POLICY FORUM
10 May 2021
National security strategies will make the Pacific safer, provided they are realistic, the product of widespread consultation, embedded in the local culture, and effectively implemented, Tim George writes.
The development of national security strategies is now firmly on the Pacific regional agenda. Four countries have completed such strategies – Papua New Guinea (2013), Samoa (2018), Vanuatu (2019), and Solomon Islands (2020) – while a number of others are well advanced.
The region has been quick to adopt an expanded concept of security – articulated by Pacific Island Forum leaders in the 2018 Boe Declaration on Regional Security – which extends well beyond traditional notions of security such as sovereignty, territorial integrity, and the maintenance of internal stability. There is widespread recognition of the gravity of global threats posed by ‘problems without borders’, such as climate change, the spread of infectious diseases, and cyber-attacks, and that human security and a just society are fundamental to national security.