Ocean of Peace in a militarised Pacific
A key declaration endorsed at this year's Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting did not include demilitarisation amid growing geopolitical tensions in the region.
The Pacific has been declared an Ocean of Peace in a document endorsed by the region’s leaders, but analysts say its ambiguity won’t stop spiralling militarisation and undue influence by foreign powers.
A 54th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting ended in Honiara on Friday (September 12) after five days of talks over some of the most pressing issues facing the region for decades.
Among issues discussed were a new mechanism for the region’s top consensus body to deal with external partner states amid great power competition, a restructure of its political architecture to better deliver a 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy development plan and a shared commitment to address the region’s increasing militarisation.
The summit, attended by leaders of the 18 nations that make up the PIF, was hosted by the Solomon Islands this year amid the backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions, as the US, its allies and China seek to build partnerships and influence governments.
The US has been militarising and securitising existing bilateral and multilateral relationships in the Asia Pacific region as part of preparations for war with its peer economic competitor China, which NATO sees as a strategic adversary and primary threat to Western hegemony.
The Ocean of Peace Declaration was drafted in part to address these issues, seeking to prevent militarisation, protect Pacific sovereignty and its environment, and promote regional stability.
First floated by Fiji in September 2023, the concept gained traction among Pacific leaders, who saw it as a modern extension of the Boe and Biketawa declarations, which framed security broadly in terms of resilience to emerging threats like climate change and a need for peaceful conflict resolution processes.
Former senior adviser to the PIF Secretariat, Sione Tekiteki, told Mick Hall In Context the declaration was a high-level political commitment that reaffirmed the legitimacy of international law and anchored Pacific peace in universal norms. But he said its ambiguity had made it vulnerable to being co-opted by states pursuing military activities in the region.
“The ambiguities leave space for diverging interpretations and inevitably possibilities of co-optation and that same dynamic exists with the ‘Blue Pacific’ framing as well,” he said.
“The Ocean of Peace does strengthen the region’s normative capacity to hold external powers accountable, while also underscoring the climate-security and addressing nuclear legacies as central to peace in the Pacific.
“It is an important normative step, but without clearer parameters there is a risk that middle and major powers may commit rhetorically to it, while maintaining that their defence and military activities fall outside its ambit.”
While the document emphasises the importance of national sovereignty, its formulations confirm the PIF as the “apex of the regional architecture” and champion integration and “Forum-endorsed mechanisms” as a means of building peace.
Tekiteki, a senior law lecturer at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT), refers to Section 17(v) of the document, which references the “responsible use of technology”, without definition, as an example of its problematic, studied ambiguity.
It is an important point. Uncrewed autonomous weapons systems (UMS) and lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) are increasingly being deployed in the strategically important waters of the Pacific, with tasks including submarine detection, reconnaissance and sabotage.
The development of commercial ports, humanitarian warehouses, refurbishment of airstrips and other donated infrastructure could also double up as military assets. The setting up of policing, maritime surveillance and disaster relief arrangements also establishes networks that can be utilised in the event of military conflict.
The secretive use of such technology and dual purpose infrastructure has prompted calls for greater transparency, oversight and guidelines, largely absent from the document.
The absence almost certainly reflects a lack of consensus and the inherent tension between Pacific nation interests and priorities with the interests and priorities of sub-imperial powers on both sides of the Tasman.
As the PIF meetings took place, Australia announced a $1.7 billion project to build a fleet of underwater Ghost Shark drones in partnership with the US. It is spending AU$12 billion on a facility in Western Australia to expand its navy, while its AUKUS deal to acquire nuclear submarines alone is expecting to cost up to $390 billion, if it goes ahead.
Defence Minister Richard Marles in a television interview said Australia planned to spend an additional AU$70 billion on defense over the next decade under the current Labor government compared to projections made under the previous government.
New Zealand is also busy building its military capacity to act as a ‘force multiplier’ with Australia and its other Western allies in the region. In the lead up to the PIF Leaders summit it announced the $2.7 billion acquisition of a fleet of MH-60R Seahawk helicopters and long-range Airbus A321XLR aircraft to travel to the Pacific and to “international events”.
It forms part of a $12 billion defence budget to be spent over the next four years to implement its Defence Capability Plan. Foreign Minister Winston Peters told media last month the $9 billion increase was just the start and that defence spending should increase from 1 to 2.5 percent of GDP.
As the summit reached its end on Friday, Australia’s federal government also said it had approved the extension of the massive Woodside's North West Shelf gas project’s operating life to 2070, expected to cause the release of 6.1 billion tonnes of emissions.
These types of announcements may reduce the declaration to a mere set of aspirational platitudes used to mask the agendas of Canberra and Wellington.
Tekiteki points out New Zealand will play a significant role in the Oceans of Peace implementation plan as it becomes a PIF Troika member next year by virtue of being hosts the Leaders Forum in 2027.
“That means it will have a lot of influence in driving this work with the Troika for three years,” he said.
“As expected, the Declaration omits referencing decolonisation - a priority raised by civil society organisations - and avoids the term ‘demilitarisation’, despite intensifying militarisation across the region.”
Senior Law lecturer at the University of Auckland, Dylan Asafo, told In Context the omissions were a reflection of influence exerted by New Zealand and Australia.
Asafo said, while the declaration referenced the anti-nuclear Treaty of Rarotonga and the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), it failed to advance popular support for a demilitarised Pacific Ocean, free from the undue external influence of colonial powers like the US.
“It fails to explicitly address major threats to peace in the region, including foreign military exercises, basing and weapons testing,” he told In Context.
“The only slight acknowledgement of threats like AUKUS is found in the Leaders Communique, which states: ‘Recognising that the region is in a period defined by both heightened political transitions and increased global attention, Leaders were cognisant that matters such as nuclear legacy issues continue to test the integrity of the Blue Pacific’s long-standing nuclear-free identity’...
“This weak language and the failure to include strong demilitarisation provisions in the Declaration indicates that Australia and New Zealand have once again successfully exerted their influence as colonial powers in the Forum to advance AUKUS and other related military interests of the US and West.”
Asafo said fundamental issues important from the Pacific perspective were also left out of the equation, including the need to liberate West Papua, Kanaky-New Caledonia and Ma’ohi Nui from violent settler-colonial regimes.
“The Communique’s reaffirmation of the ‘Forum’s ongoing recognition of Indonesia’s sovereignty over West Papua’ undermines the Declaration’s supposed commitment to “cultivating a culture of peace grounded in the Pacific Way,” he said.
Pacific concerns about Australian, New Zealand and Fijian support of Israel’s illegal occupation and genocide of Palestinians in Gaza was also not expressed.
“A genuine Ocean of Peace Declaration required the affirmation of states’ obligations under the Genocide Convention at a minimum, as clarified in the International Court of Justice’s provisional rulings last year,” Asafo said.
“In this respect, the Communique and Declaration should have recognised the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the Legal Consequences arising from the Policies and Practices of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, which affirmed States’ obligations not to recognise as legal the situation arising from the unlawful presence of Israel in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.
“It is unacceptable for the Communique to commend the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the Obligations of States in respect of Climate Change and urge all Forum Members to utilise it, while remaining silent on the ICJ’s other advisory opinions and rulings regarding the ongoing threat Israel and its allies pose to peace in the world.
For Asafo and others, New Zealand and Australia are not only ensuring an Anglocentric worldview bleeds into the Leaders Meeting final communique. They are ultimately being successful in pushing a western-aligned stability model for the region, envisaging the Ocean of Peace to be part of a security architecture undergirded by them on behalf of the US, facilitating peacekeeping to maintain the existing regional order.
Co-director of progressive foreign policy group Te Kuaka, Marco de Jong, questioned New Zealand’s objectives in helping to draft the declaration, amid its so-called foreign policy reset with ‘traditional partners’, the US and UK.
“The declaration comes at a time when New Zealand is shifting its regional security strategy from denial through diplomacy and development, towards deterrence through defence,” the AUT law lecturer told In Context.
“Its Defence Capability Plan delivers hardware to provide ‘enhanced lethality’ and ‘extended strike’ capabilities, towards an integrated Anzac force and revived ANZUS security pact.
“There has been a concern that New Zealand and Australia could co-opt the Ocean of Peace declaration, using it to bring the parallel security architecture developed outside of Forum auspices—initiatives such as the Pacific Policing Initiative or Pacific Response Group of the South Pacific Defence Ministers Meeting—under the PIF in order to control regional peacekeeping and align it with broader geostrategic objectives.”
He said if this approach was taken, the Ocean of Peace declaration would not act as an effective bulwark against militarism, but would instead prove a lost opportunity to advance an alternative Pacific-led security model, focused on peacebuilding through human development, climate action, and nuclear disarmament outside of intensifying major power competition.
“The declaration shows signs of a struggle, with hooks left in both ways. So while we might appreciate the inclusion of language supporting responsible innovation and bold climate action, for example, success there will rest on what ‘Forum-endorsed mechanisms’ are used to take the agenda forward.
“An instrumental and securitised approach to Pacific regionalism, one that seeks to prevent genuine peace by facilitating further militarisation, that fails to address the drivers of insecurity, will backfire.”
Hi Mick “the University of Auckland law lecturer told In Context.” - Marco is actually at AUT