The Question from the Pacific Islands: Will the United States Be a Credible and Consistent Indo-Pacific Partner?

Abstract

I n March 2023, Dame Meg Taylor, lawyer, diplomat, and former secretary general of the Pacific Islands Forum, told Radio New Zealand that Pacific leaders “should have paid much more attention to the Indo-Pacific strategy as it emerged.”1 Taylor’s comment highlighted not only the abundance of external strategies and policy frameworks targeting the Pacific Islands but also the increasing alignment of economic cooperation with security partnerships. Taylor was particularly concerned that island leaders were being sidelined while major geopolitical decisions were being made that affected the Pacific. This tension was highlighted in the Pacific Islands Forum’s latest security outlook report, which noted that “while geopolitical competition could draw much-needed attention and resources to the Pacific, it could also distract the region and its partners from efforts to address its existing security priorities—addressing climate security, supporting human security, and disrupting criminal activity.”2 These priorities are most cogently laid out in the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which identified five key challenges in the Pacific: climate change, human security, environmental and resource security, transnational crime,