Pacific Agency or Strategic Contest? - What Fiji and Australia’s Ocean of Peace Alliance Reveals About Pacific-Led Security

Genevieve Phillips| South Pacific Fellow

Image scourced from Mark Direen via Pexels

On 6 July 2026, at State House Suva, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka signed the Ocean of Peace Alliance - also known as the Veitacini Treaty. It is Fiji’s first mutual defence pact and Australia’s fourth formal alliance, after ANZUS and the 2025 Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea. Framed as giving practical effect to the Pacific Islands Forum’s Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration, the treaty arrives in the language of Pacific ownership and the “Pacific Way”. Yet it arrives amid a wave of Australian bilateral security deals and has been widely interpreted as part of Canberra’s response to China’s growing regional influence. These dynamics are not necessarily contradictory: Pacific governments can pursue their own strategic priorities while strategically engaging Australia, China and other external partners.

This treaty is a test case for how much influence Pacific nations can exercise over the region’s evolving security architecture. Rabuka’s success in embedding his own concept into binding treaty text shows real Pacific agency. However, a security order built one bilateral deal at a time risks becoming a patchwork that external powers can selectively engage with. Whether this becomes a networked, Pacific-centred order, or the gradual incorporation of island states into a wider containment strategy, depends on moving from parallel bilateralism to a unified stance on security.

Pacific Agency Made Binding

The Ocean of Peace concept did not begin in Canberra. Rabuka first proposed it at the 2023 Pacific Islands Forum in Rarotonga, and Forum Leaders endorsed the Declaration at their 2025 meeting in Honiara. It affirms the Pacific as a zone of peace rooted in the Pacific Way - peaceful dispute resolution through Talanoa and consensus, respect for sovereignty, and rejection of coercion. The July 2026 treaty text explicitly recalls that endorsement and commits the parties to embedding the Declaration as a cornerstone of policy.

That achievement matters. Turning a regional vision into a mutual defence obligation is a significant diplomatic feat. The treaty’s core provision recognises that an armed attack on either party within the Pacific would endanger the other’s peace and security and commits each to “act to meet the common danger, in accordance with its domestic processes.” It is open to accession by other Pacific states. Rabuka has invited neighbours to join, arguing that “the more, the stronger, the better.” Embedding a Fijian-initiated idea into hard security text showed Pacific leadership is not merely rhetorical.

The Bilateral Patchwork

Yet the architecture around the treaty reveals the limits of that agency. The Alliance sits alongside the Vuvale Union, a broader economic agreement backed by roughly AU$1 billion in Australian commitments, and forms part of a wider Australian strategy of bilateral security treaties. In recent years, Canberra has concluded the Falepili Union with Tuvalu, a treaty with Naoero, the Pukpuk Treaty with Papua New Guinea and the Nakamal Agreement with Vanuatu.

Collectively, however, they risk reinforcing Australia as the hub of a Pacific security network, with island states as spokes. The Alliance’s openness to new members provides a potential pathway beyond this model, but its institutional foundation remains bilateral rather than Forum led. The distinction matters: bilateral agreements give Australia a central role in determining the terms of individual security relationships, whereas a genuinely Pacific-led architecture would place collective regional priorities and decision-making at the centre.

Language Versus Substance

Officials on both sides insist the treaty is not directed at China. Albanese has emphasised mutual defence and regional capability against transnational crime and climate-related threats. The treaty text itself speaks of sovereignty, stability and an Ocean of Peace, not containment.

The broader strategic context, however, is harder to ignore. The signing occurred as Australia described itself as being in a “permanent state of contest” with China in the region, and days before Chinese media reported a long-range ballistic missile test in the South Pacific. Coverage framed the pact as a blow to Beijing’s influence. The sequence of bilateral deals, each locking in Australia as preferred security partner, narrows the space for alternative arrangements.

From Parallel Deals to a Unified Voice

The Ocean of Peace Alliance can still become more than a bilateral instrument framed in regional terms. Its accession clause offers a pathway for other Pacific states, including Tonga, Papua New Guinea, and New Zealand, to join a common defence commitment. If that happens, and if the resulting network is coordinated through Forum processes rather than managed as hub-and-spoke relationships, the Pacific could acquire a Pacific-owned security architecture in which regional states set collective priorities through the Pacific Islands Forum, while external partners supply capabilities and resources without determining the strategic agenda.

The Test Ahead

Rabuka succeeded in turning a Pacific concept into treaty law. That is agency. Agency exercised through a bilateral deal with the region’s dominant security partner is not the same as collective control over the region’s security order. The Ocean of Peace Alliance is both an achievement and a warning. If it becomes the nucleus of a wider, Forum-anchored network, it can help the Pacific speak with one voice. If it remains one more bilateral spoke in an Australian hub, the vocabulary of Pacific leadership will mask a structure shaped elsewhere. The choice is still open, but only if Pacific nations treat the treaty as a beginning, not an end.

Genevieve Phillips is completing a Bachelor of Law/Arts (History) at the University of Notre Dame Australia, and is a 2025 New Colombo Plan Scholar currently based in Suva, Fiji, on semester exchange at the University of the South Pacific. With a focus on international environmental law, ocean governance, and Australia–Pacific relations, she brings both academic rigour and lived regional experience to her writing on contemporary foreign policy issues.

As Regional Correspondent for Australia and the Pacific with the Young Diplomats Society, Genevieve produces concise policy updates and article pitches on diplomacy, security, and climate developments across Oceania. She also serves as Publications Associate at the Asia-Australia Youth Association. 

Drawing on her cross-cultural experiences across Cambodia, France, Italy, and the

Pacific, including volunteer work managing social media and promotional content, Genevieve is passionate about elevating Pacific perspectives in international affairs and has gained a particular interest in climate mobility, maritime governance, and the intersection of regional diplomacy and environmental justice. 

She hopes to contribute thoughtful, policy-relevant analysis to YAIA’s South Pacific portfolio.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Young Australians in International Affairs. AI tools were used by this author for structural editing and idea refinement, but all analysis, argument and content are original, and no plagiarism has been used in the preparation of this article