Australia launched its National Defense Strategy (NDS) in April 2024 by stating that the country will remain the “partner of choice” for the Pacific Island countries (PICs) when it comes to security cooperation. But why does this status matter to Australia?
Australia, as a middle power, is a key regional leader in the Pacific. The Pacific region has been Australia’s backyard in terms of security cooperation since the end of World War II. Australia also remains one of the PICs’ largest trading partners and donors. Since 2008 Australia has invested nearly $14 billion of its official development assistance in the PICs. Being “partner of choice” remains a core element of Australia’s NDS for the PICs, for several reasons, and now that competition with China for influence in the Pacific is a permanent reality, this means using Australia’s international influence and relationships to advocate for the Pacific’s needs.
Firstly, climate change remains one of Australia’s top foreign policy priorities. As a pro-Paris Climate Accord state, Australia has played a significant role since 2015 in addressing the climate change issue in the Pacific and globally. In fact, Australia’s key international development initiatives have been driven largely by its climate policy agenda. Climate change remains the single largest security threat in the region and since Anthony Albanese’s Labor government took office in June 2022, a more transformative approach has been taken to address the issue. Through its assorted climate investment efforts, Australia aims to reduce carbon emissions by 43% in 2030 and reach net zero in 2050. Australia’s increased engagement in the Pacific in its climate action efforts has led the country to receive the full support of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) members of Australia’s bidding to co-host the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) in 2026 with PIF.
Geostrategic competition is the second key issue for Australia to remain a partner of choice for the PICs in security cooperation. The geostrategic competition between the US and China has intensified in the region. While the great power rivalry remains a concern for the PIF members (including Australia), as a key ally of the US Canberra has been involved in a variety of efforts with its like-minded partners to challenge the rise of China in the Pacific.
China has emerged as a global superpower and rising regional player in the Indo-Pacific. China’s engagement in the Pacific has thus far largely been about economic development. Through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), for instance, China has provided infrastructure projects in countries like Papua New Guinea (PNG), Solomon Islands and Vanuatu.
However, China’s effort to establish a bilateral security agreement with Solomon Islands in 2022 has changed the whole narrative of power dynamics in the Pacific given that Australia and the US have been the PICs’ “traditional security partners.” “Partner of choice” in security cooperation falls under the framework of traditional security partner, in which Australia holds firmly to its foreign policy through engagement with its Pacific family and simultaneously ensures that the US remains the Pacific power.
While Australia, within the span of a year, signed three bilateral security agreements with Vanuatu, Tuvalu, and Papua New Guinea to maintain its influence in the region in security cooperation, China’s growing influence in the Pacific challenges and questions the concept of “partner of choice.” In her recent interview, Sen. Penny Wong, Australia’s foreign affairs minister stated that:
“[w]e are now in a position where Australia is a partner of choice, but the opportunity to be the only partner of choice has been lost and we’re in a state of permanent contest in the Pacific [with China]—that’s the reality.”
Australia, apart from its security engagement with the PICs, also supports a free and open Indo-Pacific through engagement with key partners. This include AUKUS, the trilateral security partnership established in 2021 with the US and UK in which both countries would build Australia’s nuclear-powered submarine capabilities (conventionally armed), including through acquisition of five Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarines from the US over the next three decades for $368 billion. The AUKUS partnership also entails technology and information sharing among the three countries as well as deployment of US and UK submarines as early as 2027 to have rotational presence in Western Australia at HMAS Sterling through Submarine Rotational Force-West, a strategic move not just to help Australia build its nuclear-powered submarine fleet but also counter China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.
As one of the members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (“Quad”) with the US, Japan and India, Australia’s status as a founding member of PIF ensures that humanitarian assistance, the key reason why the Quad was established in 2004, is delivered to PICs, who remain vulnerable to non-traditional security threats like climate change.
Australia, along with New Zealand, Japan, and South Korea also maintains the presence of NATO through Partners in the Indo-Pacific (IP4). Although NATO was established to counter Soviet threats during the Cold War in Europe after World War II, its partnership with IP4 exists to maintain the international rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific. There is this notion that “countries in both Europe and the Indo-Pacific count on the US to guarantee their security—a guarantee [that] they have not had…to question for three quarters of a century.”
But that security guarantee from the US already faces a challenge from China in the Indo-Pacific. The US and its NATO partners see China’s emerging superpower status and its provocative actions in the South China Sea, particularly with the Philippines, as a threat to the liberal order. Secondly, as US’ ally and as a NATO partner, Australia sees Pacific as crucially important to its national security interests and the security interests of its partners. This means Australia seeks to ensure that PICs remain under its influence in security cooperation and to eliminate the possibility of coercion or attempts from China to establish bilateral security arrangements with PICs. For instance, the former prime minister of Solomon Islands, Manasseh Sogavare was described as the polarizing, pro-China figure in the Pacific when he signed the security deal with China and PNG was urged early this year by Washington and Canberra to reject China’s bilateral security offer. When responding to China’s bilateral security offer to PNG, Australia’s prime minister Albanese stated: “[W]e are a security partner of choice for [PNG], as we are for most of the countries in the Pacific.”
PNG did not take up China’s bilateral security offer, intended to help improve PNG’s internal policing, as PNG already has a similar bilateral security arrangement with Australia.
Geoeconomic competition is the final issue that matters to Australia as partner of choice in security cooperation for PICs. Both the US and China are key trading partners of Australia, and the Pacific region is critical to their economic development as it houses the trans-Pacific route, the world’s largest shipping lanes linking Asia and North America. In 2023 alone, approximately 30 million 20-foot equivalent units (TEU) of cargoes were transported across the trans-Pacific route. Secondly, while China has done significant investment in infrastructure development through the BRI in the Pacific, Australia through its Pacific Step-up introduced the $2 billion Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific to increase its engagement in the region, as the BRI was accused of a “debt-trap” diplomacy. Australia’s membership in the Partners in the Blue Pacific helps support Pacific priorities envisaged in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, as PICs are not included in the US-led Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity except Fiji.
PICs understand the traditional role of Australia as the key regional leader in security cooperation. While China’s interests, apart from economic development, are also to constrain Taiwan’s diplomatic presence in the Pacific, PICs perceive all parties involved, including big powers as its key development partners without any geopolitical interest in security and economic cooperation.
As a traditional leader, Australia will have to increase its efforts both at the bilateral and multilateral levels with the PICs to remain the partner of choice in security cooperation while at the same time respects the sovereignties of each individual PICs. For instance, the Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI), just endorsed by PIF leaders in their 53rd meeting in Tonga late last month would be a good start for Australia’s investment in its effort for regional leadership in security cooperation as the PPI will be entirely funded by Australia in the next five years.
Moses Sakai ([email protected]) is a Research Fellow at the Papua New Guinea National Research Institute and a Young Leader of the Pacific Forum. He previously taught at the University of Papua New Guinea from 2018-2023.
PacNet commentaries and responses represent the views of the respective authors. Alternative viewpoints are always welcomed and encouraged.
Photo: Flags of Australia and China || Credit: China Australia – CFP
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