STRATEGIC COMPETITION & SECURITY COOPERATION IN THE BLUE PACIFIC.

• Date: 01 January 2024
• Author: Wierzbicki, Andrew

STRATEGIC COMPETITION & SECURITY COOPERATION IN THE BLUE PACIFIC

Author: Deon Canyon

Published by: Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, Honolulu, 2022, 210pp.

This book by the Hawai'i based Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) is particularly timely. There is the increasing competition for influence in the South Pacific between China and the United States; recent disagreements over leadership of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF); increasing concern among Pacific Islands leaders over the lack of meaningful action on climate change; the impact, both directly and longer-term, of Covid-19; and challenging economic conditions affecting the small Pacific Islands nations. There is also the sensitivity over the nomenclature to describe the South Pacific: is it the 'Blue Pacific' vision of the Pacific leaders, as this book pointedly underlines in its title, or is it the 'Indo Pacific' descriptor being advanced by the United States but also picked up by Australia and New Zealand among others. All of these issues and more are covered in the book.

Underlying the timeliness of the book was the NZIIA's 8 June 2023 Auckland conference ('International Solutions: Aotearoa New Zealand's Place in a...