Decades after World War II and forty years since the Treaty of Rarotonga, the Pacific is again at a crossroads: peace on its own terms, or the ambitions of powerful nations?
Next week in Honiara, in the Solomon Islands, Pacific Islands Forum leaders will meet to declare the Blue Pacific an “Ocean of Peace”.
Pacific historian Marco de Jong says this declaration comes at a time when wars in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza, and escalating rivalry between the United States and China are driving an unprecedented military build-up across the Pacific.
“Others and I have said for the declaration to be meaningful, it must seek to insulate the region from geostrategic competition, namely, that means addressing the military buildup in the region that’s being driven by outside powers,” he says.
A militarised Pacific amid peace talks
For de Jong, the most poignant symbol of militarisation is the reclaimed airfield at Tinian in the Northern Mariana Islands. It’s the same site where the Enola Gay took off to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed an estimated 110,000 to 210,000 people, and survivors continue to seek recognition and justice today.
Beyond these symbols, de Jong says the region is seeing ballistic missile tests, task forces in the Tasman Sea, and an “increasing latticework of security mechanisms” tied to development.
Examples include:
- Nauru–Australia Security and Banking Agreement – designed to counter Chinese influence.
- Funding for Papua New Guinea’s NRL team – conditional on PNG not signing a security pact with China.
- Australia–Tuvalu Falepili Union – a climate adaptation and mobility deal that comes with a security veto, restricting Tuvalu from signing agreements with other states without Australia’s approval.
“Increasingly we’re seeing an instrumentalised approach to Pacific regionalism that is focused on a broader geostrategic objective - the competition between the United States and China,” de Jong stresses.
Whose Peace?
During preliminary talanoa (wānanga), de Jong notes, it has become clear that what defines peace, and who builds it, is contested, and regional civil society groups have asked what peace without justice is, without decolonisation in West Papua, without nuclear justice for Māohi Nui, and without demilitarisation of Hawai’i, Guam, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The risk of co-option
De Jong warns that the Ocean of Peace Declaration risks being co-opted by powerful actors. He points to Australia and New Zealand’s attempts to centralise control over regional peacekeeping through initiatives like the Pacific Policing Initiative (PPI) and the Pacific Response Group (PRG).
The PPI is Pacific-designed and regionally endorsed, promising to “enhance the region’s ability to address security challenges” set out in the 2050 Blue Pacific Strategy and the 2018 Boe Declaration. It proposes regional training centres, a multinational Pacific Police Support Group, and a coordination hub. Similarly, the PRG, coordinated through the South Pacific Defence Ministers’ Meeting, creates a Brisbane-based task force for crisis response.
Yet, de Jong argues, these initiatives do not tackle the root causes of insecurity.
“The question is whether this is addressing the drivers of insecurity in our region, things like inequitable underdevelopment, climate breakdown, increasing political instability, and all the impacts that has at domestic and local levels.”
Past compromises remind the region to hold firm on peace
Speaking to Te Ao Māori News about the Treaty of Rarotonga de Jong says we should never forget that it was compromised.
“Australia formulated the wording to account for US nuclear port visits, New Zealand gave support with the assurance (that) the United States would join, but that never happened,” de Jong explains.
“So, when New Zealand went nuclear-free, it did so without the region and without the broader independence sentiment that drove the movement at large. The consensus then was nuclear-free; today it is peace. The region should not cease.”
The Pacific Way and a deeper legacy
De Jong notes that Pacific approaches to peace stretch back long before this declaration. At the United Nations in 1970, Fiji’s founding Prime Minister Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara famously spoke of the Pacific Way - resolving differences peacefully through consensus and respect.
“There are peacebuilding mechanisms that the Ocean of Peace seeks to build on,” de Jong says, pointing to Biketawa, Boe, Rarotonga, and the Blue Pacific Strategy as milestones in a deeper tradition," says de Jong.
One suggestion, he adds, is that the Ocean of Peace could establish its own conflict-resolution frameworks, rather than simply restating earlier commitments.
“At the height of the Cold War, the Treaty of Rarotonga declared the region a nuclear-free zone. Now, forty years on, we have another generational opportunity to promote peace for and from the Pacific.”
Legacies of activism
De Jong also highlights the role of civil society leaders such as Hilda Halkyard-Harawira, who in the early 1980s helped found the Pacific Peoples Anti-Nuclear Action Committee. Their work connected Pacific activists across the region, opposing French nuclear testing and articulating visions for a nuclear-free and independent Pacific.
One of the most memorable outputs of this movement was a pamphlet titled Some Māori Thoughts on Peace, which stressed how global ideals of peace often felt far removed from the daily struggles of Māori communities facing racism and poverty in Aotearoa.
“But we should be clear that what happens in the region affects us deeply here in Aotearoa,” de Jong says. “We’re bound closely by demography, genealogy, and geography. New Zealand must act constructively - it can’t seek to manage or securitise the region. It won’t work, and I worry that’s what could happen with the Ocean of Peace Declaration.”
