Overview:
Pacific unity is facing a key test as leaders prepare to gather in Palau for the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting. Disagreement over how the region should respond to China’s recent missile test highlights the growing challenge of finding common ground amid competing diplomatic and security interests.
By: Ngeldei Tulop
KOROR, Palau — Pacific governments are heading toward a major regional leaders meeting in Palau with differences over how to respond to China’s recent missile test exposing challenges to the Forum’s goal of maintaining regional unity.
Foreign ministers and senior officials from Pacific Islands Forum members met in Suva, Fiji, earlier this month but failed to reach consensus on a joint statement addressing China’s July missile launch into the Pacific.
The missile test has drawn attention across the Pacific because of the route taken by the missile and its proximity to the exclusive economic zones of several Pacific island countries.
New Zealand pushed for a regional response, while other governments expressed different views on how the Forum should address the issue.
Reuters reported that two countries, Kiribati and Nauru, did not endorse the proposed statement. Officials emphasized that the disagreement reflected different positions among members rather than an outright blocking of the process.
The disagreement is significant because the Pacific Islands Forum operates around principles of regional cooperation and consensus.
The Forum has 18 members, including Palau, Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Kiribati, Nauru, Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia. Its members have different diplomatic relationships and economic partnerships, including with China, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Taiwan.
Those relationships can make agreement on security issues difficult.
Kiribati and Nauru have both established diplomatic relations with China, while Palau continues to maintain diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The differences illustrate the range of foreign-policy positions represented within the Forum.
The disagreement over the missile test comes only weeks before Palau hosts the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting, scheduled for Aug. 30 to Sept. 4.
The meeting will be held under the theme “B.E.L.A.U. — Building Economies: Life. Action. Unity.”
The timing places regional unity among the issues likely to receive attention when leaders gather in Palau.
The missile test is also part of a wider discussion about the changing security environment in the Pacific.
Pacific island governments have increasingly emphasized that regional security should reflect the priorities and concerns of Pacific countries themselves. At the same time, the region has become an area of increased strategic competition involving China, the United States, Australia and New Zealand.
The challenge for the Forum is to address those competing interests without allowing differences between individual members to undermine regional cooperation.
The issue is particularly relevant for Palau as host.
The country will welcome leaders at a time when the Forum is already dealing with disagreements involving major geopolitical powers. Taiwan is also expected to participate in the Palau meeting after being excluded from last year’s gathering in the Solomon Islands.
Together, the developments highlight the increasingly complicated diplomatic environment surrounding the Pacific.
The Forum’s ability to reach common positions will be closely watched as leaders prepare to meet in Palau.
For Pacific governments, the challenge is not necessarily to agree on every foreign-policy issue, but to find areas where cooperation remains possible despite different national interests.
That balance will be important when leaders gather later this month.
Palau’s hosting of the Forum gives the country an opportunity to place regional cooperation at the center of the meeting, even as member governments navigate growing pressure from competing geopolitical interests.
The unanswered question is whether the differences seen among ministers in Fiji will carry into the leaders meeting — or whether Pacific governments can find enough common ground to present a united regional position.