Ahead of next week’s Pacific Islands Forum, Canberra has assembled an increasingly dense network of defence and security agreements across the region. The question is whether Pacific governments can shape that architecture around their own priorities of sovereignty, resilience and shared prosperity.
Australia is rapidly reshaping the security map of the Pacific.
With particular momentum in 2026, Canberra has strengthened security arrangements across much of the region. Most consequentially, Australia and Fiji signed the Ocean of Peace Alliance in July, a mutual-defence treaty that allows additional Pacific states to join with the consent of existing members.
Combined with Australia’s formal alliance with Papua New Guinea and separate arrangements with Tuvalu, Nauru and Vanuatu, the agreements increasingly resemble something larger than a collection of bilateral partnerships.
The Economist describes the emerging structure as an Australian-led alliance system designed substantially to prevent China from establishing a strategic military foothold in the Pacific.
That captures part of Canberra’s calculation. But heading into the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders Meeting in Palau, August 30 to September 4, the larger question is whether Pacific countries embrace the same strategic logic.
From Bilateral Deals to Regional Architecture
The Australia-Fiji agreement marks a significant shift. Fiji had historically resisted formal military alliances, while Australia’s Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea, which entered into force this July, established another formal mutual-defence relationship.
Other agreements differ in legal weight but point in the same direction. Australia’s Falepili Union with Tuvalu includes security guarantees, while Canberra has also deepened ties with Nauru and Vanuatu.
Together, these relationships are creating an increasingly interconnected regional network, though not a single uniform alliance system.
That distinction matters because Pacific governments have repeatedly resisted the idea that closer cooperation with Australia should automatically mean strategic alignment against China.
Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale has proposed a broader Pacific-wide security agreement, arguing that regional security should primarily be provided by Pacific states themselves.
Fakafanua’s Emerging Regional Role
The debate is also elevating a new generation of Pacific leadership.
Tonga’s Prime Minister Lord Fatafehi Fakafanua, elected in December 2025 at age 40, has emerged as an increasingly important regional voice focused on stability, resilience and economic opportunity.
Fakafanua serves in the Pacific Islands Forum Troika alongside Wale and Palau President Surangel Whipps Jr., placing him directly inside discussions over regional governance ahead of the summit.
His significance lies in an approach that is not framed around choosing between Australia, China or the United States. Fakafanua has instead emphasized regional cooperation, strategic autonomy and prosperity, positioning Tonga as a potential diplomatic bridge while keeping Pacific priorities at the center.
China Has Changed the Calculation
China nevertheless remains the central external driver of Australia’s strategy.
Beijing’s 2022 security agreement with Solomon Islands fundamentally altered the regional calculus by raising concern that China could eventually obtain military access in the South Pacific, something both Beijing and Honiara have denied.
Those concerns intensified on July 6, when China test-fired a ballistic missile capable of carrying nuclear warheads into the Pacific from a nuclear-powered submarine. The launch came the same day Australia and Fiji signed their defence treaty, although there is no evidence Beijing deliberately timed the test in response.
Pacific foreign ministers subsequently failed to agree on a collective response.
That matters because the Pacific Islands Forum largely operates by consensus. If governments cannot agree on how to respond to major military activity in their region, building a broader collective-security framework will be harder.
Australia’s Influence Paradox
Australia also faces a less visible challenge: material weight does not automatically translate into perceived influence.
Lowy Institute data show Australia accounted for roughly 38 percent of total aid flows to Pacific Island countries over the past 15 years, compared with about 9 percent from China.
Yet Lowy’s 2026 poll found that 39 percent of Australian respondents considered China the most influential country in the Pacific Islands, compared with 33 percent who chose Australia.
The finding reflects Australian perceptions, not Pacific public opinion. But it captures a strategic anxiety in Canberra: financial scale and historical ties do not guarantee political influence.
Australia is increasingly responding by institutionalizing its regional role through treaties and deeper security integration.
But the Pacific Defines Security Differently
This is where next week’s Forum becomes particularly important.
The 2026 Pacific Security Outlook again identifies climate change as the single greatest threat to regional security, wellbeing and prosperity, while also highlighting cyber threats, economic vulnerability and geopolitical competition.
For Pacific states, security therefore encompasses climate, economic, human and maritime resilience alongside conventional defence.
That makes the strategic tension more subtle than Australia versus China.
Pacific governments broadly want stronger regional capacity, but many also want an architecture that protects them from great-power competition itself, rather than enlisting them in it.
That is where leaders such as Fakafanua may prove increasingly consequential, by helping define a Pacific-centered agenda around resilience, prosperity and strategic agency.
What to Watch at the Pacific Islands Forum
The meeting will not be solely about China.
Leaders are also expected to address implementation of the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, regional governance, climate priorities ahead of COP31 and relations with external partners.
Three signals will matter most: whether leaders can agree on language regarding China’s missile activity; whether support grows for Wale’s proposed regional security framework; and whether leaders such as Fakafanua can keep resilience, prosperity and Pacific sovereignty at the center of the agenda.
The Test for Pacific Leadership
Australia enters Palau with considerable momentum. Its security relationships are deeper, more formalized and increasingly interconnected.
But the durability of that architecture will depend on whether Pacific governments believe it reflects their priorities rather than simply the strategic anxieties of larger powers.
That makes next week’s Forum a test not only for Canberra, but for Pacific leadership itself.
If regional leaders can build a stronger collective framework around sovereignty, resilience and prosperity rather than great-power rivalry, the emerging order could strengthen Pacific agency. If they cannot, the same architecture designed to provide greater security could become another source of division.
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