As heightened interest in the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting in Palau last month subsides, it is worth reflecting on what the meeting tells us about Pacific regionalism, and what it doesn’t. First, Leaders Week is a poor measure of the health of regionalism. Second, and more seriously, the space in which Pacific countries can disagree, debate and decide on their own terms is narrowing.
Much of last month’s reporting predictably placed considerable weight on the geopolitical posturing surrounding Leaders Week. Leaders’ absences fuelled speculation about external pressure, while the Taiwan issue sharpened disputes over participation. The statement on China’s intercontinental ballistic missile test in July, agreed by 17 of the Forum’s 18 members with Nauru dissenting, was widely reported as a test of regional cohesion. Coverage of the revised partnership mechanism concentrated on which partners would gain direct access to leaders, and on what that would mean for the regional balance of influence.
Then there are the announcements — including Australia’s A$600 million commitment to combat drug smuggling, and the US$150 million investment package — framed as part of the broader contest for regional influence. In the aftermath came the communique itself, which Tess Newton Cain and Stefan Armbruster described as “increasingly flabby” and lacking “forward momentum”. Then our attention moves elsewhere.
These criticisms are not wrong. I have often felt my own frustrations with the pace, and at times contradictory nature, of Pacific regionalism.
But the headlines from Leaders Week are an unreliable measure of its health, and of Pacific solidarity more generally. The annual Forum meeting is a political gathering. Akin to a parliamentary sitting, it puts competing political interests on full display, while substantive policy work attracts less attention. We then conflate the state of regionalism with the incidents that make the news, overlooking what it achieves.
Of course, disagreements can weaken cooperation. But from a national perspective, they can also show countries asserting agency on issues they feel strongly about. Nauru’s dissent on the missile statement is one example. And absences may say more about competing demands on leaders’ time, from domestic politics to international commitments. Those demands, coupled with limited capacity, are among Pacific regionalism’s biggest challenges.
The Leaders Meeting brings regional work together and gives it political expression. It also takes up difficult issues that only leaders can resolve. It should be a forum for frank discussion, not a rubber-stamping platform, and that means taking the good with the bad. In this respect, Nic Maclellan’s account in Islands Business offers a fair and balanced assessment of what happened in Palau.
So the meeting matters, but what happens there over a few days is one part of a longer process. Regionalism continues through regional institutions and global forums, including the United Nations and climate negotiations. Its value becomes clearer when we follow what happens to regional positions after leaders leave the meeting.
The BELAU Declaration for Urgent and Inclusive Climate Action to Keep 1.5°C Within Reach gave leaders a common position to carry from Palau to the UN General Assembly. The Pacific Resilience Facility also featured prominently in Pacific states’ addresses.
The Forum’s 2021 declaration on preserving maritime zones and its 2023 declaration on continuing statehood and protecting affected people helped build international support, paving the way for the first UN Declaration on Sea-Level Rise in September 2026. Like the 2025 International Court of Justice advisory opinion on climate change, which grew out of a Vanuatu-led campaign that Forum members took up collectively, it shows how Pacific regionalism can strengthen Pacific diplomacy and deliver results.
Vanuatu, by contrast, raised West Papua at the UN General Assembly, while many Pacific nations did not, despite its inclusion in the Leaders’ communique. Regional communiques and outcomes statements can provide a platform for global advocacy without requiring every member to champion each issue with equal force.
This is why Forum Leaders Week is not always a reliable barometer of Pacific solidarity. Regionalism does not necessarily require countries to speak with one voice. It can also mean giving one another space to advance a position, even where views differ.
I recall a negotiation in which I asked an official why they had not spoken up, knowing they disagreed with another Pacific country. The answer was simple: “Well, we don’t want to speak against our sister.” We may disagree among ourselves, but those differences do not necessarily prevent us from working together on the global stage.
Disagreement within the Forum does not preclude cooperation beyond it. Different interests and strategic ties make unanimity unlikely. But countries with limited influence alone can still help one another shape decisions, by offering support or by choosing not to stand in the way.
This brings us to the second and more serious concern, which is less reported but arguably more consequential. It is not about who attends Leaders Week or the tensions on display, but about whether the space for Pacific countries to disagree, debate and reach agreement on their own terms is narrowing.
Globally, the institutions through which Pacific countries advance shared positions are increasingly contested. When larger powers undermine multilateralism and withdraw from international agencies, they weaken those institutions’ legitimacy and capacity, making it harder for Pacific countries to secure outcomes with universal support.
Within the region, traditional powers are consolidating their influence through bilateral agreements. These agreements tie Pacific nations more closely to existing partners, increasingly through strategic trust clauses, which commit a Pacific country to consult its partner before entering security arrangements with anyone else. As Henrietta McNeill-Stowers and Romitesh Kant have argued in Pacific Dynamics, such arrangements can produce the opposite of their stated purpose: insecurity. The consequence can be less room for Pacific nations to exercise sovereign choice.
Changes to regional institutions warrant the same scrutiny. Discussions about partnerships, and about folding regional security groupings into the PIF architecture, raise sharper questions than who attends a meeting. They raise the question of how external partners are brought into the regional architecture, and whether the access they gain gives them greater influence over the regional agenda. Will that access strengthen Pacific priorities or dilute them?
The irony is that a more inwardly united Pacific could become less empowered. As choices narrow, the absence of dissent may reflect resignation rather than agreement. The most worrying prospect is that Pacific countries fall silent because their freedom to speak has been constrained, and that we mistake this for unity.
The same concern applies to the funding flowing into the region. Packages of the size announced in Palau are large relative to the budgets of the countries receiving them, they are negotiated bilaterally rather than through the Forum, and they are rarely free of expectations about how a recipient will conduct itself on other matters. That combination makes public disagreement costly. Pacific countries must ensure that financial support does not become a reason to keep quiet.
