‘New pacific diplomacy’ ten years on

The transformation in Pacific regional diplomatic culture associated with the rhetorical and institutional expressions of the principle of regional self-determination in the period 2009–2014 has held over the past decade despite significant challenges from a rapidly changing geopolitical context and threats to regional unity posed by a move by Micronesian states to leave the Pacific Islands Forum. Significantly, what we then called the ‘new pacific diplomacy’ has become institutionalised in the practices and policies of the main regional organisation, the Pacific Islands Forum, and in particular in its 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent. This has enabled a continuation of Pacific diplomatic agency in relation to key issues such as climate change, and law of the sea and fisheries, and even regional security. Although the changing geopolitics has not yet succeeded in submerging Pacific diplomatic agency the hardest test is ahead of the Pacific states as they try to defend their interests in a context where the important strategic decisions affecting the future peace of the Pacific Islands region are increasingly made in metropolitan capitals and international groupings outside the reach of the Pacific Islands Forum.