Photo: TORSTEN BLACKWOOD/AFP via Getty Images
From King Charles to Samoa, growing civil unrest in New Caledonia, devastating earthquakes, strategic Rugby deals, and major drug busts—the Pacific news cycle in 2024 did not disappoint. Amidst these many newsworthy highlights, two main trends emerged: the Pacific Islands continued to explode on the scene as a critical arena of geopolitical competition, and the international community continued to disappoint in its ability to adequately address climate change as the Pacific’s primary national security threat. As the Trump administration looks to craft its Pacific policy and safeguard U.S. national security interests across this critical region, it will be essential to take stock of these developments. This paper—part two of a two-part commentary on the Pacific—will provide recommendations on how the United States should consider the next phase of the U.S.-Pacific partnership.
Viewed from the strategic competition lens, 2024 presented a series of geopolitical chess moves across the Pacific, with Australia proving one of the region’s most active players. Australia has been more transparent about its national security interests by incorporating security components into a growing number of bilateral agreements, even where seemingly unrelated (such as forming a new rugby team in Papua New Guinea). These moves sync largely with U.S. interests—ensuring that Pacific security needs are met, if not by the United States, by other like-minded partners like Australia. Yet despite recent movements, the region remains very much in play, not least because no one development partner has a monopoly on influence or presence across the Pacific.
By now it is a well-worn mantra that the United States, after several decades of relative neglect, has stepped up its engagement with the Pacific Islands in recent years. While much of this attention was welcome, however, Pacific leaders remain rightfully skeptical that U.S. attention is here to stay. To maintain and grow these critical relationships, it will be essential for the United States to progress beyond this first phase of engagement—defined by high-level visits, leader-level summits, and grand promises—to a second phase of follow-through and commitment. Doing so will require consistency across administrations, which is uncommon in the U.S. system. Fortunately, the Pacific Islands is a rare bright spot of Washington bipartisanship. For example, both sides of the aisle voiced strong and consistent support for finalizing the critical Compacts of Free Association (COFA) agreements with Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia—and in fact, the recent refocus on the Pacific started under the first Trump administration, with Trump designating the COFA negotiating team and inviting three Pacific leaders to the White House.
Despite this welcome bipartisanship, several challenges remain. First and foremost is how the United States will address the topic of climate change, which remains a top national security threat for the Pacific. Secondly, while attention to the Pacific will likely continue, the manner and shape of U.S. engagement under a Trump administration will likely change—principally in a more vocal articulation of how the region directly fits into U.S. national security interests. A shift to a more transactional, U.S.-centric approach is likely to create challenges in a region that values consultation, partnership, and relationships.
To protect and advance these vital U.S.-Pacific relationships into 2025 amidst a deteriorating global strategic environment—and in doing so protect U.S. national interests—the U.S. Pacific strategy in 2025 should encompass the following key points:
Diplomatic Boots on the Ground
The math is simple: protecting U.S. national security in the Pacific requires influence, and influence requires presence, not virtual or fly-in, fly-out diplomacy. Central to the Biden administration’s strategy in the Pacific was the need to expand diplomatic presence across the region, and yet despite opening three new embassies and increasing its presence in others, the United States remains woefully outmatched by China in both the number of outposts and diplomats on the ground—the latter often by a factor of 10–1. Opening further embassies and getting more people on the ground will require crafting creative solutions to persistent challenges, from resourcing shortfalls to overly onerous waiver requirements, but the alternative is to cede this critical space to China. Both of these require a concerted and coordinated effort by Congress, the Department of State, and the White House.
A solutions-based approach should also include the impetus to broaden the aperture of what is considered diplomacy. In addition to opening more embassies and better resourcing and manning existing ones, further consideration should be given to vastly increasing funding for the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). The USCG is one of the most sought-after U.S. institutions for engagement in the Pacific, adeptly engaging on maritime security in a way that is both effective and fit for purpose in the small island region. In popularity and effectiveness in enhancing people-to-people ties, the USCG is second only perhaps to the Peace Corps, which has seen its funding levels remain flat despite increased missions around the globe. These institutions both build meaningful and lasting relationships, and relationships are the currency of influence in the Pacific.
Agile Funding for Bespoke Projects
Securing U.S. interests in the Pacific will require, at a minimum, follow-through on major initiatives like the COFA agreements and the Tuna Treaty. However, while the U.S. development apparatus tends to gravitate towards large projects, it is the smaller and more tailored initiatives that can have the biggest impact where it matters most for influence—the host nation’s population. Chinese diplomats excel at pairing timely, relevant local donations with media promotion, as with this delivery of half a dozen laptop computers, polo shirts, and more in Malaita province, Solomon Islands in early January.
This model requires having sufficient diplomats on the ground to engage and pulse the needs of the local governments and populations, but it also requires that embassies have flexible and timely funding models to rapidly source bespoke smaller-budget initiatives. Paradoxically, the relatively small sums required to buy a few computers, generators, or backpacks can make it difficult to appropriate funding for these types of initiatives in Washington. Instead, diplomats must have the direction—and the authority—to allocate money directly and rapidly for programming that falls under a certain amount. This flexibility should extend to posts where there is not yet a resident head of mission or even a designated embassy.
Don’t Disregard the Power of Soft Power
The trend in 2024 was for increased securitization of Pacific engagement. Given the strategic significance of this region, this trend is unlikely to wane in 2025. However, it would be a mistake for the United States to allow this continued focus on security to come at the expense of other forms of development, especially in a region where traditionally “soft power” initiatives can have huge positive effects on U.S. relationships in the region. Most importantly perhaps for competition-minded strategists, these types of programs are an extremely effective and direct way to create goodwill and gain influence.
Education and health, specifically, are two sectors that deserve serious attention from U.S. policymakers, for two reasons: (1) both are areas of enormous need in the Pacific and (2) both are areas toward which the United States has thus far committed only limited resourcing in comparison to demand (outside of the three COFA countries). On health, the Pacific Islands region currently falls well behind global standards in several critical metrics. Implementing initiatives aimed at bolstering national and local health systems not only responds to requests from Pacific leaders but also builds extensive goodwill throughout host nation populations. Similarly, when a country provides scholarships, it not only provides educational opportunities but also creates an opportunity to shape the thinking and experiences of the recipient. China is effectively deploying the education vector of influence across the Pacific in large numbers. The United States should make every effort to do the same.
Engage Credibly on Climate—Regardless of U.S. Position
Regardless of the U.S. stance on climate, the fact remains that climate change will remain the top security concern for Pacific nations and territories. A recent Heritage report rightly makes this point in its proposed Pacific Strategy for the second Trump administration. However, to maintain (much less enhance) ties with the Pacific, the United States must go further than simply acknowledging Pacific concerns. Making meaningful contributions to the Pacific Resilience Facility and finding ways to resource climate resilient and adaptation projects throughout the Pacific will be essential to demonstrate U.S. commitment as a credible partner. While Pacific nations see these initiatives as climate-related, within the U.S. system they can also be considered as addressing “critical infrastructure” needs, such as ensuring that ports, cables, and roads are resilient to extreme weather events. Failing to effectively assist islands in developing resilient infrastructure creates space for non-like-minded countries such as China to fill the gaps—especially in areas such as ICT, ports, cyber, and airfields.
Most tenuous will be the U.S. posture on the global stage vis-à-vis climate change. The U.S. withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on January 20—for the second time this decade—will add fuel to persistent arguments that the United States is unreliable as a Pacific partner. Much of the region is frustrated by relative global inaction—including from the United States—over the last several years, especially at COP29. Pacific nations are likely to continue pushing their climate agenda at the UN, such as “loss and damage” and maintaining boundaries as sea levels rise. When addressing these concerns—and when engaging Pacific partners—the United States should keep in mind the broader strategic competition at play in the region.
Embrace What It Means to Be a Pacific Nation
When speaking to Pacific partners, U.S. diplomats and government officials often assert that the United States is a Pacific nation. This is technically true—besides almost 100,000 miles of Pacific coastline, the United States also counts one state and three territories as Pacific islands, and almost 2 million Americans call a Pacific island home. But this common refrain might land more comfortably if the United States itself fully embraced this Pacific identity and incorporated its Pacific territories and citizens into overall U.S. strategy in the Pacific. Currently, there is a sharp bifurcation between how the U.S. government engages with Pacific Island countries and its territories—with COFA nations falling somewhere in between. Some of this is necessary due to authorities for foreign versus domestic assistance. However, the reality is that Pacific people, cultures, and the challenges they face do not abide by these boundaries, and failing to wholesomely incorporate U.S. islands into the U.S. Pacific strategy limits the effectiveness of many policies—and ignores one of the United States’ greatest strengths.
For example, as the United States looks to bolster the strength and independence of Pacific media, it should consider how the recent closure of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands’ paper the Saipan Tribune negatively affects the region. Similarly, as the United States and other partners work with the Pacific to create a layered network of health systems, it is critical not to overlook the services provided by hospitals in U.S. territories such as Guam and opportunities for enhancing clinical training and exchanges between islands.
Finally, while the Pacific region’s role in U.S. military strategy may remain unchanged, other seemingly domestic decisions can directly affect U.S. influence in the broader Pacific. In 2018, the first Trump administration considered cutting the budget for Guam, the Northern Marianas, American Samoa, and the freely associated states by 18 percent. Following through with this or similar cuts would be to the detriment of U.S. strategy across the region.
Continue to Bolster Pacific Regionalism
Beyond bilateral relationships with the 14 nations in the Pacific, it is essential to incorporate support for regional organizations such as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) into any Pacific Strategy. The previous administration made the PIF central to its Pacific strategy, hosting PIF leaders twice at the White House and designating the first U.S. envoy to the PIF. This type of regional engagement must continue, with the recognition that a strong and united PIF bolsters the region’s ability to retain a consolidated position as a counterweight to larger powers. The Pacific has already demonstrated its ability to project strength in unity when it withstood pressure from China to partition off mini-lateral security partnerships in 2022.
The Pacific has a strong inclination to look within to meet Pacific needs—especially on security. Enhancing the Pacific’s ability to look to near partners vice far to meet its security needs is absolutely in U.S. national security interests. To facilitate the growing U.S.-PIF relationship, President Trump should nominate a permanent ambassador to the PIF, and the United States should allow a reciprocal PIF ambassador to the United States based in Washington.
Competition for resources, devastating effects of natural disasters, the race to lay critical undersea cables, and an increasingly divided and complex global environment—these factors will only continue to escalate in the coming years, making the Pacific ever more prominent on the global stage. For the United States, with its national security so intimately tied to the stability and independence of Pacific Island states, the strategic importance of the region will only continue to grow. A thoughtful and holistic approach to the U.S.-Pacific partnership in 2025 and beyond will be essential to ensure U.S. presence and influence – and strategic interests -remain steadfast in this critical region.
Kathryn Paik is deputy director and senior fellow with the Australia Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
