Strategic Geography
🇦🇺Australia
Australia’s security role in the South Pacific and its place in critical minerals supply are growing in tandem, making it an increasingly important middle power in the Indo-Pacific. This section tracks those dynamics.
5 analyses
The Statement That Never Came: A Chinese Missile Test Exposes the Deeper Contest in Pacific Diplomacy
After a Chinese submarine test-launched a strategic missile into the Pacific, the Forum's foreign ministers could not agree on a statement. A failure to agree on wording repays more study than a strongly worded communiqué: the same consensus rule that let small states constrain nuclear powers in 1985, and blocked Beijing's regional security package in 2022, has now blocked the Forum's own statement. The institution has not changed — the structure of interests has.
Papua New Guinea in the New South Pacific Order: Security Alliance via the Pukpuk Treaty, Multi-Market Hedging, and Compartmentalized Diplomacy
Papua New Guinea is deepening its military alignment with Australia under the Pukpuk Treaty and granting the US defense access, while expanding trade with Beijing and praising major Chinese investments. This 'compartmentalized alignment' is meant as a hedge, but as the lines between security, energy, and port infrastructure blur, the cost of policy ambiguity is rising fast.
Missile Diplomacy in the South Pacific: Security and Economic Calculus Behind the Solomon Islands' Protest
Following China's submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) test in the South Pacific, Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale issued a rare public protest. Coming from a government long seen as one of Beijing's closest Pacific partners, the criticism signals that island nations are increasingly putting regional security and sovereignty ahead of immediate economic incentives.
Global Backlash Against China's 'Ethnic Unity Law': The Most Disunited Regime Needs Unity Written into Law
China's new law packages domestic assimilation and external long-arm jurisdiction under the guise of 'unity,' sparking concern and countermeasures from democracies worldwide.
The Price of the Silicon Alliance: Pax Silica, the MATCH Act, and the New Reality of Tech Sovereignty
Pax Silica marks a deeper industrial realignment in U.S. technology alliance policy. This article examines how the MATCH Act pushes allies toward common export controls, and how the EU, India, and Taiwan are building policy firewalls to protect their technological sovereignty.