Fragmentation, Fatigue, and the Security Ecosystem

Pacific Island countries today navigate a crowded security agenda. External actors are deeply engaged, but often in ways that emphasise silos – climate, maritime, cyber, or crime – without connecting the interdependencies across these issues. Such fragmentation risks undermining the holistic conception of security that Pacific leaders affirmed in the Boe Declaration on Regional Security (2018) and the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent (2022). For the Pacific, there is no neat division between hard and soft security. Climate change, for example, is not solely an environmental threat but a driver of economic pressure, food insecurity, social instability, and even militarisation.

The consequences of this fragmented engagement are profound. Uncoordinated initiatives can overwhelm limited local institutions, stretch already thin administrative capacities, and generate perceptions of paternalism. Over time, this breeds ‘engagement fatigue’: a sense that external partners, however well intentioned, are seeking to shape the region’s security agenda at times at the expense of Pacific actors themselves.

Climate, Maritime, and Human Security

The climate crisis remains the defining existential threat for the Pacific. Leaders have consistently described climate change as the single greatest danger to their peoples and their futures. Yet, external partners often privilege military and maritime concerns over climate resilience. The resulting gap between rhetorical commitments and tangible resource allocation underscores a persistent misalignment between Pacific priorities and partner interests. Unless climate resilience is elevated to the core of security engagement, promises risk outpacing delivery.

Maritime security represents another contested domain. While Pacific states prioritise sovereignty over their Exclusive Economic Zones and the protection of vital fisheries, external engagement often reflects global concerns about freedom of navigation and strategic competition. Surveillance and patrol investments can strengthen local capacity, but they also risk reinforcing outside agendas and creating security dependencies. A similar dynamic emerges in responses to transnational crime, where partner states often promote militarised policing or imported models that fail to engage the social, judicial, and community dimensions of security.

Cybersecurity has rapidly emerged as a new frontier of vulnerability and opportunity. Pacific reliance on undersea cables and satellite connectivity highlights risks of technological dependency and geopolitical entanglement. Initiatives such as Starlink raise questions about coordination and sovereignty, underscoring the need for collective approaches that avoid fragmenting digital infrastructures.

Regional Order-Making: The Review of the Regional Architecture

In response to these dynamics, Pacific leaders are experimenting with new institutional mechanisms to manage both internal fragmentation and external competition. The Review of the Regional Architecture (RRA) seeks to consolidate Pacific voices and strengthen the region’s capacity to engage multilateral forums. Inspired by ASEAN, its tiered structure – encompassing both strategic and sectoral levels – aims to reduce opportunities for external actors to ‘forum shop’ and to channel competing interests more effectively.

Yet the RRA is itself contested. Some smaller agencies within the Council of Regional Organizations of the Pacific (CROP) fear that centralisation will diminish their roles, while others worry that national sovereignty will be compromised in pursuit of consensus. Divergent alignments on issues such as China, AUKUS, and U.S. Compacts further complicate collective decision-making. As such, the RRA embodies both the promise and peril of regionalism: it offers a pathway to unity, but only if it can reconcile inclusivity, representation, and sovereignty.

Normative Ambitions: The Ocean of Peace

Complementing the institutional focus of the RRA, the Blue Ocean of Peace Declaration initiative seeks to provide a normative framework for resisting militarisation and positioning the Forum as a proactive norm-shaper. It aspires to reaffirm sovereignty, promote conflict prevention, and articulate principles that reinforce the Pacific’s identity as a Blue Pacific Continent.

However, its ambiguity and lack of clear implementation mechanisms limit its immediate impact. Some members regard it as aspirational rather than practical, fearing it could undermine established partnerships. Without defined thresholds for crisis response, incentives for compliance, or concrete protocols, the Blue Ocean of Peace Declaration risks being dismissed as symbolic. The challenge, then, is whether it can evolve into a framework with both moral and operational leverage.

Geopolitical Pressures and Forum Cohesion

Both the RRA and the Blue Ocean of Peace Declaration emerge against a backdrop of growing fragmentation within the Pacific Islands Forum itself. National interests increasingly override collective ones, with Pacific Island states navigating external relationships in divergent ways. External partners often exploit these differences, lobbying individual members in ways that undermine unity. The exclusion of Dialogue and Development Partners from the 54th PIFLM in Solomon Islands reflects both tensions within the Forum family and the sensitivity of external involvement.

Geopolitical pressures exacerbate these divisions. Chinese challenges to long- standing communiqués, debates around security alignments, and rival offers of connectivity highlight the contested nature of regional order. The Forum thus faces the dual task of maintaining coherence as the region’s political voice while also managing its own internal disunity.

Reconciling External Engagement and Pacific Agency

Taken together, these dynamics reveal the central challenge of Pacific regionalism: reconciling external engagement with Pacific agency. The risks of transactional, interest-driven interventions that fatigue institutions and fragment priorities are considerable. Moreover, the opportunities and risks of regional mechanisms that attempt to reclaim agency but must navigate inclusivity and practical implementation. Both dynamics converge on the need for partnerships that are relational rather than transactional, holistic rather than siloed, and Pacific-owned rather than externally imposed.

This requires a fundamental shift in mindset among external partners. Engagement must move beyond optics, such as highly visible disaster responses, towards long-term resilience-building. It must privilege Pacific definitions of security, particularly the centrality of climate and human security, and avoid locking states into geopolitical dependencies. And it must invest in regional institutions, not overwhelm them with competing initiatives.

Conclusion

The Pacific is at a crossroads. Its security ecosystem is increasingly complex, shaped by climate threats, transnational crime, digital vulnerabilities, and geopolitical rivalry. At the same time, its regional institutions confront fragmentation, sovereignty sensitivities, and the pressures of external competition. The RRA and Ocean of Peace represent ambitious efforts to strengthen Pacific agency, while persistent engagement fatigue underscores the limits of externally driven initiatives.

Ultimately, the success of Pacific regionalism will depend on whether partners and Pacific states alike can embrace holistic, inclusive, and pragmatic approaches. The task is not only to manage today’s crises but to build resilience for the future. This means supporting Pacific agency, privileging long-term investment over short-term symbolism, and embedding security within the broader ecosystem of climate, human, maritime, and digital priorities. Only then can the Pacific navigate the competing logics of development and securitization, sovereignty and consensus, external engagement and internal unity. The measure of success will not be the number of initiatives launched, but whether the Pacific can chart a resilient and coherent path through an increasingly contested ocean of peace.