Competing Regional Visions and Incompatible Priorities: The Blue Pacific and Indo-Pacific in the Age of AUKUS

Abstract

As two distinct visions of regional order and identity, the Blue Pacific and Indo-Pacific have been pursued with increasing vigour over the last five years. On the one hand, the Blue Pacific is championed by Pacific Island leaders as a framework for Pacific Islands regionalism founded on shared values, a common Oceanian identity and a commitment to collective action (PIFS 2022). Its insistence on Pacific selfdetermination has seen the Blue Pacific described as a strategy and narrative for assertive diplomacy that resists attempts to draw the Pacific Islands region into intensifying geopolitical power struggles between China and the United States and instead positions the Pacific as independent in its navigation of global politics (Kabutaulaka 2021). The Indo-Pacific, on the other hand, emerges as a product of these geopolitical power struggles. It projects a vision of democratic regional order stretching across the vast expanse of the Indian and Pacific Oceans and provides a policy platform for security collaboration between its member nations to advance such ambition. Promoted by the US and its allies, this second regional mapping seeks to counter China’s growing presence across this extended maritime region and secure what is commonly referred to as a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ (Biden et al. 14/3/2023).