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Oceania: The Erosion of Sovereignty as a Political Trend

The Pitfalls of Australia’s New Defense Pact with Papua New Guinea

By Ksenia Muratshina – New Eastern Outlook – November 16, 2025

Once Upon a Time in Oceania

Last October, a significant event took place in the Oceania region—significant, that is, in a negative sense. It was the signing of a Mutual Defense Treaty between Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). The very necessity for “defense” is an open question—just who in the modern world would need to attack PNG? Or, more precisely, who would have wanted to before it tied itself to an American ally that is constantly getting bogged down in one conflict after another, following Washington’s lead? Nevertheless, this treaty became the first military alliance in the history of the independent New Guinean state (since 1975).

As for Australia, its authorities claim they haven’t signed a treaty of this level and substantive depth in 70 years, not since the well-known ANZUS pact. While Australia is in a military alliance not only with the US and New Zealand but also with the UK, the AUKUS agreements are not as detailed. The document with PNG is also remarkable because it demonstrates Canberra reaching a new level of interference in the internal affairs of neighboring countries. It elevates the status of interaction between the parties to an allied level and stipulates a series of corresponding measures. The main one is mutual assistance in the event of an external threat. Furthermore, it outlines the inadmissibility of actions that could hinder the fulfillment of allied agreements—a clause that sounds extremely broad and allows for any interpretation. The parties commit to developing a full spectrum of military-technical cooperation: personnel exchanges, military education and personnel training, “synchronization of military doctrines,” bilateral and multilateral exercises, “actions to support security interests at sea, on land, in the air, in space, and in cyberspace,” the sharing of intelligence and other “sensitive information” through secure channels, “logistics integration,” and “mutual access to defense infrastructure.” The treaty even approves the possibility of recruiting each other’s citizens into their armed forces on a mutual basis.

In plain English, all this means the following: Papua New Guinea is, in effect, losing the remnants of its even somewhat formal sovereignty (part of it, one could say, was left with the British Commonwealth; another part was taken by the US, which signed a less obligatory but almost identical military-technical cooperation agreement with PNG in 2023) and is signing up for the role of Australia’s squire. Or, more accurately, one of its squires.

The Wrong Kind of Falepili

The fact is that the Port Moresby treaty with Canberra fits perfectly into a troubling trend observed in Oceania: small island states, which already lack full autonomy in foreign and domestic policy, are voluntarily or under pressure ceding their remaining shares of sovereignty to Australia through such agreements. Earlier notable examples include Australia’s use of Nauru’s territory to host migrant detention centers, its police “cooperation” with the Solomon Islands, and the so-called “Falepili Treaty” with Tuvalu. According to the latter, Australia committed to “protecting” the small state from “external aggression” and accepting its residents as “climate refugees” should their territories be submerged due to rising sea levels. In return, Tuvalu lost the ability to make independent decisions in the spheres of foreign policy and security.

At the time, its citizens noticed something interesting: they nicknamed the treaty “falepili,” as in Tuvalu, this refers to a situation where one party does a genuine favor for another, expecting nothing in return, and can later ask for help in the same way. However, it turned out that Australia has its own understanding of “falepili,” fundamentally different from the Tuvaluan one. But by then, it was too late for the Tuvaluans to complain and say, like the bees in the famous cartoon, “That’s not right, falepili.”

Those Who Don’t Vote for Palestine

This inherently unequal interaction between Australia and its neighbors contributes to the limitation of Oceania’s sovereignty on a global scale. By exerting military-political and economic pressure on small island states and leveraging instruments of influence dating back to colonial times, the collective West uses its Oceanic partners merely as sources of raw materials and bargaining chips in its own ruthless political games.

We can regularly observe, for example, how the coerced votes of such specific international actors (due to their formal and de facto incomplete sovereignty) as the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau, or Tuvalu are used for anti-Russian resolutions, partial recognition of the Taiwanese regime, or, from recent events, countering the international recognition of Palestine. The diplomats of many Oceanic countries seem to feel no Global South solidarity with the Palestinian population. Following the lead of the US and Israel, such international heavyweights as Palau, Nauru, the Federated States of Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, and Tonga have already been compelled to voice their “weighty word” at the UN against the establishment of a Palestinian State.

When studying voting patterns in General Assembly resolutions, one is reminded of the joke that if a cat ran for office, only the mouse wouldn’t vote for it. In this case, it’s a specific contingent of politicians that votes for categories of issues beneficial to the West and “against” those that are not—those who, willingly or unwillingly, have found themselves dependent on Western coordinators and who, at some point, compromised the sovereignty of their states.

But it’s not just about resolutions! The governments of Fiji and Papua New Guinea went even further and, following the example of the US, Guatemala, Honduras, Paraguay, and the unrecognized Kosovo, moved their embassies to Jerusalem instead of Tel Aviv. By doing so, they openly display sympathy for Israel and the US, seemingly declaring that while they have no money for their own population’s social security, education, healthcare, agricultural support, or creating new industries, they somehow have the funds to move embassies to occupied territory.

At the same time, the obsequiousness of many Oceanic politicians towards the West is gradually beginning to cause ferment within their societies, which are tired of neocolonial practices. Moreover, this development is moving in the opposite direction, demanding an independent and multi-vector foreign policy. There are also emerging examples of active resistance to the imperialist treaties imposed by Australia. Notably, since 2022 (!), Vanuatu has been resisting the ratification of an agreement similar to the one with PNG. Serious internal political battles are underway there, and society has fully begun to realize that the issue of defense sovereignty is a matter of survival—for the country as an independent international actor and for normal relations with the rest of the world.

Incidentally, the Australia-Papua New Guinea treaty also still has to go through a ratification process. And the example of Vanuatu could prove useful for New Guinean society. Because only a critical understanding of the situation and a measured, rational approach to what is happening can help the states in this part of the world strive for a sovereign policy, rather than acting as tools in someone else’s hands and hostages to others’ interests.

Ksenia Muratshina, Ph.D. (History), Senior Research Fellow, Center for Southeast Asia, Australia, and Oceania Studies, Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences

November 16, 2025 - Posted by aletho | Militarism | Australia, Papua New Guinea, United States