Tag Archive for: Pacific

To counter anti-democratic propaganda, step up funding for ABC International

A global contest of ideas is underway, and democracy as an ideal is at stake. Democracies must respond by lifting support for public service media with an international footprint.

With the recent decision by the United States to freeze funding for the US Agency for Global Media, crippling media bodies including Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, the ABC’s international media activities across the Indo-Pacific are needed more than ever.

The ABC’s international media channels and the bespoke content we create, distribute and share with our media partners showcase an Australian society that is diverse, free and equal, with an independent media that holds power to account.

We show a positive alternative to the authoritarian systems that illiberal states promote through their own international media activities, and we reach out to people across our region with an Australian voice.

The US has also frozen foreign aid (which affects media houses and journalists across the globe) and, according to former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, is making cuts to its diplomatic service, with planned closures of representative offices.

The timing of this broad-based US withdrawal of soft power is of particular concern. Autocratic states are subjecting populations across the globe to an information assault. Russia, China and others are vigorously propagating the narrative that they are part of a battling Global South, fighting against a degenerate Western agenda that champions women’s rights and minority interests to the fundamental detriment of people everywhere.

Democracy, the narrative goes, does not lift people out of poverty, and human rights are merely a Western notion. In the absence of a strong US information presence around the world, that view has more opportunity to take hold.

Today authoritarian states take soft power as seriously as hard power and work together to sell, share or otherwise promote their content across social media, in multiple languages and across regions. China invests about US$7 billion to $10 billion per year in its media outlets, including Xinhua News Agency, China Global Television Network, China Radio International and the China Daily web portal. While funding is generally opaque, Russia’s international media operations are estimated to receive $9 billion a year.

With the US pulling back, Australia’s security in our region is challenged. We cannot afford to sit back and wait for a change in the US position; we need to project our soft power with all available tools.

In December 1939, when Australian prime minister Robert Menzies saw the threat posed by the regional propaganda of the Axis powers, he announced the formation of Radio Australia specifically because, he said, ‘the time has come to speak for ourselves’.

ABC International, of which Radio Australia is now a part, works through partnerships, creating programming for, with and about the peoples of the Indo-Pacific region. Its output covers many genres including news and current affairs, arts, sport, science and culture. This commitment to regional perspectives and voices is well recognised by our neighbours and seen as a sign of Australian sincerity and friendship. The ABC’s increasing reach across the Indo-Pacific is both strengthened by and lends strength to Australia’s diplomatic presence and foreign policy initiatives.

Through media capacity building projects funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT), and with funding under the Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy, our ABC International Development team partners with media houses, press councils, media associations, journalists and content makers in countries across the Pacific, in East Timor and in Indonesia. These collaborations help our neighbours strengthen their own media, bolster their civil societies and thereby counter the influence of malign external actors.

There is much more that could be done, both to expand existing programs and to step up Australia’s media engagement with vulnerable and growing economies, and large populations in our region including Indonesia, Vietnam and India.

Funding for ABC International broadcast and digital activities, excluding DFAT grants for media capacity building activities but including additional funding from the government as part of the Indo-Pacific Broadcasting Strategy, currently sits at around $20 million per year.

This is a modest investment when compared to the funds being deployed by China, Russia and others in promoting autocracy and their world views. Further spending by the government in our media outreach to the region would be well justified, especially when compared with hard power investment, and it can be swiftly scaled up.

We are defending and promoting free speech, reliable information, independent media and citizenship. For Australia, it means ensuring that our neighbours understand us and value our friendship. And ultimately it enhances the security of our nation.

The Pacific Response Group is making pleasing progress but needs more buy-in

The Pacific Response Group (PRG), a new disaster coordination organisation, has operated through its first high-risk weather season. But as representatives from each Pacific military leave Brisbane to return to their home countries for the winter, there is still plenty of work to do.

The PRG should focus on two key priorities. Firstly, it should engage all members of the Pacific Islands Forum to highlight how the PRG can benefit them as it grows and expands. Secondly, it should consult with regional partners and organisations on the development of operating frameworks to facilitate the group’s deployment.

In October, members of the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting endorsed the establishment of the PRG. The novel multinational military initiative aims to deepen cooperation to improve Pacific military support for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). Aiming to be of immediate use to the region, the first step in establishing the PRG was to co-locate an advisory capability in Brisbane available for rapid deployment (originally referred to as the Pacific Special Advisory Team in official announcements).

The PRG is composed of 19 people from across its six member countries—Australia, Fiji, France, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Tonga. It deployed to its first disaster just before Christmas, when a planning team of six arrived in Vanuatu to offer advice and support after the devastating earthquake in Port Vila. Since Port Vila’s recovery could be handled by civilian heavy machinery and by urban search and rescue, the PRG planning team quickly determined that a greater military response was not required.

It probably wasn’t what the PRG was expecting for its first call-out: to deploy to a country that lacked a military and deal with a disaster that didn’t require military support. But it was an important and successful exercise in responding fast and exiting in a timely and appropriate manner. There is valuable experience to be gained in practising deployment and communication in the early days of a disaster response.

As we exit the high-risk weather season, October to March, PRG members will return to their home countries, and their deployment response time will rise from 48 to 72 hours. While cyclones are far less likely, the low-risk weather season does not actually bring a much lower disaster risk for most countries. The PRG will stay active and seek to get involved where possible in Pacific national disaster planning exercises, including regional exercises such as Longreach and the French-led Croix du Sud.

But the PRG is still trying to develop its image and brand. Not all national disaster management offices are fully aware of the group, its mission, its capabilities and its plans. Greater engagement is needed across the region, not only from PRG personnel but from officials in-country who regularly engage with government and non-government disaster management organisations.

As the current host of the PRG and the country with the largest regional footprint, Australia should take the lead in promoting the group through diplomatic channels and encourage other partners to do so where possible. The PRG should also develop its online presence to provide the public with more information about the group and its aims and activities.

The PRG should also prioritise establishing appropriate legal mechanisms for the group to enter Pacific countries when requested. Because of the multinational nature of the PRG, it does not neatly fall under any bilateral agreements, such as status of force agreements, that Australia and other military countries may have in the region that enable their forces to enter efficiently upon request.

In March, Pacific security leaders convened at the annual Joint Heads of Pacific Security meeting in Port Moresby, where PRG operations were discussed as part of a regional operations deployment framework. The framework would ‘close a gap in existing regional security architecture by providing a common mechanism to support Pacific-led responses to Pacific security challenges’, according to the meeting’s joint communique.

This would be an efficient way to support PRG operations in the region, in addition to other initiatives such as the Pacific Police Support Group (a multinational deployable police capability). But a complicated regional framework would require endorsement by Pacific leaders and could take years to negotiate and finalise.

In the meantime, the PRG should still consider how it will grow to better meet the needs of the region in coming years. Our October report, Stepping up military support to humanitarian assistance in the Pacific, provides further targeted recommendations for Australia and other PRG members to consider as the group continues to take shape.

The US harms its image in the Pacific with aid cuts and tariffs

USAID cuts and tariffs will harm the United States’ reputation in the Pacific more than they will harm the region itself.

The resilient region will adjust to the economic challenges and other partners will fill gaps, but what will last is the memory of being a non-factor in the Trump administration’s foreign policy. The sentiment might not last forever, but the US must pursue reputational damage control. In the meantime, Australia needs to ensure that it’s not the only partner covering the US’s absence.

The Pacific is not even an afterthought in the stream of announcements and changes that have come under the new Trump presidency in the US. With sweeping cuts to USAID and tariffs threatening global supply chains, there are plenty of challenges on the horizon.

Some may argue that the US wasn’t doing much in the Pacific outside of Micronesia to begin with, and in many ways that is true. But even if it could have been much larger and more effective, the support from the US has had value. Its withdrawal is a hard pill to swallow for those it will directly affect.

The decision to freeze funding to USAID came in February, with more than 80 percent of USAID programs (worth more than US$50 billion) to be cut. Climate, refugee and sexual health programs were high on the hit list.

According to the Lowy Institute’s Pacific Aid Map, the US has been the fifth-biggest funder of the Pacific—behind Australia, China, Japan and New Zealand—providing around 7 percent of all development funding in the past decade.

Some have claimed that most USAID money to the Pacific goes through Australian NGOs. But of USAID’s recent US$249 million annual contribution, $75 million (around 30 percent) was in partnership with Australian NGOs—far below a majority. USAID has provided tangible support in pivotal programs that will be sorely missed.

Uncertainty around the future of USAID-funded projects for HIV/TB and Malaria is already affecting Pacific communities. Programs improving accessibility to climate financing for Pacific island countries are at a tipping point, and key gender-based violence initiatives that provide workshops on domestic violence, women’s empowerment and mental health are in limbo.

In response, Australia has redirected some of its aid from multilaterals to more direct action. But Australia does not have the capacity or resources to simply take over where the US left off, nor should it. Australia must find a way to get other partners to help fill the gap, whether through new minilateral partnerships or increasing its effort in multilateral initiatives.

Donald Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs have made things worse for the US. Most Pacific island countries received the baseline tariff of 10 percent, but Fiji, Vanuatu and Nauru all received higher tariffs. The US has suspended the higher tariff rates as it seeks to bring parties to the negotiation table, but for Vanuatu and Nauru, the amount of goods exported to the US is small anyway.

OECD data shows that in 2023 the US received 3.29 percent and 0.57 percent of Vanuatu and Nauru’s exports respectively, amounting to a few million dollars. Fiji would be hit the hardest: the US is its top export destination, receiving 31.8 percent of Fijian exports. The value in 2023 was more than US$366 million. On ABC Radio, Fijian Deputy Prime Minister Biman Prasad slammed the tariffs, calling them ‘unfair and disproportionate’.

In making these tariff decisions, the US hasn’t considered its partnership with Pacific island countries or accounted for potential implications. The tariffs may not directly spell doom for many, given the availability of other export destinations. But countries are concerned that the flow on effects to global supply chains will affect tourism and increase import costs.

While the consequences of these tariffs are hard to predict, we can be confident of one lasting effect: the memory of a careless and inconsiderate US.

So far, many leaders see these decisions as the actions of an individual, rather than a state, but trust has still suffered. The US has previously clawed its way back into relevance, but even if it can do so again, the lesson will not be forgotten: the US could, at any time, step away from the region.

For Australia, a little distance from the US wouldn’t hurt, particularly as China will likely tar the two countries with the same Western brush, as it has been doing for years. Australia must also look to partners such as Japan, India, South Korea and the European Union to test their appetite for stepping up regional support. Though sometimes overlooked, these actors have all contributed to the Pacific and sought to deepen engagement in the past decade. Their value should not be underestimated.

At the end of the day, the US is doing greater harm to their reputation than to Pacific nations. While we should be wary of an unpredictable US administration, we should not underestimate the resilience of Pacific island nations.

Humanitarian assistance in the Pacific should be led by Pacific countries

In the Pacific, the rush among partner countries to be seen as the first to assist after disasters has become heated as part of ongoing geopolitical contest. As partners compete for strategic influence in the region, humanitarian interests should not be sidelined.

Instead, partners to Pacific island countries can advance both humanitarian and political interests by prioritising humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) initiatives that are Pacific-led, resilience-based and—ideally—Pacific-owned.

Not only is HADR important for meeting humanitarian needs; it helps partner countries gain visibility and strengthen relationships. When Cyclone Yasa hit Fiji in 2020, Richard Marles, acting Labor leader at the time, emphasised the importance of Australian readiness to support Fiji. He suggested that Australia should ‘remain the natural partner of choice for the countries of the Pacific and central to that is our standing ready to provide whatever assistance is required.’ Australia has since demonstrated this readiness, for example by deploying its first relief flight within 24 hours of the 7.2-magnitude earthquake that struck Vanuatu in December 2024.

HADR operations also provide opportunities for signalling capability. China did so when it displayed its range of military capabilities, deploying  army vessels and planes in response to disasters in Tonga and Vanuatu. Furthermore, HADR exercises such as Bhakti Kanyini, a multinational exercise conducted in Darwin in 2024, can improve interoperability among partners and support collective responses.

However, we have observed that these cooperative dynamics are now increasingly marked by contestation among partners. For example, French officials noted that France and the European Union were initially omitted from reporting on HADR efforts in Tonga in 2022, with reports largely crediting only Australia and New Zealand. Competition between external actors can also lead to miscommunication and impede the delivery of assistance, as Australia and China found during the 2020 response to Cyclone Harold in Vanuatu.

New HADR initiatives also raise old questions about how militaries, often among the first on the scene to offer support, can effectively interact and coordinate with other military and civilian-military partners.

Our story map of HADR architecture shows how traditional alliances that support HADR, including the FRANZ (France, Australia, New Zealand) arrangement and the Quad, have been joined by newer initiatives such as the Australia-led Pacific Response Group and the Pacific Humanitarian Warehousing Program, which is supported by Partners in the Blue Pacific and France.

But these initiatives are led by partners, not Pacific island countries. An earlier justification for this was that only Fiji, Tonga and PNG have militaries. However, these militaries are now noticeably far more involved in regional disaster responses, and their national disaster management offices are taking the lead.

Partners can advance humanitarian interests in the region by minimising contestation and competition around HADR. They should share knowledge and expectations, strengthening preparedness and supporting predictability. These partners should develop a Pacific islands-centric handbook on disaster management that captures disaster risk profiles, national frameworks and actors for disaster management, as well as arrangements for requesting assistance and civil-military coordination approaches in different countries.

The United Nations has set out basic guidelines in this area, but the document does not detail country-specific policies, frameworks or responsibilities of national actors. And while the UN has, in recent years, created a set of recommended practices based on lessons learned, it is unclear how these have been adopted at the national level in Pacific countries, each of which has unique structures, protocols and systems. A regional handbook would be a useful way to establish local approaches to effective civil-military interaction and coordination of disaster relief.

This initiative should be developed through the Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction Ministers Meeting, which could help ensure that the outcomes reflect Pacific priorities, preferences and needs. It should work within the existing regional security architecture while avoiding duplication, a key issue under the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security.

By capturing current processes and arrangements, a handbook would also be a useful resource in the development of regional standard operating procedures and coordination mechanism for HADR, key actions proposed within the Boe Declaration Action Plan.

The Pacific is one of the world’s most disaster-prone regions, and climate change is only increasing the destructive power of weather events such as tropical cyclones. Partners of Pacific island countries need to prepare accordingly. They must support Pacific-led preparedness initiatives so that they can build shared knowledge and mutual understanding, strengthen partnerships and meet future humanitarian needs.

Australia can take USAID’s place in the Pacific islands

One of the first aims of the United States’ new Department of Government Efficiency was shutting down USAID. By 6 February, the agency was functionally dissolved, its seal missing from its Washington headquarters.

Amid the sudden shutdown, Australia must increase its developmental aid to Pacific islands before China fills in.

The most aid-dependent countries—the Freely Associated States, including Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia—happen to be among the most strategically located for US resistance to possible Chinese aggression against Taiwan, Japan and the Philippines. Maintaining aid to them is doubly important.

Moreover, island countries across the Pacific suffer from intense poverty and are unusually vulnerable to climate change.

The Pacific islands’ geostrategic importance necessitates aid to achieve ideal defensive posture. The primary military value of the islands is that they enable the US to disperse military assets across the wide expanse of the region. The second island chain provides several secondary and tertiary operating locations important in a Sino-American conflict. Important islands include Palau, and Yap and Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia.

The Pacific is important to China’s counterinsurgency strategy, which aims to prevent reinforcement of the US’s position inside the first island chain. Limiting access is the name of the game for military strategists on both sides of the Pacific. If Beijing were to convince countries in the second island chain to let the Chinese army’s rocket force deploy ballistic missiles on their soil, that would be devastating for the US. The DF-17 medium-range ballistic missile has a range of 1600km, while the DF-ZF hypersonic glide vehicle has a range of 2000km. Given that there are currently no viable defences against hypersonic weapons, this would effectively box US navy carrier strike groups out of much of the Pacific Ocean.

The Pacific is the world’s most aid-dependent region and thus particularly susceptible to China’s coercion. Pacific states are small with few natural resources, making them reliant on aid to develop. Between 2008 and 2021, the region received more than US$40 billion in aid.

Aid packages are only effective in scoring geopolitical influence insofar as they align with the priorities of Pacific countries, which are increasingly concerned with adapting to the negative impacts of climate change. This makes complete sense: rising sea levels, declining fish populations and increased natural disaster prevalence all spell a true existential threat. With the planet surpassing the 1.5 degrees C limit outlined in the Paris Climate Agreement, Pacific island states will need further aid to diversify food sources and build seawalls. USAID created the Pacific-American Climate Fund in 2020 specifically to help Pacific island countries weather the effects of climate change through grants and loans to local organisations. This program ceased with the agency’s sudden closure.

It is perfectly reasonable for these states to look for a more reliable source of funding, which China is eager to provide. This is a real threat: on 15 February, the Cook Islands signed a comprehensive strategic partnership agreement with China. This agreement is just the latest in a series: in 2019, China sent generous economic aid to Solomon Islands, leading the Pacific state to drop its diplomatic recognition of Taiwan. Kiribati soon followed.

Australia is the ideal candidate to aid the freely associated states to prevent a Chinese fill-in. China is the second-largest provider of aid to the Pacific after Australia. US aid is primarily directed to the Federated States of Micronesia, Marshall Islands and Palau, with whom the US has Compacts of Free Association. These three states contain key dispersed military operating locations and they received about 82 percent of the roughly US$250 million the US sent to the region in 2022. These states are therefore sensitive to a funding freeze. The Biden administration signed into law US$7.1 billion in aid to them in 2024, though USAID’s axing has likely disrupted this funding.

Australia is best equipped to fill the void left by the US, given its robust relationships with many Pacific countries. Additionally, most US money dedicated to Pacific aid goes through Australian NGOs. This decreases the need to alter existing programs, which increases the chances of a smooth transition.

The shutdown of USAID has been an enormous hit to US soft power and its ability to counter China in the Pacific. But the worst outcomes can be avoided through the intervention of steadfast allies—especially Australia.

This article has been amended to omit references to AusAID, which was absorbed into the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in 2013.

Things I was wrong about

This is an article about things I was wrong about. It’s not exhaustive.

It’s also an unconventional way to take stock of some of the biggest ongoing issues in foreign affairs and security: Australia’s relationship with Papua New Guinea and the rest of the near region, big military acquisitions, and what to learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I am a small fish in an admittedly shallow think tank pond, and I assume few have paid attention to my mistakes. But I’ve been doing this for long enough now that I ought to hold myself to account.

In May 2022 I wrote in The Strategist that the next National Rugby League team should come from PNG.

A rugby league deal has now been struck worth $600 million over 10 years across PNG and the wider Pacific—though not, of course, because of anything I wrote—and I find myself deeply ambivalent about it.

An esteemed colleague who must remain nameless is culpable for changing my mind. Among many questions: how would failure be dealt with, and what will the Australian government do if the league comes asking for more? And, as Stephen Howes and Oliver Nobetau have emphasised, is this the best use of Australian money in PNG?

A PNG team playing in Australia is not an inherently bad idea. It’s a significant diplomatic achievement and one that will have deep symbolic import for many people in both nations. It is also backed by elite politicians on either side of the strait. One cannot underestimate the near mythical role sport plays in the psyche of Australia. Sharing that with our closest neighbour is potentially soft power genius. Advocates also point out that sports might be used to drive engagement with other social programs. If unlimited money were available, a PNG team would make some sense.

But there is not unlimited money. The long-run strategic payoffs of addressing the basic human development challenges that drive PNG’s fragility seem likely to be greater. This isn’t a call for more development assistance; the case for expanded visa arrangements is strong, for instance. In the cold light of day, this deal looks like an extravagance in the face of average Papua New Guineans’ daily struggle to be safe, healthy and educated—though I hope I am wrong again.

Mistake number two. In September 2022, I parsed some developments in advanced military command-and-control systems in the United States. I wrote that ‘Truly integrated command-and-control systems are one priority that might be considered in the various [Australian] assessment processes’ then underway—for example, the Defence Strategic Review.

The pursuit of comprehensively integrated sensor and communications networks now seems to me a fool’s errand. In acquisition terms, we know how difficult big, complex projects are, and any all-seeing, all-talking network would be just that. There are many cases where there is no other choice (submarines, for example) but we should try to avoid it.

And operationally, I should have listened to my own advice, which followed closely at the heels of far more credible others, including now-Major General Chris Smith, that in warfare the best that can be hoped for is rough coordination, because of the ever-present friction that bedevils military operations. It’s a matter of satisficing, not perfecting. Ukraine’s resistance to Russia so far appears to validate both these dimensions, showing what hastily acquired, messily integrated arrays of kit can achieve in determined hands.

Thankfully, my third mistake was not on the record. Had I been making predictions about the outcome of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, I would have been wrong. So many analysts were very wrong, and these analytic failings have attracted welcome reflection.

Like many, I thought—or assumed—that a concerted Russian attack would quickly overwhelm Ukraine. I failed to appreciate Ukraine’s development of its military capabilities since 2014, the realities of scale and distance in the theatre, the level of mobilisation therefore required, and the disfunction of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and its armed forces.

I still think acute concern about escalation has been entirely legitimate. I also wonder whether small changes might have seen a successful coup de main on Kyiv, or what might have happened had President Volodymyr Zelensky been killed in the early hours or days.

My fourth mistake was underestimating the power of narratives to cloud specifics. I contributed to an Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy and Defence Dialogue paper exploring the emerging ‘all tools of statecraft’ rhetoric. I also published related shortform work shortly afterwards.

My intent—aligned with that of many others, much more distinguished—was that our international affairs community rebalance the books, elevating the roles of conflict prevention alongside defence preparedness, and long-term resilience building alongside shorter-term tactical responses.

This rhetorical turn towards ‘all tools of statecraft’ has become mainstream. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, the National Defence Strategy and the International Development Policy all reflect the advocacy of many for a more integrated ‘statecraft’ approach.

But I’ve found myself increasingly sceptical. For one thing, there is little sign that the budget levels between Australia’s different policy levers are shifting to any greater balance. It isn’t all about the money, but the money is important.

Until very recently, it seemed like we had hollowed the idea of its political significance and rendered it technocratic, a matter of important but mundane coordination between Canberra departments.

And yet, perhaps the wheel really is turning. We’re now seeing outcomes that reflect a more ambitious rendering of statecraft: leaders opening space for genuine policy innovation and changing international relationships in consequential ways.

The Falepili Union—a genuinely comprehensive partnership, with a clear dividend for Australia—was perhaps the first big signpost. An agreement announced with Nauru late last year is another huge step and, whatever its flaws, the PNG rugby league deal reflects a clear appetite to find different ways of engaging the region. The potential to build on these successes, particularly regarding labour mobility, appears real. Replicating such innovations in bigger, more crowded Southeast Asia will remain a challenge and something to watch.

In Pacific island countries, Trump should pursue embassy transformation

The Biden administration struggled with adequately advancing US national security and foreign policy interests in the Pacific islands. The problem was that the White House failed to select the right business concept to pursue.

What is needed is not simply a strategic pivot. What is needed is a business transformation. That requires more than reform and modernisation. It requires a radical rethinking and restructuring of the core business processes of the US embassies and consulates to the Pacific island countries.

Until that happens, Washington’s foreign policy establishment will be unable to afford to compete with revisionist authoritarian powers seeking to displace US influence in the Pacific islands.

Unfortunately, such organisational change cannot be achieved overnight. Among other things, it will require new executive leadership teams, and ambassadorial confirmations for Pacific island countries are notoriously slow. However, that does not mean that the new Trump administration cannot change the status quo at US diplomatic missions in the region by the end of the first 100 days. Here are four suggestions that could help to get the ball rolling.

First, the administration should systematically assess the strategic planning of the State Department in the Pacific. As a matter of policy, each mission is supposed to create a multi-year strategic plan that declare the United States’ whole-of-government priorities in ‘a given country’.

The plain meaning of the phrase ‘in a given country’ suggests that the requirement is to produce an integrated country strategy for every independent state of concurrent accreditation. In practice, that does not always happen. For example, the US embassy to Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga, and Tuvalu produced a single integrated country strategy for what it refers to as ‘five diverse and geographically distant Pacific Island nations’.

The Trump administration should consider providing different guidance and instructions to missions that cover multiple countries. That revision might stipulate that the mission is to produce separate integrated country strategies for each of the countries, followed by an integrated mission strategy that synthesises the individual country plans.

Second, Trump should re-evaluate the concurrent accreditation of the diplomatic staff at the US embassy in Fiji to Kiribati, Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu. These countries span the Pacific’s cultural subregions, Fiji being part of Melanesia, Nauru and Kiribati within Micronesia and Tonga and Tuvalu forming part of Polynesia.

The Trump administration should consider restructuring the US diplomatic footprint across the region. While current arrangements may reflect logistical and resource constraints, a more strategic approach would create three subregional complexes of US embassies, consulates and consular agencies. Within each of these complexes, key business functions would be centralised to promote efficiency and thereby reduce costs.

Under this strategic approach, the Melanesian complex would be composed of the US embassies in Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. The Micronesian complex would be composed of the US embassies in Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia and Palau. And the Polynesian complex would be composed of the US embassies in Samoa and Tonga and the US Consular Agency in French Polynesia.

Under this structure, it would make sense for the concurrent accreditation for Kiribati and Nauru to shift to the US embassy in Marshall Islands until the US embassy in Kiribati is established. Similarly, it would make sense for the concurrent accreditation for Tuvalu to switch to the US embassy in Samoa.

Third, the White House should re-evaluate the regional diplomatic posture of the US in foreign dependencies and areas of special sovereignty. In the Caribbean, the US has an independent mission for Aruba, Curacao and Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. In East Asia, the US has an independent mission for Hong Kong and Macau, which are special administrative regions of the People’s Republic of China.

In the Pacific, the US recently established diplomatic relations with the Cook Islands and Niue, self-governing states in free association with New Zealand. Following these precedents, the Trump administration should re-evaluate the diplomatic terminology used to describe other foreign dependencies, areas of special sovereignty and sovereign independence movement territories across the region.

Fourth, the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of State should address the gap that exists in inspections of the US embassies in Fiji, Tonga and Samoa. Under the Foreign Service Act of 1980, the office is required to inspect every US diplomatic post at least once every five years.

Unfortunately, that requirement is rarely met in practice, thanks to waivers from the United States Congress. The most recent inspection reports for the US embassies in Fiji and Samoa were a decade and a half ago. Shockingly, that was before the US pivot to Asia ever really started in earnest.

Women journalists in the Pacific unite to fight gender discrimination

 

Women journalists in the Pacific are mobilising to work together against gender discrimination in male dominated workplaces.

They have described being threatened with violence, sexually harassed, intimidated, shut out of leadership roles, excluded from training opportunities, and deliberately left off mailing lists for news events.

The women say influential and powerful decision makers are often the perpetrators of sexual harassment.

A case study in 2022 found that more than 80% of women in the media in Fiji had experienced workplace sexual harassment.

Women also say they are being left out of digital training which is one of the most pressing issues for the survival of media outlets in the Pacific. Many rely on traditional media and the sale of newspapers for income.

The women are seeking support to enable them to drive change from within their industry themselves and want to lead and control a push for change.

They’ve been motivated and inspired by the success of a pilot mentoring scheme run in 2023 by Women in Media Fiji, an initiative of the Fijian Media Association.

The priority is to create a single, stronger voice for media women, support each other and work together to address issues of gender inequity. They’ve asked for help to advance their careers, take on long overdue leadership roles and deal with the challenges of working in the media with the support of other women.

— Rosi Doviverata Tamani, Women in Media Fiji co-founder

Young women journalists especially need support to stay in the industry despite widespread gender disadvantages. Many leave journalism after two or three years because of the poor culture in the industry and the much higher salaries available in communications roles.

Senior women journalists across the Pacific are now working together to establish Women in Media organisations modelled on Australia’s Women in Media project.

They want local chapters that are culturally, socially, and traditionally appropriate for the region. An example is the work being done in Papua New Guinea by the secretary of the Media Council of Papua New Guinea (MCPNG) Belinda Kora.

We need drastic changes to enhance the capacity and experiences of female journalists, especially to do with maternity leave, annual leave and parental leave.

— Belinda Kora, ABC Papua New Guinea

The aim is to build a cohort of women journalists who can connect in a safe space to share experiences and support each other in solidarity to deal with the gender discrimination they face doing their jobs.

Having someone to confidentially talk through a topic is more than just support, it’s about bouncing ideas off others in the industry to find strategies and techniques to deal with issues which often include toxic workplaces.

The main strategies of any such work must be the recognition of the importance of one-on-one relationships that are crucial to doing business in the Pacific, and empowering Pacific women to lead initiatives to resolve the issues they face.

Offering a support system for women working in the media in the Pacific will help them deal with gender discrimination, develop their careers and skills, and build a safe space for women journalists across the region. They want new laws—and their employers—to protect them from intimidation, threats and hostile governments.

The women also want an awareness strategy to help the public better understand the importance of their professional roles.

Journalists represent the people and are the collective watchdog keeping power to account on behalf of society.  The Pacific women journalists need backing to end the gender discrimination they face daily in doing their jobs.

Partnering with the Pacific to strengthen cyber resilience

Australians are used to seeing the nation’s first responders rushing to the scene of natural disasters in our region. Australian navy ships and helicopters on operations make for dramatic television when cyclones, volcanic eruptions and tsunamis strike. But Australians are also on the ground to help our neighbours when crises are caused by something we can’t see: cyberattacks.

Australia is currently the partner of choice for countries in the Pacific when preparing for, and responding to, these cyber incidents. The Albanese government’s 2023–2030 Australian Cyber Security Strategy is making the investments necessary to ensure it stays that way.

Australia and the Pacific family know the disruption that cyberattacks can cause all too well. In recent years we’ve seen a series of significant cyber incidents take down critical infrastructure and disrupt essential services and the operations of governments.

In Australia, the Toll ransomware attacks disrupted mail and logistics services on land before the recent DP World incident disrupted our ports. In the Pacific, cyberattacks have taken ambulance services offline and severely disrupted hospital services. They’ve affected essential communications services, payments systems and government services. Some agencies have been forced to go back to working with pen and paper.

Cyber incidents are bad enough in Australia, but their impact can be even greater for Pacific island nations that face the same cyber threats with more limited scale and resources and less resilience and redundancy.

That’s why, when cyber disasters strike in the Pacific, Australian teams led by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are there to respond to requests for assistance from our Pacific family—just as we are when natural disasters strike. I’ve seen the expertise and dedication of these cyber diplomats firsthand, and I couldn’t be prouder. Much of what they do needs to remain confidential, but it’s a model of trust and partnership within the Pacific family.

In one recent incident, Australia’s cyber diplomats and private-sector partners worked in tandem with staff from the affected Pacific government, crouching over laptops and whiteboarding scenarios in dark rooms. They shared kava and prayers as they worked through the night to restore crucial systems for Pacific citizens. Tim Tams, Oreos and energy drinks were the only unauthorised visitors in the secure crisis rooms as Australians worked side by side with Pacific partners to successfully get critical services back online.

We’ve listened to Pacific island leaders and understand their ambitions to realise their economic development goals by increasing their digitisation and connectivity. That’s why we have committed to submarine cable infrastructure rollouts to ensure Pacific island nations have trusted options to build their digital connectivity and redundancy. But as connectivity grows, so too do the cyber threats. We understand that to remain the partner of choice for the Pacific in the cyber domain, we need to lift our engagement.

The Albanese government is strengthening Australia’s cybersecurity posture in the face of growing cyber threats through a suite of new initiatives. For the first time, we’ve integrated our domestic and international cybersecurity strategies into a single document—and through this process we’re boosting cyber resilience both at home and across the Pacific.

We are building our Pacific cyber crisis response capability by committing $26.2 million to establish Cyber RAPID teams so we can continue to be on the spot when cyber disaster strikes.

We’re also investing to build long-term resilience to cyber disasters, committing $16.7 million to working with Pacific partners to identify vulnerabilities and implement solutions that reduce cyber incidents. This complements the Australia–US commitment announced during Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s recent state visit to Washington to pilot cyber resilience partnerships in the Pacific through upgraded data services and cloud-based back-ups.

In the cyber domain, as in all domains, we are listening to our Pacific family. Together, we’re building a region where everyone can access the opportunities of the digital economy securely. And together, we’re building resilience to cybersecurity threats to ensure those opportunities can be realised.

Whether it’s a natural or digital disaster in the Pacific—Australia is there.

Australia’s opportunity to help close the Pacific’s digital divide

In 2011, venture capitalist and dot.com pioneer Marc Andreessen famously declared that ‘software is eating the world’. His argument was that services that had once been delivered via traditional means were rapidly being displaced by new software-enabled firms, like Amazon, Netflix and Spotify.

Andreessen took issue with market pessimists who looked at the rapid growth of second-generation tech companies like Facebook and who wrongly predicted another financial bubble was forming.

Instead, he argued, business was in the midst of ‘a dramatic and broad technological and economic shift in which software companies are poised to take over large swathes of the economy’.

More than a decade on, a shift no less profound is underway. Like with the software boom of the early 2000s, the rapid uptake of cloud computing services is transforming the digital ecosystem.

By some estimates, global spending on cloud services will reach nearly US$600 billion in 2023, and that is set to increase annually.

Companies are increasingly migrating their services to cloud operators, attracted by cheap operating costs, infinite scalability and on-demand computing power. But whereas the software boom transformed the digital economy, upending business models and giving rise to the tech titans of today, the cloud services revolution is reaching beyond the digital horizon and deep into our lives.

The Covid-19 pandemic gave us a glimpse of this.

Employees who once would have had no choice but to come to work, stayed at home—juggling schooling with Zoom calls. Businesses shed office space and expensive in-house ICT capabilities in favour of laptops and off-the-shelf professional services. And an increasing array of services, from food delivery to data storage to e-government, was presented to us, safely, efficiently and cheaply online.

The benefits of this new phase of digital growth have been profound, but also profoundly uneven. Too much of the world lacks the digital infrastructure required to make full use of these opportunities.

In the Pacific, this digital shortage is particularly acute.

The tyranny of distance and lack of market size mean Pacific nations must for the most part rely on Australia and New Zealand to host their data and provide digital capability.

Ironically, that distance and small, dispersed populations make access to cloud services especially important. Robust cloud infrastructure gives developing economies an asymmetrical advantage, allowing them to compete in the digital marketplace with larger, more advanced economies.

But when those nations lack robust infrastructure, the implications can be profound, as when Tonga’s massive volcanic eruption in January 2022 cut the internet for days. The humanitarian impacts aside, the disaster forced Tonga to relinquish control over its sovereign information.

In the Pacific, round trips to core infrastructure in Australia or New Zealand can exceed 500 milliseconds, compared with latency as low as 150 milliseconds between Sydney and the West Coast of the United States. High latency makes it impossible to build a mature and independent digital ecosystem. The result is a rudimentary digital capability, prone to disruption and inimical to growth.

For businesses, this is stultifying.

A decade ago, Andreessen reasoned that the software boom of the mid-2000s was driven by the growth of smartphones and the mass rollout of broadband internet. It relied on the existence of a vast digital infrastructure, which in turn fuelled a new wave of tech-based entrepreneurship.

Entrepreneurship in the modern age will require a new bedrock of digital infrastructure.

In a 2021 working paper, the Asian Development Bank wrote that cloud computing was emerging as the foundational infrastructure for building nimble, highly scalable and digitally enabled firms.

The bank wrote: ‘It is imperative for governments to consider the availability of baseline infrastructure and foundational elements for a digital economy, which enable the emergence of agile, resilient, and competitive tech start-ups, powered by cloud computing.’

Ubiquitous access to the cloud is vital if this digital divide is to be closed. If it is not, disparity and inequality will only grow.

In the absence of jobs and opportunity, the Pacific’s best and brightest will not stay. And foreign businesses will not invest if the digital infrastructure remains fragile and prone to disruption.

Developing economies like India and the Philippines successfully leveraged the benefits of cloud platforms, attracting millions in multinational investment and allowing them to grow their service sectors.

The island states of the Pacific must do the same.

There are no easy solutions. Major cloud service providers like Amazon and Microsoft see a business case for building data centres in the Pacific. They recently built a US$5 billion data centre in New Zealand following, in part, the growth of accounting software Xero.

Pacific island states will be forced to embrace other solutions, like public–private cloud models that serve the region as a whole—thereby providing the necessary scale to be viable—while ensuring sovereign data remains onshore.

At a time when the Australian government is looking to redouble its diplomatic efforts in the Pacific, the provision of this digital infrastructure is an obvious way to make a big impact quickly. A failure to invest in this critical capability will have long-reaching social and economic consequences.

It could also have strategic implications.

If Australia and its allies do not help the Pacific island states make this digital transformation, other, less scrupulous operators will move quickly to fill the void.