Most Pacific Island countries claim the foreign policy of “friends to all and enemies to none” amid the mounting geopolitical disputes between the United States and China. But what does this foreign policy mean?
This policy seeks to identify short- and long-term national interests on an ad hoc basis with bilateral partners, including superpowers the United States and China. Many developing states profess this foreign policy to ensure they remain neutral during this period of intense rivalry.
Among the key issues discussed by Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders including Australia and New Zealand during their recent 52nd meeting in Rarotonga, Cook Islands, was great-power competition, with the region increasingly being used as a geopolitical playground for hard power projection.
On geopolitics, the host of the PIF meeting, Cook Islands Prime Minister Mark Brown, stated that the Pacific region was seen as the focus of “heightened geo-strategic interest.”
Nevertheless, he said, the region would not shift attention away from the key issue of climate change, especially when dealing with the PIF’s 21 dialogue partners, which include the United States and China.
China has its footprint in the region through its Belt and Road Initiative, an infrastructure program largely funded by China’s Exim Bank in the form of loans to countries in the Pacific and developing countries in other regions of the world. However, recent studies indicate that the populations of a few countries in the Pacific already disapprove of the BRI because of debt risks.
China’s official development finances in the Pacific region have decreased significantly since 2016, according to the 2023 Pacific Aid Map launched by the Lowy Institute, but China maintains support in a few places, such as Solomon Islands and Kiribati. In 2019, Solomon Islands and Kiribati shifted their diplomatic ties from Taipei to Beijing.
China in 2022 solidified its diplomatic relationship Solomon Islands to a more comprehensive strategic standard by signing a security pact to improve Solomon Islands’ policing. This controversial pact triggered increased PIF engagement from the United States and its traditional allies, such as Australia.
Of course, Washington has long been regarded as a “Pacific power.” Now, for the first time since the end of World War II, the United States, under President Joe Biden’s administration, has hosted PIF leaders at the White House.
At those sessions in 2022 and 2023, Washington pledged more than half a billion dollars to address climate change, among other key issues in the region. (Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manaseh Sogavare was absent during the second meeting.)
At the PIF meeting, held on November 6-10, 2023, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfied said she wanted to “listen to better understand how the US can continue to support the region’s priorities.”
US support has immensely increased in the region this year, both economically and strategically. For instance, in May 2023, the United States signed a defense cooperation agreement with Papua New Guinea, the largest country in the region. The agreement allows unlimited access by US military personnel to six of PNG’s major ports, including sea, air, and land.
And in collaboration with Australia, Washington has already announced funding for a new undersea Internet cable initiative for Pacific Island countries, largely implemented by US tech giant Google.
Such economic and strategic support to the region is to ensure “a free and open rules-based order” in the Pacific and is the aim of the Biden administration’s 2022 Indo-Pacific Strategy, as the region stretching from the Indian to the Pacific Ocean is considered bedrock to global peace.
However, even with closer defense cooperation between the United States and PNG, island countries’ view of the great-power competition should still be thought of as neutral.
Furthermore, while both the United States and China are making moves to meet the Pacific region’s key development priorities, as envisaged in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, those two countries have also aroused the concern of region’s political leaders regarding great-power competition.
Speaking at the Pacific Islands Forum leaders’ summit in Fiji in 2022, Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape stated that the foreign policy of “friends to all and enemies to none remains despite the current geopolitics in the region, where the bigger forces are at play. We have no intention of making enemies and our Pacific ways must pacify all forces and interests in our region.”
To ensure order and stability within the region and simultaneously address key emerging issues like maritime security, nuclear testing, cybersecurity and climate change will require commitment and regional cooperation from all PIF leaders. PIF states are among the world’s most aid-dependent countries and their 21 dialogue partners, including the United States and China, are seen as PIF development partners, multilaterally and bilaterally.
At the PIF summit this year, Fiji Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka proposed declaring the Pacific region a “zone of peace” because of current geopolitics. Rabuka’s proposal was accepted by Forum Leaders and a declaration will be made in Tonga in 2024 at the PIF’s 53rd meeting.
It must be similar to the Biketawa Declaration and the Boe Declaration, the two declarations that fully recognized forum members’ sovereignties and their values such as peace, harmony, security, social inclusion and prosperity underpinning the Framework for Pacific Regionalism.
Being friends to all and enemies to none under the Framework for Pacific Regionalism and the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent signifies peace, stability, and order.
As PIF states are small island developing countries, they will still need external assistance from development partners – including the United States and China – to achieve their development goals, even if great-power competition subsides.
In the meantime, while big powers have their own interests in the region, regional interest should be the key for PIF countries when engaging with their development partners, including the United States and China.
To maintain that foreign policy at the regional level necessitates solidarity from all forum members both at the present and in the future to ensure they remain neutral and to avoid any conflict within the region.
Moses Sakai (sakaimoses@gmail.com) is a research fellow at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute and is designated as a young leader of the Pacific Forum. He previously taught at the University of Papua New Guinea from 2018-2023.
This article was originally published by Pacific Forum and is republished with permission.