Australia reaches security agreements with Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea
Australia has used a growing set of security agreements with Vanuatu, Fiji and Papua New Guinea to deter Pacific governments from forming closer security ties with China, The Wall Street Journal reported. Reached since late last year, the agreements have helped curb China’s advances and opened space for U.S. efforts to counter Beijing. The outlet said the shift was benefiting U.S. interests even as Washington’s regional presence had diminished.
The mechanics are partly about consultation. Australian defense pacts often include clauses that could box out Beijing by requiring Pacific governments to consult Canberra before sealing a deal with any other country. Sandra Tarte, an associate professor at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji, said, “Australia is seeking to cement its role in the region as the security partner of choice” while deterring links with China. Connor Graham, a research fellow at the Lowy Institute think tank in Sydney, said, “It’s a strategy of defense via denial secured via diplomacy.”
Chinese officials said the Australian agreements seek to undermine China. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning declared, “We do not engage in geopolitical rivalry or seek selfish political gains,” after Australia and Fiji signed a July pact in which the two nations pledged to come to the other’s aid if attacked.
China’s 2022 agreement with the Solomon Islands came after Beijing persuaded the island country to drop diplomatic ties with Taiwan and establish official relations with Beijing. The deal was secretive, surprised Western governments and raised fears that China might soon establish a naval outpost in the Pacific. The pact prompted a flood of Western diplomacy. Pacific countries have long competed for influence in the region, and when China pursued an expanded security agreement with several nations later that year, some Pacific leaders felt they were being rushed to sign; the effort fizzled out.
China has not been excluded from the region. The Wall Street Journal said Beijing maintains extensive commercial and policing ties with Pacific island nations and that none of them wanted to completely freeze out China. The Solomon Islands has not torn up its agreement and allows a muted Chinese police presence, while Kiribati retains close relationships with Beijing. China’s military reach has also extended into the neighborhood: last year, a Chinese naval task force sailed around Australia and conducted live-fire drills, triggering concern.
The report said “Aggressive diplomatic maneuvering by Australia, the election of Western-friendly leaders and perceptions of overreach by Beijing” had curbed China’s advances. It also said the shift was helping the United States counter China in the Pacific, where “Beijing’s rise as a maritime power threatens decades of American supremacy.” Many Pacific islands saw intense fighting during World War II, and in a conflict over Taiwan, the islands could influence the movement of U.S. and Chinese forces.
Australia paired the pacts with other inducements. In 2024, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government agreed to spend about $420 million over 10 years to sponsor a rugby team from Papua New Guinea to join Australia’s National Rugby League in 2028 and support grassroots development of the sport. The arrangement allows Australia to withdraw and force the team out of the league if Papua New Guinea makes a security deal with a country outside the region. Recent agreements with Tuvalu, Vanuatu and Nauru include clauses with a similar aim, while Australia has also used migration opportunities for residents of Tuvalu, where islands are expected to be inundated by rising oceans.
Graham said, “Those clauses are widely considered to be directed at China, with Australia’s run of bilateral deals serving to place it as the hub in a hub-and-spoke-style security architecture in the Pacific.”
Papua New Guinea, the region’s largest and most populous Pacific island nation, and Australia upgraded their security alignment to a mutual defense treaty last year. It was Australia’s first new military alliance since the ANZUS treaty with the United States and New Zealand was reached in 1951. Graeme Smith, a senior fellow at the Australian National University who spoke with Chinese officials about the pact, said the Chinese “really were pretty rocked.” Smith relayed that Papua New Guinea had said, “we’d like to upgrade this to something a bit more substantial, to have our forces be more integrated.” The Wall Street Journal then described the agreement: “It was almost an unexpected win.”
Fiji’s July defense treaty followed a political shift. After longtime Prime Minister Frank Bainimarama was defeated in 2022, his successor, Sitiveni Rabuka, moved to pare back Fiji’s ties with China. In 2023, Rabuka ended a mutual policing agreement with China and told the Fiji Times, “Our system of democracy and justice systems are different so we will go back to those that have similar systems with us.” The Australia-Fiji treaty pledged the two countries to come to each other’s aid if attacked.
On the day the Fiji-Australia defense treaty was signed in July, China test-launched a long-range ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine into South Pacific waters. Australia, Japan, New Zealand and others complained. Prime Minister Matthew Wale of the Solomon Islands said the launch was “not something a friend does.”
The United States retains deep, longstanding ties with the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and Palau, the three Pacific island nations just north of the equator. Under long-term agreements, Washington pays them billions of dollars, maintains their defense and provides other services in exchange for exclusive military operating rights. The United States also signed a defense cooperation agreement with Papua New Guinea in 2023 and works with law enforcement in the region. In October, the U.S. brought together Pacific Islands police officials and announced more than $44 million in programs to combat transnational criminal organizations.
Those moves coexist with what The Wall Street Journal described as U.S. retrenchment. Ambassador posts sit vacant for almost every Pacific island nation, and a newly opened USAID office in Fiji was closed last year after President Trump terminated the overseas aid agency. Kathryn Paik, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former director for the region at the National Security Council during the Biden administration, said, “Most of U.S. programming across the entire region runs through USAID, and that was all closed down.” Paik said the “perceived U.S. retrenchment…kind of put the fire under what was already a pretty substantial effort within the Australian system to make sure that they were shoring up their relationships in the region.”
State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott rejected arguments that U.S. diplomacy was in retreat, saying, “The Department has confidence in our ability to communicate with our counterparts around the world and advance the national interest.” The report said Washington’s presence in the region had diminished. It separately attributed growing skepticism to the Trump administration’s tariffs and the war with Iran, which had driven up fuel prices.
Washington has also taken steps that challenge China’s position in the region. It hosted an investment summit in Honolulu in February, and in October, the State Department sanctioned a Chinese-born Fijian businessman whom it accused of paying bribes to advance Chinese government, business and criminal interests. The Wall Street Journal described the broader contest as mixed: China’s advances had been curbed, but Beijing still maintained commercial and policing ties, the Solomon Islands had kept its pact and China’s military reach had extended into the neighborhood. The Australian deals benefited U.S. interests even as Washington’s presence in the region had diminished. The report attributed growing skepticism to the Trump administration’s tariffs and the war with Iran, which had driven up fuel prices.