Many delegates arriving in Palau for this week's Pacific Islands Forum would rather focus on transnational crime, energy security, climate adaptation, development finance, seabed minerals, or transport links. Instead, the gathering has been overshadowed by a question that now haunts every Pacific regional meeting: what happens when the world's major powers decide your part of the ocean is strategically vital?
The answer need not involve picking a patron. For the Pacific's small states, a more promising path may lie in seeking shelter collectively—pooling their limited military, economic, and diplomatic resources to reduce dependence on any single external power.
Growing pressure from Beijing
The urgency is hard to miss. In June, a Chinese People's Liberation Army submarine launched a long-range, nuclear-capable ballistic missile with a dummy warhead into waters near Tuvalu. Last year, a PLA air and naval flotilla, including a submarine, conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea without prior notice to Australia or New Zealand. The flotilla also traversed Papua New Guinean waters and sent a military drone into PNG airspace. Chinese state media described the exercises as the start of the "normalization of deployment" of PLA forces in the South Pacific.
Beijing has also sought to build competing regional architectures that undermine the existing order, including the 18-member Pacific Islands Forum. It has intervened more aggressively in forum events, attempting to exclude Taipei's participation. Three forum members—Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, and Palau—maintain diplomatic ties with the Republic of China (Taiwan), while the rest recognize the People's Republic of China. Many observers believe Beijing pressured some Pacific leaders to skip this week's meeting.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration's policies have compounded the region's security anxieties. Washington withdrew aid from most Pacific states in 2025 and launched a war in Iran in 2026, triggering an energy crisis that rippled across the Pacific. These developments have fueled narratives that cast Pacific nations as pawns in a US-China chess match, and the forum as fractured.
But Pacific countries are not passive objects. They possess their own agency, interests, and histories. The forum itself has endured for 55 years, weathering numerous upheavals. The real question is not which great power to follow, but how Pacific states can acquire enough collective shelter so they do not have to follow anyone.
A useful security partnership should bolster a nation's resilience without forcing it to surrender diplomatic choices. Development finance should build self-sufficiency, not create political dependency. That is why the Pacific Islands Forum matters—it offers a platform for joint action.
The forum is far from perfect. Members hold divergent diplomatic relationships, security concerns, and views on issues like seabed mining. But such diversity is an argument for stronger regional institutions, not weaker ones. A single Pacific nation negotiating alone with a great power does so from a position of weakness. Eighteen countries negotiating together carry a collective voice—and they possess something the great powers covet: access to an ocean whose strategic and economic significance is rising rapidly.
The Pacific's leverage lies partly in its geography. Its maritime spaces are vast, and its nations sit astride key routes and resources that have long attracted larger powers. The Solomon Islands' recent proposal for a region-wide security arrangement should be seen as an attempt to ensure no Pacific country faces coercion alone. Although Prime Minister Matthew Wale is absent due to political turmoil at home, his delegation remains in Palau to advocate for the motion.
The expansion of bilateral agreements involving Australia, New Zealand, and Pacific partners has already created opportunities for small states to gain shelter from two larger forum members. Deepening cooperation across the forum could add another layer of resilience. The overarching goal should be to move from bilateral deals to collective capability—shared maritime surveillance, better disaster response, energy security, climate adaptation, and common infrastructure standards.
The strongest form of Pacific security will be the ability to prevent the region from becoming militarized by outsiders. The Pacific needs an order in which its own governments have room to say no. That may be the most important test of sovereignty in the years ahead.
Great powers will continue to compete in the Pacific. The question is whether Pacific states will face that challenge individually or collectively, with enough shelter to preserve their freedom of action. For small states, independence has never meant standing alone. The Pacific now needs to build that shelter together.
