Over the last decade, the concept of “Indo-Pacific” has increasingly established itself in the strategic thinking of many states. A wide range of people have developed Indo-Pacific strategies, whether they are powers bordering the Indian and Pacific Oceans – such as the United States, Australia, Canada, India and Japan – or more distant actors, including the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands and even Lithuania. It has therefore become increasingly common to describe the Indo-Pacific as a “region”, despite its geographic immensity which, in a maximalist sense, covers more than half of the surface of the globe.
However, behind this apparent consensus lies a more complex reality. The Indo-Pacific does not constitute a “natural” geographical region which has always existed and whose existence is only recognized today. Rather, it should be understood as an active attempt at what international relations scholars refer to as “macrosecuritization”: a coordinated effort by a group of like-minded powers to present China’s rise as an existential threat to the international order based on rules. Nevertheless, this macro-securitization enterprise, despite its growing prevalence in Western strategic discourses, has given rise to forms of contestation or adaptation on the part of actors located within the very space it intends to define, such as the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Although often overlooked due to their small size, Pacific island states have not remained passive in expressing their positions in the face of the ongoing macro-securitization of the Indo-Pacific. The Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) is of particular importance in this regard. This regional intergovernmental organization, founded in 1971, initially aimed to promote cooperation between newly independent states in Oceania. Originally, its vocation was resolutely functionalist: it was centered on the promotion of regional cooperation in concrete areas such as trade, maritime transport, education and even telecommunications, with the overall objective of improving the living conditions of the populations of the Pacific. However, over time, the FIP has not only broadened its scope in terms of members and partnerships, but has also gradually taken on a more geopolitical register.
This repositioning, like that observed in Southeast Asia with ASEAN, has led the FIP to seek to play a leading role in defining the geopolitical dynamics at work in its region. In this regard, Aitutaki’s declarations in 1997 and Boe in 2018 were important milestones. Nevertheless, the most ambitious and successful initiative to date remains the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent, endorsed in. 2022 during the 51ste Summit of FIP leaders (PIFLM51), even if its development began in 2017. The Blue Pacific can be understood as a strategic story which not only circumvents the Indo-Pacific framework – which is not moreover not mentioned once in the strategy –, but above all seeks to “re-secure” the region around an alternative existential threat, namely climate change. In doing so, it calls into question the logic of rivalry between great powers that the Indo-Pacific concept reflects, while helping to strengthen them.
This article argues that the Pacific island states, through the Blue Pacific narrative and strategy carried by the FIP, have developed a sophisticated strategy for navigating Indo-Pacific macro-securitization: it is neither a question of subscribing to it by adopting the logic of the great powers nor of oppose it head-on, but to promote a parallel securitization of climate change, by mobilizing indigenous knowledge systems with the aim of redefining what constitutes an existential threat in the Pacific.
To analyze this dynamic, the article is divided into four main sections. The first proposes a conceptual framing of macrosecurity and shows how the Indo-Pacific can be understood through this conceptual prism. The second section examines the Blue Pacific and the way in which it aims to place the challenge of climate change at the heart of regional security discourses. The third and fourth sections finally focus on the limits and potential of this narrative, highlighting highlights the growing risks of co-optation and internal fragmentation. This allows us to reflect on what the competition between these two frameworks reveals in terms of agency and security, and what it tells us about the future of the regional order.
Understanding macrosecurity: the Indo-Pacific as a construction
The notion of securitization, formulated by Ole Wæver in the mid-1990s, is based on the idea that national security policies do not arise from a natural or organic order, but are instead “carefully constructed by political leaders and decision-makers” “. At the heart of this process is an “act of securitization”: most often a “speech act” (speech act), disseminated by various “security actors” through different platforms, which consists of presenting a given issue as an existential threat for an identified reference object – that is to say a threatened entity and considered to have a legitimate right to survival.
Macrosecurity extends this conceptual framework to a higher scale, in that it mobilizes a reference object located beyond the State and presupposes collective action. Barry Buzan and Ole Wæver thus identify the Cold War as an example of macro-securitization: the Soviet Union, because of its nuclear capabilities and its Marxist-Leninist internationalism, was presented by a group of actors sharing convergent views as an existential threat to the objects of reference that were freedom, democracy, or even human rights.
The discourse on the Indo-Pacific, although it is today far from achieving the hegemonic and omnipresent character of that imposing the “Cold War” as a framework of understanding in the post-Second World War, is part of a comparable logic. It indeed corresponds to an attempt, on the part of a group of states sharing similar orientations – notably Australia, Japan, India (albeit inconsistently), the United States and, more recently, the United Kingdom and the EU – to present the rise of China as an existential threat to an object of reference: the rules-based international order, more recently conceptualized under the expression “Free and Open Indo-Pacific” (“Free and Open Indo-Pacific”)Free and Open Indo-Pacific », FOIP).
The genesis of the Indo-Pacific concept does not lie in Washington, but in Tokyo, through the action of its Prime Minister at the time, Shinzo Abe. In a speech delivered to the Indian parliament in 2007, the latter affirmed that “we are now at a stage where the confluence of the two seas [océans Indien et Pacifique] is coming to fruition” and that “in the face of this vast, open and expanding Asia, it is incumbent upon us, as democracies, to continue the quest for freedom and prosperity in the region.”
This change first materialized with the creation, in 2007, of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad), an intergovernmental forum bringing together Japan, Australia, India and the United States, aimed at establishing a “arc of freedom and prosperity” across Asia. However, the Quad quickly sank into oblivion, suspended in 2008, largely out of fear – particularly in Australia – that it would lead to too much confrontation with China.
It was not until 2012, with the return of Shinzo Abe as prime minister, that Japan formally adopted an Indo-Pacific perspective. In an article titled “Asia’s Democratic Security Diamond,” Abe asserted that “peace, stability and freedom of navigation in the Pacific Ocean are inseparable from peace, stability and freedom of navigation in the Indian Ocean.” From 2013, Abe regularly used the term “Indo-Pacific” to describe this new strategic perspective, which was then formally integrated by Japanese business ministries Foreign Affairs and Defense.
Australia was the first state in this “Wider Asia” to explicitly adopt an Indo-Pacific perspective, clearly set out in the 2013 Defense White Paper. However, the major development in the macro-securitization of the Indo-Pacific concept was undoubtedly the decision of the United States, in 2017, to officially place this concept at the heart of its strategic thinking. Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the National Security Strategy of the United States of America (NSS) unambiguously modified the American posture, affirming not only that “the The United States must mobilize the will and means necessary to remain competitive and prevent any unfavorable developments in the Indo-Pacific,” but also that China was now a strategic competitor.
The elevation of China to the rank of explicit threat to the international order based on common rules constituted the last major phase of the process of macrosecuritization of the Indo-Pacific. It is in fact part of the typical workings of macro-securitization, according to which a powerful group made up of securitization actors (here, the powers with an Indo-Pacific strategy) acts by securing a referent object (here, by making China a threat) and, in doing so, addresses an interlocutor precise (here, the Pacific island countries). Furthermore, the decision of the United States to officially adopt the Indo-Pacific concept and to designate China as a strategic competitor had immediate concrete consequences. This not only enabled the resurrection of the Quad in 2017, but also led to the creation of AUKUS in 2021, the launch of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity (IPEF) and the formation of the Indo-Pacific Four (IP4) in 2022.
Although India has always been central to other states’ Indo-Pacific strategies, it initially lagged behind Australia, Japan and the United States in adopting the concept. India was initially cautious, seeing this approach as a form of containment strategy and fearing that its too-narrow membership would compromise its strategic autonomy. Nevertheless, China’s growing assertiveness, its rise in military power, its support for Pakistan, its increased economic engagement in the regional environment via the New Silk Roads initiative and the long-standing dispute between the two countries on the Himalayan border have contributed to India’s adherence to the idea of the Indo-Pacific. In 2018, the concept became an official policy framework when Prime Minister Narendra Modi outlined India’s vision for the region during an inaugural speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Beyond Japan, Australia, the United States and India, European actors have also accepted the Indo-Pacific framework and joined these macro-securitization efforts. The most important, due to its overseas territories (bringing together around 1.7 million inhabitants) in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, was France, which in 2019 became the first European country to publish an Indo-Pacific strategy. The United Kingdom followed suit by adopting a clear “Indo-Pacific tilt” in 2021, as part of its post-Brexit vision of Global Britainconsolidated by its participation in AUKUS. Finally, it was in September 2021 that the Council of the European Union published the EU Strategy for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific which, like the United States, identifies China as an “economic competitor and a systemic rival”.
It is important to emphasize, however, that the majority of European Indo-Pacific strategies – with the possible exception of that of the United Kingdom – are relatively unconcerned by the Chinese threat, and are oriented more towards trade, development and multilateralism. In the case of the EU, China is also seen as a partner with whom it remains possible to cooperate. Therefore, European states do not strictly participate in the macro-securitization of the Indo-Pacific; on the other hand, their appropriation of the concept through explicit strategies gives a certain credibility to this macro-securitization, particularly in the eyes of China, which sees it as a manifestation of a “mentality inherited from the Cold War”.
Le problème du cadrage « Indo-Pacifique » et comment le FIP y répond
Conceiving the Indo-Pacific as a region or super-region, according to the international relations literature, naturally has important strategic implications. The designation of the Indo-Pacific as a “region” in fact assumes that this space presents a degree of interdependence such that the foreign policy actions of each of its members automatically become critical for the others. For example, any change in foreign policy in Burma should immediately affect geopolitical perceptions of New Zealand – an assumption that seems difficult to believe.
More fundamentally, the concept of the Indo-Pacific is “anti-regional” in nature. It seeks to supplant existing regional architectures and identities by subordinating them to global strategic competition between China and the United States. This logic has profound consequences on the agency of small states and regional organizations, which thus find themselves encompassed within this imposed framework.
For many states located in this space, the macro-securitization underlying the concept of the Indo-Pacific constitutes an unwelcome imposition. It forces them to a binary choice: align with the United States or deal with China. This limits their room for diplomatic maneuver and threatens the relations they have patiently cultivated with these two powers. For many, this process transforms a region of opportunity and economic integration into a space defined mainly by strategic competition and the risk of conflict.
ASEAN’s response to Indo-Pacific macrosecuritization illustrates how relatively smaller states can collectively seek to navigate the Indo-Pacific era. ASEAN positions itself as a central interlocutor in the evolving regional architecture, approaching the concept of the Indo-Pacific on its own terms, rather than accepting or rejecting it outright. Through the ASEAN Outlook on the Indo-Pacific, the organization affirms the centrality of ASEAN as the organizing principle of regional cooperation. At the same time, it maintains a pragmatic and plural engagement with China –via mechanisms such as ASEAN Plus One and the East Asia Forum – generally favoring engagement rather than containment. To date, this approach has proven relatively effective, with ASEAN managing to maintain a productive dialogue with both United States (and its Indo-Pacific partners) and China.
It is therefore in this context that the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and the FIP strategic narrative on the Blue Pacific must be understood. The Pacific island states – although generally perceived as small and seemingly vulnerable – are not mere spectators of great power competition. Not only do they have extensive experience in managing relations with them, but they have also developed a sophisticated strategic narrative that does not just resist the Indo-Pacific framing: it aims to fundamentally redefine what constitutes an existential threat to the region.
The FIP, as briefly mentioned in the introduction, has evolved considerably over the years and now presents a marked geopolitical axis. This forum brings together as full members all the sovereign states that make up Oceania (Cook Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Niue, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, the Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu and Vanuatu), as well as, since 2016, the two French overseas communities (New Caledonia and French Polynesia), without forgetting Australia and New Zealand. In addition, the FIP includes a long list of associate members, observers and dialogue partners: an architecture currently in the process of restructuring, through a tiered system (tier system) in order to better coordinate these external partnerships.
One of the major challenges for the Pacific island states is to guarantee respect for their agency, while the legacy of colonialism and, in a more discussed manner, a less visible neocolonialism are insistently manifested there. The perception that their capacity for action is systematically neglected by the great powers exercising influence in the region (the United States, Australia and, to a lesser extent, France and New Zealand) is in fact widely shared.
Many island states have expressed their reluctance to embrace the concept of the Indo-Pacific and are concerned about power rivalries between China and the United States, which they perceive as a brake on the expression of their agency and as a distraction from which constitutes, in their eyes, the most pressing existential threat to the region: climate change. In this context, the launch of AUKUS in 2021 was greeted with skepticism. A joint statement from four former Pacific Prime Ministers – Hilda Heine (Marshall Islands), Tommy Remengesau (Palau), Enele Sopoaga (Tuvalu) and Anote Tong (Kiribati) – deplored the “$368 billion allocated to the AUKUS agreement”. “, which went “against island states, which have long called for support for climate change.”
The FIP has established itself as an active counterweight to the broader macro-securitization efforts underlying the Indo-Pacific concept by proposing an alternative vision of the region, known as the Blue Pacific, that prioritizes climate change. In the 2050 Strategy, an alternative discourse on the subject of the Pacific is thus formulated. What matters is that it is fundamentally different from status quo by integrating a non-Western and non-anthropocentric perspective, and drawing heavily on Melanesian, Micronesian and Polynesian ontologies and epistemologies.
In the preface of the document, it is indeed underlined that “we attach great importance to our oceans and our lands, and we celebrate the deep link which unites us to our community, to our natural environment, to our resources, to our means of subsistence, to our beliefs, to our cultural values and to our knowledge traditional.” Further in the document, the strategy establishes a “shared stewardship of the blue continent of the Pacific” and recognizes the “need to take urgent, immediate and appropriate measures to combat the threat and consequences of climate change, the loss of biodiversity and the habitat degradation, waste and pollution, as well as other threats.”
Thus, the fundamental tension between the Indo-Pacific and Blue Pacific framings lies in the very definition of existential threat. For promoters of Indo-Pacific macrosecurity, China’s rise constitutes a challenge to the liberal international order which has guaranteed peace and prosperity since 1945. China’s authoritarian political system, its ever-stronger territorial claims in the South China Sea, its military modernization, its economic diplomacy via the New Silk Roads, as well as its growing influence in international institutions, are invoked as proof of this threat.
For the Pacific island states, on the other hand, climate change is a much more urgent and incontestable subject. Rising sea levels threaten to submerge some island territories this century. The increasing frequency and intensity of tropical cyclones are devastating infrastructure and economies, and ocean acidification is ravaging the marine ecosystems on which people in the Pacific depend for food and livelihoods. The penetration of land by salt water also renders fresh water sources and agricultural land unusable.
These threats are neither abstract nor potential: they constitute realities experienced by Pacific communities. The existential dimension of climate change for these states is not rhetorical; it is tangible. As Tuvaluan politician Simon Kofe pointed out in 2022: “If we really want to work for world peace and fight climate change, there are no good guys or bad guys.”[…] We need China on our side. We need the United States on our side.” This quote perfectly illustrates the fundamental divergence between the two framings. From a Pacific perspective, strategic competition is, at best, a distraction from the real existential threat of climate change, and, at worst, an active obstacle to addressing it. The militarization of the region, the mobilization of resources in the service of strategic competition and the pressure placed on island states to take sides distract from the urgent imperative for collective action in the face of climate change.
The limits and potential of the Blue Pacific
Whether the FIP can succeed in counter-securitizing (or re-securitizing) the Indo-Pacific by refocusing attention on climate change represents a considerable challenge, given the relatively small size of the Pacific island states, both individually and collectively. Their combined gross domestic product (GDP) is in fact less than 50 billion dollars, well below that of the great powers, which amounts to thousands of billions. Their total population is estimated at less than 15 million inhabitants and their military capabilities are negligible on the scale of the great powers. Furthermore, they remain heavily dependent on external aid and investment: Australia alone provides Oceania with more than $1 billion in development aid each year. Furthermore, China, after a retreat during the COVID 19 pandemic, has returned with vigor since 2023 and is actively intensifying its engagement efforts. This economic dependence creates vulnerabilities that limit the room for maneuver of island states for independent action.
The FIP also faces internal challenges. The temporary withdrawal of several Micronesian states in 2021, linked to disputes over leadershiphighlighted underlying tensions within the organization. There is a huge disparity in the sizes, capabilities and interests of member states – from Papua New Guinea with an estimated population of over 10 million, to Nauru with barely 10,000 people. – makes coordination complex. Furthermore, the presence of Australia and New Zealand – both former colonial powers in the Pacific – as members of the forum also generates, despite its many advantages, tensions due to their status as developed countries and their sometimes divergent interests.
Furthermore, the institution of the FIP as such, like its strategic narrative of the Blue Pacific, appears particularly vulnerable to attempts at co-optation by the great powers. Although the Partners for the Blue Pacific (PBP) system, an initiative led by the United States with other so-called “Indo-Pacific” powers, is presented as aiming to support Oceanian regionalism, it is in reality part of a deeply Indo-Pacific perspective. anchored. According to Greg Fry, Tarcisius Kabutaulaka and Terence Wesley-Smith, the Partners for the Blue Pacific have, essentially, “disregarded” the true objectives of the Blue Pacific, to the extent that they seek to exploit this dynamic in the service of their own strategic ends, first and foremost the desire to contain the China. Similar criticisms have been leveled against the “Pacific Charter” recently proposed by the Heritage Foundation, an institution known to be close to the Trump administration.
Additional probable indicators of this co-optation, certain elements of the Indo-Pacific framework seem to be gradually interfering in Pacific regional strategies. The most notable example is the vision of an “ocean of peace” held by Fijian Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka, through which he presents Fiji as a key player helping to ensure a “stable balance in a broader Indo-Pacific”. However, until now, the FIP has resisted any explicit adoption of the Indo-Pacific framework. The most obvious proof of this is the final communiqué of the 2025 FIP Leaders’ Summit: if Rabuka’s vision of an “ocean of peace” was certainly endorsed there, it is nevertheless significant that it was reformulated before being raised in the title of the “Blue Pacific Ocean of Peace Declaration”, without any mention of the Indo-Pacific appearing in the latter.
Despite its inherent challenges, the Blue Pacific can capitalize on some successes regarding the reconfiguration of regional discourse. Climate change is now widely recognized, including by Australia and New Zealand, as the main security threat facing the island Pacific. This issue also finds an important echo on a global scale, in particular among the countries of the “Global South”, located on the front line of these effects. In this context, the FIP’s collective voice on the climate issue has attracted growing international attention in recent years. The leaders of Pacific island states have been able to effectively mobilize international forums, from the United Nations to the climate negotiations at the Conference of the Parties (COP), in order to highlight this existential threat.
L’avenir : coexistence, concurrence ou synthèse ?
In the future, several possible trajectories are emerging regarding the relationship between the Indo-Pacific and the Blue Pacific frameworks. A first hypothesis envisages a lasting coexistence, marked by persistent tensions. The Indo-Pacific could remain the dominant framework for strategic competition between great powers, while that of the Blue Pacific would remain as a regional counter-discourse, the two evolving in parallel without direct confrontation. It is also necessary to take into account the influence of China, which favors the “Asia-Pacific” framework and has considerably intensified its commitment in the Pacific in recent years, in particular with the security agreement concluded in 2022 with the Solomon Islands. An uncomfortable coexistence between these different framings seems to characterize the current situation; however, it remains intrinsically unstable to the extent that these framings are based on distinct ontological points of view.
A second hypothesis is based on the intensification of strategic competition to the point of eclipsing alternative frameworks. If relations between the United States and China continue to deteriorate and the region experiences increased militarization and a higher risk of conflict, the space for alternative narratives such as the Blue Pacific could shrink. Pacific island states could then be forced to choose sides, with their own security agenda subordinated to the imperatives of the great powers. Certain empirical elements seem to point in this direction. Indeed, the United States-FIP summit, organized in 2023 in Washington, placed strong emphasis on the need to counter China, while a little earlier the same year, the United States signed a defense agreement (DCA) with China. Papua New Guinea.
A third, more optimistic hypothesis provides for a form of synthesis or accommodation. It requires major powers to genuinely integrate climate change as a central security concern into their Indo-Pacific strategies, or recognize that the fight against climate change involves cooperation rather than competition. There are some tentative signs in this direction: both the United States and China have recognized climate change as an important issue, and climate cooperation has sometimes been identified as a potential area for bilateral cooperation, even in a context of broader strategic competition.
Recent developments have further complicated these dynamics. The return of Donald Trump to the White House has introduced significant uncertainty into the US Indo-Pacific strategy. His first term was marked by the formal adoption of the Indo-Pacific concept and the designation of China as a strategic competitor. However, this second mandate is characterized by more transactional approaches, apparently less focused on an Indo-Pacific “grand strategy” and more oriented towards bilateral trade agreements, among others.
This shift could, in an unintentional way, open up more space for alternative framings. If the United States pays less attention to promoting Indo-Pacific macrosecurity, other actors – including Pacific island states – could have ample room to advance their own security agendas. Developments could also create significant instability and uncertainty, which could pose particular adaptation challenges for small states.
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The Blue Pacific strategy supported by the FIP constitutes much more than a simple rhetorical and passive response to the concept of the Indo-Pacific. It amounts to a sophisticated attempt at re-securitization, proposing an alternative macro-securitization that identifies a distinct existential threat, protects other referent objects and calls for different exceptional measures.
This counter-securitization is also based on indigenous knowledge systems which offer fundamentally different ways of conceiving security, community and relationships between human societies and their environment. She says climate change – not China – is the main existential threat to the Pacific region. It also claims the capacity for action of the Pacific island states in defining their own security priorities, rather than seeing them imposed by external powers.
The competition between these frameworks is not just an academic debate. It has concrete implications and profound ramifications in terms of resource allocation, diplomatic priorities, military postures and, ultimately, for the security and survival of the populations of the Pacific. Whether resources and political attention are directed toward military buildup and strategic competition, or toward climate change adaptation and sustainable development, is a critical issue for Pacific states.
The concept of macrosecurity allows us to understand these dynamics not as inevitable consequences of objective threats, but as constructions resulting from political discourses and actions. The Indo-Pacific is not a “natural” region responding to an obvious threat; it is an elaborate overhanging construction (top-down), shaped by performative security discourses and strategic choices. In the same way, the Blue Pacific is not simply the description of a geographical reality, but a political project aimed at redefining the very terms of security in the region.
Recognizing this constructed nature does not make the threats any less real – the rise of China and the ambitions that accompany it, like the threat of climate change, are undeniable realities. However, it does shed light on the way in which these threats are framed, prioritized and processed, and how they arise from political choices and not from inevitable necessities.
The FIP, despite the material limitations specific to island states, has demonstrated that alternative framings are possible and can find an echo. The Blue Pacific has already challenged dominant discourses and obtained a certain international recognition. He affirmed the capacity for action of actors in the Pacific Islands in defining their priorities and proposed a vision of regional cooperation anchored in indigenous perspectives and centered on truly existential threats.
In an era often marked by pessimism in the face of competition between great powers and the erosion of international cooperation, the Blue Pacific offers a perspective that has become rare: a vision of international relations based on partnership ambition, respect for indigenous knowledge and collective action in the face of shared existential threats. The ability of this vision to prevail could say a lot about the nature of the world in which we live – a world dominated by strategic competition and zero-sum logics, or a world capable of placing human survival and flourishing above the imperatives of power.
Crédit photo : SCM Jeans
