When Singapore’s Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing addressed the Xiangshan Forum in Beijing this past Wednesday, he delivered what may be the most thoughtful speech on statecraft heard in the region this year. It deserves to be read carefully here in Suva, because the principles he outlined speak directly to the delicate position Fiji and our Pasifika neighbours now occupy.
Chan’s central question was this: how do we strengthen our own security without weakening the security of others? It is a question that resonates across the Blue Pasifika, where we are being courted, pressured, and pulled by competing powers — Australia, the United States and the West on one side, China and India on the other.
His answer drew on a well-known insight in international relations: the “security dilemma.” One country’s efforts to make itself safer almost inevitably make others feel less safe, triggering a spiral where everyone ends up more insecure. For small states like ours in the Pasifika, this is not an abstract theory. It is our daily reality.
Consider what has unfolded in just the past few months
In July, Fiji signed the Ocean of Peace Alliance with Australia — our first mutual defense treaty. Prime Minister Sitiveni Rabuka and his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese formalised what is now called the Vuvale Union, under which the two nations agreed to consult each other over any “security-related development” which may threaten their sovereignty. Australia committed $1.5 billion over ten years. In response to questions in Parliament, Fiji’s Foreign Affairs Ministry insisted the pact would not affect our relationship with China.
Around the same time, China test-fired a nuclear-capable ballistic missile from a submarine into the South Pasifika. At the Pacific Islands Forum summit in Palau earlier this month, Pasifika leaders expressed “concern” and called on all states undertaking such tests to provide at least 24 hours’ advance notification. Naoero dissented.
Days earlier, Australia and the United States announced a combined $580 million in funding for Pasifika nations, explicitly framed as part of their competition with China for influence in the region.
These are the dynamics Chan warned about. Each action, taken in isolation, may seem justifiable. Collectively, they produce exactly the spiral of insecurity he described — and it is the Pasifika that feels the effects.
What Chan got right
The Singaporean minister’s most powerful insight was his redefinition of “winning.” To him, winning is not about “outgunning or outlasting a rival.” It is about winning others over through “the power of our example,” not “the example of our power.”
He quoted the ancient philosopher Mencius: “Power may compel others to comply. But in the end, it is trust that truly wins others over.” This is the distinction between what Chinese strategic thought calls badao — the hegemonic way of force, which is brittle and unsustainable — and wangdao, the kingly way of virtue, where others follow voluntarily.
For Fiji, this is a welcome framework. We have long insisted on an independent foreign policy. We are friends to all and enemies to none. We do not wish to be conscripted into anyone’s alliance. We have repeatedly rejected the idea of hosting a permanent Chinese military presence, and just as firmly rejected the notion that signing a defense treaty with Australia means we are taking sides against Beijing.
Chan’s emphasis on “strategic patience” also deserves attention. “Not every capability needs to be advertised,” he said. “Not every advantage needs to be immediately pressed. Not every provocation demands an immediate response.” A great power that feels compelled to respond to everything is, in effect, letting its rivals set its agenda. A confident power can afford restraint.
And his final principle — “first, do no harm” — is one we would ask every partner to embrace. Trust, he said, “is built by being consistent, but lost in a single instant.” Every unnecessary provocation, every military test without warning, every dollar of aid that comes with strings attached is a withdrawal from a trust account that is very expensive to fill.
Where the speech falls short
Yet for all its wisdom, Chan’s speech was delivered from the perspective of a confident small state that has found its equilibrium. Fiji’s position; as well as most Pasifika island states, is more precarious.
The security dilemma Chan describes is not something we can solve through statecraft alone. It is an external condition being imposed upon us. When Australia and the US announce half a billion dollars in funding explicitly as a measure to “battle China for influence,” we are not participants in that rivalry — we are the terrain on which it is being fought.
More troubling is the silence at the heart of the speech. The Pasifika’s own security agenda — as articulated in the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent and the Boe Declaration — identifies climate change as “the single greatest threat to the security and wellbeing of Pacific peoples”. Yet climate change barely features in the frameworks the major powers bring to our region. Their security is defined by military competition; ours is defined by survival.
Chan’s speech does not grapple with this. Its conception of “winning” remains strategic and economic, not ecological. For a Fijian, any definition of security that does not prioritise the survival of our islands is fundamentally incomplete.
What Fiji and the Pasifika should take from this
Chan Chun Sing’s speech is a valuable contribution to a conversation the Pasifika needs to have. Its emphasis on redefining winning, building trust, and exercising restraint offers a genuine alternative to the zero-sum logic that too often dominates great power discourse.
But its principles are those of a confident state speaking to other confident states. For Fiji and the Pasifika, they are aspirations to hold our partners to, not descriptions of the world we live in.
The true test of the statecraft Chan describes is not whether great powers can articulate wise principles. It is whether they can subordinate their rivalries to the existential security needs of the region they are courting.
Until they do, the “spiral of insecurity” will remain a lived reality for the Blue Pasifika — not a theoretical warning from a comfortable lecture hall in Beijing.
Pasifika Talanoa by a traveled ITaukei Fijian 