Military assets in the Pacific are increasing, ostensibly in an effort to help curb one of the region’s biggest challenges: illegal fishing. However, it’s also in part an effort to counter China’s influence in the region. National correspondent Lucy Craymer looks at what this means and New Zealand’s role in it.

A New Zealand Defence Force P-3K2 Orion​ took off from Nauru’s only runway this week. The crew of the plane spent the next several hours peering out of its windows at the expanse of blue ocean below, looking for fishing boats, yachts and merchant ships.

This military plane is part of a multinational push – with the United States, France and Australia also involved – to curb illegal fishing in an operation led by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency​. It is also just one of a growing number of defence assets operating regularly in the region as Western partners counter China’s growing power there.

New Zealand and its partners have all raised concerns about the shift in influence in the Pacific region over the past decade, which has resulted in them boosting aid as well as diplomatic and military support. Chinese influence in the region has grown over the past two decades as Beijing has built infrastructure, increased diplomatic ties, and provided loans.

New Zealand, Australia and the US are aiming to ensure that no power hostile to their interests establishes a strategic foothold in the Pacific Islands, “particularly as the strategic reach of China’s ambitions increases, and climate-related, security and crisis management concerns escalate”, according to a recent Lowy Institute report that Anna Powles​, senior lecturer​ at Massey University’s Centre for Defence and Security Studies, co-authored with Joanne Wallis​, a professor of international security at the University of Adelaide​.

In recent weeks, the US Coast Guard has commissioned three 47-metre​ fast response cutters in Guam​. The ships replace two older, less capable vessels previously stationed there. And French President Emmanuel Macron​ announced France would launch a South Pacific coast guard network to counter predatory behaviour in the region.

This follows news last year of two naval patrol boats for New Caledonia and French Polynesia. There have also been reports that Australia’s Special Air Service Regiment will potentially be redirected to focus on operations in the Pacific.​

Although not specifically for the region, New Zealand has also bought new maritime surveillance aircraft and the C-130J Hercules. A Defence Force spokesman noted these purchases were important for the country to continue to contribute to the immediate region.

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“New Zealand is a Pacific nation and our national security and wellbeing are intrinsically linked to the peace and stability of the Pacific,” the spokesman said. “We know because of climate change and the increasing frequency of adverse weather events that we will be called upon to assist more frequently in disaster recovery but also search and rescue operations.”

Meanwhile, new bases are being built or proposed in the region. Australia is upgrading a naval base in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Last year, the Republic of Palau urged the US to build bases in its territory, while in late July the president of the Federated States of Micronesia said there were plans for a more frequent and permanent US armed forces presence in the island nation.

At the same time Pacific countries are better resourced to do their own patrolling – Australia is currently donating 21 ​new patrol boats to 12 countries​ in the Pacific and Timor Leste.

The region faces a number of key security challenges such as transnational organised crime, and illegal, unregulated or underreported fishing, says Pacific Islands​ Forum Secretary-General Henry Puna. “It is important that the region’s key partners are engaged and co-ordinated with regional efforts, in a way which builds capacity, to address these regional security challenges.”

Why now?

Analysts say a key driver behind the increased military presence was the Boe Declaration on Regional Security in 2018. The declaration made by the Pacific Island Forum recognises the increasingly complex security environment and lists human security, environmental and resource security and transnational crime among the region’s security priorities.

“By helping Pacific states with the security issues they see as important – and fisheries are right at the top of that list – they can help build goodwill in the region and at the same time mobilise these security resources,” says Jonathan Pryke​, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute.

“These assets are helping Pacific nations to address their identified security challenges, and this is the right way for defence and security agencies to operate in the Pacific rather than encouraging an over-military build-up in the region.”

The US Coast Guard last year announced a renewed focus on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, arguing it was undermining the national security of small island states and was the leading global maritime threat.

While the islands in the Pacific are small, they control close to 15 per cent of the world’s surface, and the ocean holds the world’s largest and most valuable tuna fisheries, worth a combined end value of more than US$26 billion (NZ$36b) annually. Furthermore, Pacific economies are reliant on the income derived from this industry, especially as Covid-19 has hurt other industries.

The size of the region and the resources the small countries have for surveillance make it an ongoing challenge, says Allan Rahari, director of fisheries operations​ at the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency​. He adds that the resources France, the US, Australia and New Zealand – known as the Pacific Quad – are providing are welcome.

“These resources complement those that we have had at the regional and national levels, so we are really grateful.”

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The growth in the assets in the region comes amid concerns about China’s treatment of its neighbours and denial of international law.

Michael O’Keefe​, Director of the Master of International Relations at La Trobe University, said in part the concern around China’s intentions in the Pacific were due to the country’s actions in the South China Sea.

There China has used not just naval boats but also coast guard and maritime militia to assert its claim to the region. The country’s treatment of its neighbours has seen a global response -- warships from the UK and Germany are the most recent to pass through the contested region asserting the right to free passage. India has said it plans to send a ship later in the month.

“The tactics that China is using are changing,” O'Keefe​ says. “And that means that we will respond in kind.”

The Pacific has always been seen as having strategic importance after becoming a heavily contested battlezone during World War II, with Guam in the north Pacific often called the tip of the US spear. In recent years, Australia has launched its Pacific Step Up, New Zealand a Pacific Reset and the US a Pacific Pledge.

The new Coast Guard vessels have the ability to do a myriad of missions for the US.

“They’ll detect, deter, and suppress illegal, unregulated – unreported, unregulated fishing. They’ll counter other maritime transnational shipments of illicit narcotics or other products. They’ll promote the rules-based maritime governance. They’ll safeguard a free and open Indo-Pacific, and really help achieve national security objectives in the Micronesia region,” Karl Schultz, Commandant with the United States Coast Guard​, said at a media briefing from Guam last week.

What’s to come?

But if tensions remain heightened around the Pacific, there could be further military build up and New Zealand could be asked to do more.

Kurt Campbell, a leading diplomat in the US, said when he spoke by video at a conference in Wellington that he would like to see New Zealand play a great role in the Pacific.

Although “probably the country that needs to do more is not New Zealand, it is the United States,” he added.