{"id":1849,"date":"2025-09-17T11:17:01","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T11:17:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/?p=1849"},"modified":"2025-09-17T12:29:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T12:29:15","slug":"palau-the-war-in-the-pacific-has-begun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/2025\/09\/17\/palau-the-war-in-the-pacific-has-begun\/","title":{"rendered":"Palau: The war in the Pacific has begun"},"content":{"rendered":"

The menacing sailing of the US and Chinese armadas aside, the local “war camps” on the seas of the world’s largest ocean will perhaps be clearer next year, when Palau (.458 square kilometers, 17,000 inhabitants.) hosts the annual gathering of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). Namely, within the PIF group (founded in 1971, today it has 18 members), Palau, the Marshall Islands and Tuvalu recognize Taiwan’s sovereignty, which causes noticeable dissatisfaction with China, otherwise a key development partner of most of the tiny PIF members. Some, such as the sovereign states of Nauru and Tuvalu, each have an area of \u200b\u200bless than 30 square kilometers. \"\" “We have to help our people understand that because of our maritime location we are under constant pressure. I could say that we are already at war,” Surangel Whipps Jr., president of Palau, said at a gathering in Hawaii, ahead of this year’s summit of PIF member leaders in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands (September 8-12). Meanwhile, Australia and New Zealand, the two “giants” among the PIF membership, in separate assessments by senior officials in Canberra and Wellington these days claim that “it is obvious that outside forces are interfering in the creation of a common policy of the members of the Pacific Islands”. Foreign powers, and which ones, were not specified in these announcements. The Pacific Islands Forum has 13 associate members, twenty-one “dialogue partners” and one “development partner” (Taiwan). Ahead of this year’s Forum in Honiara, the two largest economies in the world: the USA and China announced new investments in the development of the region: Beijing over 700 million dollars only for Nauru (12,000 inhabitants), Washington about 60 million dollars for the PIF region. How to resist the influences and pressures that often follow such offers? Jeremiah Manele, Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands and Chairman of the PIF, on that occasion came up with a radical strategy: not to invite any dialogue partner to the most important annual gathering of state leaders in the middle of the strategic global military-naval space of the Pacific. Can the “small of the Pacific” do without China, and without America, and without…? “Individually, we are small and relatively isolated. We face existential and security threats, starting with the climate crisis, epidemics, terrorism, transnational crime, the outflow of labor, economic fragility, the imposed competition of geopolitical interests… For us individually, these challenges are insurmountable. Our hope is in our association,” Sitiveni Rabuka, Prime Minister of Fiji, said in Honiara. From this register, PIF adopted the “Declaration of Peace in the Pacific Ocean” this year. In addition, they introduced a new procedure for registering interested “dialogue partners” for participation in the work of the PIF. The extent of the “jointness” of the PIF membership spread over 8.5 million square kilometers of land and vast sea is of great interest to numerous foreign strategists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The menacing sailing of the US and Chinese armadas aside, the local “war camps” on the seas of the world’s largest ocean will perhaps be clearer next year, when Palau (.458 square kilometers, 17,000 inhabitants.) hosts the annual gathering of the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). Namely, within the PIF group (founded in 1971, today it […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1850,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-sea-new-dramas-on-the-horizon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1849"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1855,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1849\/revisions\/1855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1850"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vujic-geopolitika.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}