Pacific Islands Forum’s goals, achievements and failures
I did my best not to follow the most recent Pacific Islands Forum meeting in Palau. In fact, I actively avoided it.
The Forum’s acronym, PIF, sums up the organization best.
Say it out loud: “PFFF.”
Then U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau showed up. The U.S. isn’t even a full member. I tuned in because the State Department's No. 2 official was there and later went to Chuuk to, of course, “strengthen ties and advance priorities."
Shortly before this year’s meeting convened in Palau, President Trump referred to the Federated States of Micronesia and the Marshall Islands as "U.S. territories" in a Truth Social post, hinting at greater U.S. control and probably resource extraction.
Honestly, Trump surprised me a bit. I figured he would have called them "Sovereigns in Name Only" and cast America as the financial victim of decades-long relationships of our own making. So much for the Compacts of Free Association being a guide for Greenland.
On July 6, China shot off a test ballistic missile that arced across the Pacific, crossing a number of national territories. The objection from the nations in question was not directed at the missile test itself, but at China's failure to notify them beforehand.
However, the missile test and Trump’s sovereignty slur didn’t do much for the sovereign integrity of the Forum members, much less the legitimacy of the PIF itself.
One-third of PIF members were absent. Others were not represented at the highest level. One had to go home to face a vote of no confidence in the national parliament.
The end result was expected. The 20-page communique was filled with laudatory but nondescript goals of alternative energy, regional cooperation, sticking to the 1.5-degree climate pledge from the various climate agreements and economic diversification. Its content was hard to disagree with, but it didn’t call for anyone to do anything.
In case the 20-page document isn't enough, there’s also a 40-page Strategic Implementation Plan on the PIF website. I think I smell a consultant.
In my youth, I read that the future mayor of my city, upon meeting his hero, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, told the justice how he had inspired him to obtain a law degree. To which Justice Marshall bluntly snarled,
“So? What are you going to do with it?”
And so, to the PIF I ask of its 2026 communique: “So? What are you going to do with it?”
The Forum’s goals are all fine on paper. A resilient region of peace, harmony, social inclusion and prosperity for all citizens to lead free, healthy and productive lives, to paraphrase its mission. What can the PIF do, or what has it done, to advance this vision that Pacific nations and their donors can’t?
Aside from asking other countries for money to mitigate climate change, what are you going to do about the challenges the Pacific faces? Will you root out the conflicts of interest that undermine every action? That’s a question both for the PIF and its members.
I don’t know what a successful PIF looks like, or what a failed PIF looks like.
I don’t want the PIF to fail. I want the opposite. But I’ve never viewed the PIF as having the structure or institutional competence to be anything other than a club whose members talk a lot and dislike one another.
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I want Chuuk, just to take one example, to have safe drinking water, roads that don’t become rivers after a storm and opportunities so that its citizens don’t have to leave to do anything. Throughout the world, I don’t want local elites to sit atop donated largesse while their citizens live in squalor.
But I’m not so naïve as to think I know how to accomplish it. Perhaps I’m being unfair. Many public policy achievements often go unnoticed.
Regarding peace and stability?
China will act in its own interest. So will Taiwan. So will the U.S., eventually or maybe, if the bureaucracy wakes up.
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The dance for influence will continue. The only question is who the dancing partner will be. A member state with something to offer? I don’t see the Forum stopping the music. On the contrary, real progress on climate change and the 1.5-degree standard, to take one example, will require great powers to act, and so far they’ve shown little interest in changing energy policy.
We might lament the tension and uncertainty geopolitical competition has brought, but there is no escaping the fact that this region is important to the Great Powers precisely because of that tension.
But for now, I have to say “pfff.”
Gabriel McCoard is an attorney who previously worked in Palau and Chuuk State. Send feedback to gabrieljmccoard@hotmail.com.
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