Description
Faced with China’s growing presence in the South Pacific, Australia and New Zealand (NZ) embarked in the late 2010s on major Pacific policy initiatives, the “Step-up” and the “Reset”. Both initiatives have involved substantial increases in development assistance, diplomatic posts, and high-level visit diplomacy. Yet, whereas Australia’s Step-up has focused in substantive terms on conventional security issues, NZ’s Reset has entailed greater emphasis on climate-change induced challenges in the Pacific, reflecting a more comprehensive understanding of security shared by Pacific Island Countries (PICs). These two initiatives signalled to PICs the two Australasian allies’ desire to remain their first-choice partners. To the United States, and other audiences, the initiatives signalled Australia and NZ’s resolve to assume greater responsibility in a context of growing geostrategic competition in the Indo-Pacific.
Drawing on International Relations scholarship and communication theory, I conceptualize signalling as a form of inter-state communication through which a sender seeks to influence the behavior or worldviews of one or more receivers. The efficacy of such communication is determined not just by its costliness (as suggested by the mainstream literature on signalling) but depends crucially on how the signals are perceived by the respective receivers. The receivers’ interpretation of signals reflects, in turn, their past experiences with as well as other relevant behavior of the sender. The case of Australia and NZ’s recent Pacific initiatives illustrates these dynamics. PICs have welcomed the intensified engagement of the two traditional regional powers. However, discrepancies in Australia and PICs’ security narratives have put the efficacy of the Step-up into question.
