Last week, Matthew Wale became King Charles’ third Prime Minister of the Solomon Islands. Wale’s predecessor, Jeremiah Manele, lost a confidence motion in the National Parliament of the Solomon Islands by 22 votes to 26. Strikingly, Manele’s unpopularity in Parliament stemmed from geopolitical issues. Manele, who was Foreign Minister at the time of a controversial security pact with China in 2022, saw himself replaced by his chief critic and a leading China-hawk, who described the pact as “counterproductive to the security interests of the Solomon Islands and the region.”

British strategic thought rarely extends to the Pacific Islands. Despite having a population of just 1.4 million, these twelve independent nations on the other side of the globe cover an enormous expanse of ocean: when added together, they are jointly entitled to 20 million square kilometres, roughly almost one-fifth of the world’s surface. Nine of these countries are Commonwealth members: Tuvalu, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Kiribati, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Samoa and Tonga. Three: the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea and Tuvalu — share King Charles III as head of state. On the island of Tanna in Vanuatu, the late Prince Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh, is regarded as a deity. Britain maintains a permanent naval presence in the region with two Royal Navy offshore patrol vessels, HMS Tamar and HMS Spey. Last week, HMS Tamar docked in the Solomon Islands last week for a week-long stop, where it provided training to the local police force.

No wonder, then, that an original Commonwealth member, Australia, is seen as the region’s foremost power and security provider. However, since President Xi took office in China, the region has become highly contested.

Xi has conducted two state visits to the region since 2014, opened multiple new embassies in the region, scaled development funding and FDI and signed 54 bilateral agreements with the Pacific Islands, including multiple security partnerships.

Two deals in particular caused a high degree of consternation in the West.

First, in April 2022, the Solomon Islands signed a security pact with China. The agreement included provisions which would facilitate the Chinese navy using ports to replenish ships and allow for the deployment of Chinese police and armed forces in the Solomon Islands to maintain “social order.” Though not the establishment of a military base, it allows China to gain a military foothold in the region.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong described the deal as “the worst Australian foreign policy blunder in the Pacific since the end of World War II.” Consequently, in August 2022, the Solomon Islands refused Royal Navy and US Navy ships access. In September 2025, Prime Minister Manele hosted the 54th Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders Meeting in Honiara. Alarmingly, Manele refused to invite the United States or the UK, despite the latter being a ‘dialogue member’ of the PIF. The move was understood to be favourable to China, as it also excluded Taiwan, whom the Solomon Islands unrecognised in 2019. Second, in 2024, the Prime Minister of the Cook Islands travelled to Beijing to sign a comprehensive strategic partnership with China without consulting Wellington. This is despite, since 1965, the Cook Islands having been in ‘free association’ with New Zealand, which assumed the role of the main development and security provider to the Cook Islands.

The deal with China was the first the Islands signed beyond Australia and New Zealand and covered tourism, technology, infrastructure and deep-sea mineral exploration. In Wellington, Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters described the agreement as a “matter of significant concern.” New Zealand then paused £8 million worth of funding to the Cook Islands.

China has also invested a large amount into the region’s infrastructure. Some of the infrastructure, including ports and airstrips, is considered dual-use and can serve both civilian and, in the event of conflict, military purposes.

China’s interest in the Pacific Islands centres around its geostrategic and military ambitions, on top of its diplomatic influence.

First, by establishing a military foothold in the Pacific Islands, China can disrupt Western deterrence, secure key sea lines of communication and conduct intelligence gathering operations on its adversaries such as Australia. Second, by pushing the Pacific Islands to switch recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, as three — Solomon Islands, Nauru and Kiribati — have already done, China can isolate Taiwan diplomatically. Third, the twelve votes of the Pacific Islands at the United Nations have increasingly aligned with China’s position, facilitating China’s diplomacy.

Britain must be actively involved in resisting and countering China’s efforts in the region. As an AUKUS member, a founding member of the Partners in the Blue Pacific initiative, an ASEAN dialogue partner, as well as a signatory of several other pacts to do with the region (CPTPP, the Five Power Defence Arrangement, Five Eyes, CGAP and the UK-Japan Reciprocal Access Agreement), Britain is increasingly interested in the Pacific.

Given widespread cuts to USAID programmes, international climate finance is one area in which Britain can lead. Climate change is a crucial issue for the Pacific Islands. To the low-lying atolls of Kiribati, Tuvalu and the Marshall Islands, rising sea levels are an existential risk. The 2018 meeting of leaders of the Pacific Islands Forum produced the Boe Declaration on Regional Security, which declared that “climate change remains the single greatest threat to the livelihoods, security and wellbeing of the peoples of the Pacific.”

Besides, polling in the Solomon Islands reveals that “90 percent of people said that they preferred their country aligning with liberal democracies instead of China, and nearly 80 percent said they did not want their country receiving financial aid from China.”

Britain should integrate the Pacific Islands into its broader Indo-Pacific strategy. It should build on recent initiatives, such as the £500mn Blue Planet Fund, this year’s Small Island Developing States Strategy and the 2019 ‘Pacific Uplift’ policy in which the UK opened embassies in Samoa, Tonga and Vanuatu. Indeed, Britain should open yet more embassies, especially in nations which host Chinese embassies. Kiribati, for instance, hosts a Chinese embassy but not an American or a British embassy. We should announce an Ambassador to the Pacific Islands Forum to coordinate on a multilateral basis. In concert with our allies, Britain should also conduct more defence diplomacy, such as that demonstrated by HMS Tamar this week, as an alternative to the Chinese offer which embeds authoritarian practices. We need more regular visits and the establishment of a UK-PIC ministerial track with working groups on trade, security and climate.

Britain should recognise its potential to be influential in the Pacific, building on deep historic ties, shared values, common legal and political systems and in some cases a shared head of state. Crucially, it should recognise its engagement with the Pacific Islands as an effective means of securing objectives as part of its wider strategic interests rivalling China.

Original picture of what happened the last time the British had to defend their interests in the Pacific. Taken by a Royal Navy official photographer aboard HMS Victorious, it shows the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable on fire after being struck by a Kamikaze.