In an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment compounded by difficult domestic security challenges, the Pacific Island countries would benefit greatly from a stronger regional security identity. Individually, these countries are stuck in an uncomfortable position of vulnerability in the regional power competition of the Asia-Pacific, as well as having limited resources to tackle challenges at home, such as unemployment, political violence, crime, and labour exploitation. Stronger collective action between the Pacific Islands would provide the best possible opportunity to assert a more independent and powerful voice in terms of global politics and create a healthy platform to tackle the domestic challenges that threaten the peace and security of the Pacific Islands and their citizens.
Dame Meg Taylor declared that “the Blue Pacific narrative has been successful in building solidarity and shifting the prevailing narrative of the region as small, dependent and vulnerable” towards a stronger collaborative entity that can pose as an attractive and strategic ally and trade partner. Similarly, the Boe Declaration of 2018 affirmed “stewardship of the Blue Pacific,” collective security, and capacity building “to sustain our Pacific peoples and our resources.” While this is a positive endeavour towards establishing a secure community and cooperative identity, it is worth asking whether the Declaration will manifest as merely a symbolic token absent of legal obligations or an instrumental doctrine of the regional architecture that provides the basis for an ongoing security policy for the Pacific Islands.
Strengthening Pacific Island countries’ capacity to respond to security risks should be strengths-based, centralising on the regions’ core interests and opportunities, particularly by empowering national investments and economic activity in high-potential industries such as renewable energy, local agriculture, and national infrastructure projects. Heavy investment in these sectors will allow for considerable long-term growth, the establishment of a competitive export industry, and increased employment, wage growth, and labour mobility. This would generate profit that can subsequently be injected back into tackling domestic political security and human security risks, such as universal health care, vocational education training for youth, and strengthening local markets. Here we can observe the connection between core security issues such as climate change, economic policy, and more efficient responses to peripheral challenges such as employment and the risk of political violence.
It is important for the Pacific Islands to not be rendered simply as a geostrategic ‘tool’ in the contest for regional influence between China and Western-liberal states. In the context of this supposed regional geostrategic competition, it is paramount that the Pacific Island states maintain agency. Solidarity between these states may result in a collective sphere of influence that empowers them to both pursue and defend their security interests, hence the significance of conceptions such as the instrumental ‘Blue Pacific’ narrative. The establishment of regional dialogue and identity allows for a stronger collective voice that can be brought to larger international platforms to instigate a more global approach to security risks.
Beyond state sovereignty and freedom from manipulation by more powerful countries in the region, social security concerns the maintenance of cultural norms, traditions, and values that often define a people. Again, it is imperative that the policies of Pacific governments are inclusive of all communities under their leadership and that they represent the will of the people to sustain political security and reduce social discontent and the potential for escalation towards violence and crime. Ultimately, greater collective action and cooperation among the Pacific Islands will provide the best opportunity to complement each nation’s respective cultural and economic strengths for a stronger international presence, and also successfully tackle domestic socioeconomic issues that will provide the optimal pathway to peace and stability in the region.
- Greater Collective Action Of The Pacific Islands For Peace And Stability - December 22, 2021
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