Why Pacific Island states should seek collective security for the region

Saeed Khan/AFP via Getty Images Many participants at the Pacific Islands Forum in Palau this week would like to talk about anything but great power rivalry : transnational crime, energy security, climate change, development finance, seabed minerals, transport links.

Instead, the meeting has been pulled toward the question that now shadows every Pacific regional gathering: what happens when the world’s great powers decide your part of the world is strategically important? The answer does not have to involve choosing between them.

For the Pacific’s small states, a more useful approach could be to seek shelter collectively.

Shelter theory was developed to explain a basic problem of small-state politics : countries with limited military, economic and diplomatic resources cannot provide everything they need for themselves.

They can instead choose to get collective protection and support from international and regional institutions or a larger power.

In the Pacific, sheltering together is becoming painfully urgent.

Growing pressure from China In June this year, a Chinese Liberation Army (PLA) submarine fired a long-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into waters near Tuvalu.

Last year, a PLA air force and navy flotilla, which included a submarine , conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman, without any warning to Australia or New Zealand.

The flotilla travelled through Papua New Guinean waters and sent a military drone into PNG airspace .

The Chinese media said the live-fire exercises signalled the beginning of the “ normalisation of the deployment ” of PLA forces in the South Pacific.

China is attempting to create competing regional architectures to undermine the existing Pacific order, including the 18-member Pacific Island Forum.

Beijing has become increasingly aggressive in its interventions in Pacific Island Forum events, trying to exclude Taipei’s participation in Pacific diplomacy.

Both the Republic of China (ROC, Taiwan) and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) are partners of the Pacific Island Forum.

Three forum members – Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands and Palau – recognise the Republic of China while all other forum nations have diplomatic relations with the PRC.