As Pacific Islands Forum leaders gathered in Palau, one of the last nations recognizing Taiwan, five members skipped sending their top leaders. Meanwhile, a June survey found New Zealanders now rate the United States a greater threat than China, to which our guest said warmth toward Washington had “fallen off a cliff.”

Hosts Ray Powell and Jim Carouso are joined by David Capie, Director of the Centre for Strategic Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, who explains why views of both great powers have shifted. Warmth toward China had eroded for years because of its actions toward the South China Sea, Hong Kong, and the Uyghurs, as well as its expanding Pacific presence since the 2022 Solomon Islands agreement. Then a PLA Navy task group circumnavigated Australia and conducted live-fire drills in the Tasman Sea, diverting commercial flights. Strategy documents are read by “foreign policy nerds,” Capie notes, but when flights carrying “grandma home to the Gold Coast” get rerouted, the public notices.

What flipped the ranking was 18 months of U.S. policy, such as tariff whiplash, Greenland and Canada rhetoric, and USAID’s closure leaving perceptions of America “in the freezer” while Beijing now pitches itself as the responsible, predictable partner.

He maps New Zealand’s foreign policy reset ahead of November’s election: leaning into Australia and Five Eyes partners, deeper security cooperation with Japan, new partnerships across Southeast Asia and a recalibrated India relationship. On the Cook Islands, Capie traces how Wellington’s relations with Rarotonga had soured over a China partnership agreed without adequate consultation, the aid pause that followed, and the new Declaration on Defence and Security, but then unpacks the surprise U.S.–New Zealand port project at Penrhyn and its link to seabed minerals.

On the missing PIF leaders, his verdict is “a little from column A and a little from column B”. Chinese pressure is real, but so are local dynamics like the Solomon Islands no-confidence vote that pulled Prime Minister Wale back home. He warns against “always seeing strategic machinations where often there are local dynamics at play.”

Australia’s Ocean of Peace Alliance with Fiji prompts hard questions about militarization and whether Canberra and Wellington praise PIF centrality while building a parallel architecture. That tension showed after China’s July 2026 submarine-launched ballistic missile test into the Pacific, its first ever into international open waters. Leaders spoke frankly, but no collective PIF statement emerged.

Keeping China out of the Pacific Islands, Capie says, would be “a fool’s errand” – the real concern is its expanding security footprint. His challenge to Wellington, Canberra, and Washington: lift your game and treat transnational crime and climate change as priorities in their own right.

Plus: pavlova, flat whites, and why David won’t perform a haka.

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