By Cleo Paskal
(The Sunday Guardian) -- This past week, flights were diverted between Australia and New Zealand to avoid Chinese military live fire exercises, three Chinese military ships sailed within 277 km of Sydney, and the Cook Islands and China agreed on an “Action Plan 2025-2030 for the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the Cook Islands and the People’s Republic of China."
None of this was a surprise. China’s goals in the region were made clear in its “China Pacific Islands Common Development Vision” (and supporting “Five Year Plan”) documents.
The goals are barely post-colonial and aim to undermine Pacific islands’ sovereignty, then bring them under Beijing’s control. This is an essential step to, at the least, neutralize Australia and New Zealand.
China’s role in the region is a constant pressure in one direction. The question is, how to respond?
I can tell you how not to respond: the way it’s been done until now. New Zealand and Australian policies toward the region have been naive at best, and the situation was worsened by the U.S. State Department following Canberra and Wellington’s lead.
A foundational issue is “what is a country” and, by extension, who has the right to sign nation-to-nation strategic agreements. The Pacific island region
has a wide range of political arrangements, including the fitful French colony of New Caledonia and the independent countries in free association with the United States (Palau, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands).
Increasingly, many of the hard-fought battles of the decolonization period have been forgotten and undermined as the meaning of sovereignty is blurred.
For example, the Cook Islands is in a “free association” with New Zealand. Cook Islanders are New Zealand citizens, use New Zealand passports and the New Zealand dollar. Close to 100,000 Cook Islanders live in New Zealand. Around 17,000 live in the Cook Islands.
According to the non-binding 2001 Joint Centenary Declaration, the Cook Islands is supposed to “work together and consult” with New Zealand on defense and national security matters of mutual interest.
Given all that, is it an independent country? Yes, according to Washington. In
2023, the United States issued a press release that recognized Cook Islands as an independent country. It also recognized Niue, another part of the Realm of New Zealand, with a population of 1,700. This was done at a U.S.-Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Washington, D.C., which New Zealand and Australia were heavily involved in coordinating. If New Zealand didn’t want it, it is hard to see how it could have happened.
Meanwhile, Australia signed deals with Tuvalu and Nauru in 2024, which seriously weaken national sovereignty. The Tuvalu deal, for example, reads: “Tuvalu will mutually agree with Australia any partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other State or entity on security and defense-related matters in Tuvalu.”
The Nauru deal goes further: “Nauru shall mutually agree with Australia any
partnership, arrangement or engagement with any other state or entity on matters relating to Nauru’s security including maritime security, defense, policing, border protection and cyber security sectors, and Nauru’s critical infrastructure concerning banking and telecommunications.”
A critical aspect of this is the deals were done through government-to-government treaties that were not publicly debated before signing and weren’t ratified by referenda. By contrast, the United States' Compacts with Palau, Marshalls and Micronesia were widely debated and then ratified by referenda.
This confusion over sovereignty can be seen at the Pacific Islands Forum, which calls itself the region’s “premier political and economic policy organization."
Given the policy aspect, membership was originally generally confined to
sovereign countries and self-governing territories that had the authority to make foreign policy. Now its members include Niue and French colonies New Caledonia and French Polynesia. Recently American territories Guam and American Samoa became associate members.
Howard Hills, one of the world's experts on sovereignty in the region, was legal counsel for political status affairs in the Carter, Reagan, Trump and Biden administrations.
In an interview with The Sunday Guardian, he explained the implications.
“In the post-World War II era of decolonization, diplomatic bureaucrats and self-aggrandizing academics have been dispensing relativistic theories about traditional nation-state sovereignty being an anachronism impeding historically dependent peoples seeking greater self-determination. But the Atlantic Charter and U.N. Charter do not promise the benefits of nation-state status without the disciplines and the responsibilities that come with separate sovereignty, natality and citizenship.
“Real self-determination requires real political will by peoples aspiring to emerge from dependency to make real choices between real political status options recognized and therefore sustainable and enforceable under international law. Pretending sovereignty has been attained when the test of real nationhood based on the right to independence is not met is a form of condescending neo-colonialism the State Department and French diplomatic elites refer to as ‘wink and nod’ decolonization.
“The State Department was asleep at the wheel as France and then New Zealand manipulated political status principles under U.N. Resolution 2625 to move non-self-governing Pacific territories along the path from observer toward associate and full membership in PIF.
“U.S. announcement of an intention to recognize [Cook Islands as an independent country] was opposed by regional experts as an abandonment of minimal criteria for recognition of sovereignty and predicted a loss of reciprocity and continuity needed for a legitimate and orderly decolonization process. Under pressure to add fluff to the implementation of the Pacific Summit Declaration, the State Department ignored real reengagement in the region to stop the Chinese diplomatic, economic and security intrusions and instead engaged in diplomatic tokenism by surrendering to Guam’s demand for associate membership in PIF.”
This approach to sovereignty has created openings that China has exploited.
Apart from feeding the confusion over sovereignty, the PIF is also tied directly to the issue of the Cook Islands' leadership and China. In late 2020/early 2021, the position of secretary general of the PIF was up for election by PIF member-states. The two leading candidates were Gerald Zackios (Marshall Islands' ambassador to the U.S.) and Cook Islands Prime Minister Henry Puna.
The secretary general position was supposed to rotate by region (Polynesia, Micronesia and Melanesia). It was Micronesia’s turn. The Marshall Islands is in the Micronesia subgroup. So, by the PIF’s own customs, it should have gone to Zackios.
But that would mean the secretary general position would go to a country that recognizes Taiwan and a man who is well-known and liked in DC. Sounds like a good thing for a free and open Indo-Pacific, right? Not to Canberra and Wellington. It came down to a one-vote difference and Canberra and Wellington voted for Puna. Puna won.
Possibly Canberra and Wellington thought they were being clever—not annoying Beijing, limiting U.S. engagement in the PIF (Zackios had a direct line to some key people in D.C.) and so not undermining their own position while putting in a man they thought they could “control” (there had been accusations of corruption against Puna, which he denied).
As a result, five Micronesian countries left the PIF.
They needed to be strong-armed by the State Department to rejoin—though one can’t be sure it really benefited anyone, except ultimately China. China has an increasing influence on PIF as it flips more PIF members from Taiwan to China and uses the PIF to add pressure on those that still recognize Taiwan. It also uses the PIF to legitimize the “independence” of places like the Cook Islands, which it then leverages into partnerships.
The next PIF meeting is in the Solomons—which is heavily China-influenced—and there will be extreme pressure on the three remaining countries that recognize Taiwan (Tuvalu, the Marshall Islands, Palau) at that meeting.
At the last PIF meeting, the Taiwan language was removed from the communique after pressure from China. And it was the current prime minister of the Cook Islands, Mark Brown, who was caught on a hot mic reassuring the Chinese representative that “we’ll remove it.”
It’s worth noting Australia and New Zealand are also members of PIF. Doesn’t look like they fought to retain the language. Canberra and Wellington consistently make choices that show willingness to seriously displease Beijing. Is Beijing afraid of Canberra or Wellington? Given the recent naval activity, doesn’t look like it.
The U.S. helped the Cooks claim that it had the right to make a deal with China by declaring it an independent country.
Australia set a precedent for a government to bypass the will of the people and sign away sovereignty without debate. Note China didn’t object much to the Australia–Tuvalu/Nauru deals. Beijing must have been delighted at the precedence.
New Zealand and Australia backed a controversial Cook Islands prime minister over a well-respected candidate from a country that recognizes Taiwan for the leadership of the PIF. It opened the way for the prime minister’s equally controversial former deputy to become Cooks' prime minister.
So, a known opportunistic politician was told by the U.S. his country was independent, and Australia legitimized independent countries signing away sovereignty without public debate. And we’ve known for years what China wants. What did they think would happen?
What should have happened?
1. Resist making a decision to populate a quick feel-good press release if it’s not informed by legal realities and supported by a viable long-term strategy.
2. Do all the things democracies are supposed to do (and that are supposed to differentiate them from China): be transparent, consult with the populations, require referenda for major changes in strategic alliances.
3. Prosecute corrupt people, giving hope and maneuvering space to the honest people who will fight off the PRC better than any outsiders can. Sure, honest people who love their nations will be harder to “manage” by Canberra and Wellington, but that’s because they will be protecting their sovereignty from all—including China. They will voluntarily support and fight for a free and open Indo-Pacific. No “management” is required on that most crucial front.
4. If you aren’t Australia or New Zealand, don’t just follow Canberra and Wellington’s lead or accept their narrative about how they know the region so much better than anyone else. If they are so smart, why did the Cooks (and the Solomons) sign strategic deals with China? Why have three Pacific island countries abandoned Taiwan since 2019? And why are there People's Liberation Army Navy live-fire exercises diverting flights between Australia to New Zealand? Better to work directly with the countries, and people, who know the region best, and who are most likely to fight to keep it free: the Pacific Islanders.
It’s not complicated. Basically, don’t copy the China playbook—Beijing will always be better at it than you will. Beijing will just ride your draft until it’s time to overtake you. Get one step closer to accomplishing its “Vision."
Cleo Paskal is a non-resident senior fellow at the Foundation for Defence of Democracies and columnist with The Sunday Guardian. Republished with permission
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