Pacific security cooperation

A networked security architecture in the Pacific: Implications for Australia (Defence Strategic Policy Grant 2020-106-040, 2020-2022)

Introduction to the project

In the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security , Pacific Islands Forum leaders recognised that the Pacific Islands region is facing ‘an increasingly complex regional security environment driven by multifaceted security challenges’. This raises the question of how Pacific Island states and territories will respond to these wide-ranging, but frequently interconnected, challenges, and what role security cooperation can play.

With funding from an Australian Department of Defence Strategic Policy Grant, since 2020 an international team of researchers led by the Stretton Institute Security Policy in the Indo-Pacific research program director Professor Joanne Wallis has been analysing the various cooperative security agreements, arrangements, and institutions between and among states and territories in the Pacific Islands region, and their partners. 

The aim of the project is to identify how Pacific security cooperation could be best orientated to address current and future regional security challenges.

The project team

Mapping Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands

The first major project output is a policy paper titled Mapping Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands . This paper identified and mapped the various cooperative security agreements, arrangements, and institutions between and among states and territories in the Pacific Islands region, and their partners.

This policy paper was accompanied by an animated map .

Members of the project team shared the map and research findings in an opinion piece about regional security cooperation.

The Dynamics of Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands

The second major project output is a policy paper titled Security Cooperation in the Pacific: Workshop Report . 

This paper is based on an online workshop held online on 18 and 19 November 2021 to better understand security cooperation between partner states; between Pacific Island countries themselves, and their citizens; and between partners, Pacific Island countries and their citizens. 

Speakers came from a range of PICs and partner states, including Australia, China, Fiji, Japan, New Caledonia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, and the United States. The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat also attended part of the workshop as an observer.

Based on papers presented at the workshop we are now editing a book. More information regarding publication, including dates, will be provided here as it comes available.  

Security cooperation in the Pacific Islands: architecture, complex, community, or something else?

The third major project output is an article in International Relations of the Asia-Pacific in which we address the question: is there a security architecture in the Pacific Islands, or does security cooperation take a different shape?

We find that security cooperation in the region does not constitute a security architecture, as there is no ‘overarching, coherent and comprehensive security structure for a geographically-defined area’. We also find that the region is neither a security complex nor a community, due to the extensive involvement of metropolitan powers and external partners.

Instead, we argue that security cooperation in the Pacific Islands is best described as a patchwork of bilateral, minilateral, and multilateral, formal and informal agencies, agreements, and arrangements, across local, national, regional, and international levels.
 

Workshop on security cooperation in the Pacific Islands

The fourth major project output is a policy paper titled Navigating 'Flexible, Responsive and Respectful' Security Cooperation in the Pacific Islands: A 2022 Workshop Report.

This paper is based on a workshop we convened on 23 and 24 November 2022 featuring speakers from across the Pacific Islands, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, Japan, and France, to discuss the dynamics of security cooperation in the Pacific Islands and formulate proposals for how cooperation may best be orientated to address current and future regional security challenges. View the workshop program here.

Acknowledgement

This activity is supported by the Australian Government through a grant by the Australian Department of Defence. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Government or the Australian Department of Defence.