke partnerships and relationships to exist without sacrificing regional architecture.
The Republic of Palau, in the northwest corner of the Pacific, for example, is just a few hundred miles from the Philippines and sees itself very much on the frontlines of any potential future conflict between the United States and China. Palau’s strategic outlook from this location at the intersection of the first and second island chains may align more closely with neighbouring US allies such as the Philippines and Japan than with fellow Pacific nations in the South Pacific. This is in no small part because Palau — alongside the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands — is part of the Compacts of Free Association with the United States, thereby making it a US responsibility to defend in a time of war but also foundational to US Pacific strategy more broadly. Although a lengthy delay before congressional funding was approved in 2024 raised concern among these states about US reliability, the three nations remain a central US comparative advantage. Prioritising resource allocation here allows the United States to build durable and long-lasting regional influence while enabling allies to lead elsewhere.
There is space — and often a need — for bespoke partnerships and relationships to exist without sacrificing regional architecture. In the case of Palau, also a diplomatic ally of Taiwan, an initiative such as intelligence sharing between the United States, the Philippines, Japan and Taiwan could be welcome. A role could also exist for the US territories Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands, which are similarly positioned on the front lines of any potential conflict between the great powers. Respect for regional architecture should not prohibit partners from pursuing initiatives to address the unique and evolving challenges emerging across the region.
As the race to secure influence, advantage and access to critical resources intensifies, the Pacific Islands are destined to remain an area of strategic focus for the United States, China and other large players around the world. But Pacific nations are not passive bystanders to this geopolitical tug of war, and as interest in the region increases, so too do the options of partners that the Pacific can choose from. Gaining and maintaining real influence in the Pacific requires thoughtful engagement and demonstrated ability to work collectively with Pacific islands on shared security challenges — including those that don’t fit into traditional ‘hard power’ buckets of programming. Fostering resilience across the Pacific and allowing Pacific democracies to make sovereign choices is ultimately in the long-term interest of the United States and other partners. This is an arena that traditional western partners have the tools to excel in, if they choose to deploy them.