Beyond the “Ocean of Peace”: PNG Needs a Realist Position on Missile Testing in the Pacific

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By Bernard Yegiora

Prime Minister James Marape’s call for the Pacific to remain an “Ocean of Peace” is morally appealing. It speaks to the region’s painful history of war, nuclear testing, foreign military activity, and great-power competition.

But as foreign policy, the phrase is utopian.

Major powers will not stop testing weapons because Pacific leaders ask them to. The United States, China, France, Russia, and the United Kingdom all maintain defence strategies that require weapons testing, deterrence signalling, and military readiness. Whether Pacific Island countries like it or not, weapons testing is not disappearing.

This is why PNG must move beyond slogans and adopt a realist Pacific security position.

The real question is not whether missile testing can be completely stopped. It cannot. The real question is whether PNG can demand transparency, prior notification, environmental safeguards, sovereign respect, and one consistent diplomatic standard from all major powers.

This matters because China’s recent missile test has been treated as exceptional. Beijing, however, described the launch as routine, not directed at any country, and notified in advance. That explanation is similar to the language used by the United States when it conducts its own ICBM tests across the Pacific.

In March 2026, the United States launched an unarmed Minuteman III ICBM from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. The missile carried multiple test re-entry vehicles and travelled thousands of miles to Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands. U.S. authorities described the test as routine, planned years in advance, and not a response to world events.

So PNG must be careful. If China’s missile test is criticised because it contributes to the militarisation of the Pacific, then U.S. missile testing should be assessed using the same standard. Otherwise, PNG risks appearing selective: critical when China acts, but quiet when America does something similar.

As someone who studies China-PNG relations, I do not think China’s actions should automatically be read through a threat lens while similar actions by the United States are normalised. China is an important development, trade, education, infrastructure, and diplomatic partner for PNG. That does not mean PNG should accept everything China does. It means PNG should interpret China’s behaviour with strategic balance, not reflexive suspicion.

Marape’s statement was diplomatically careful because he reaffirmed PNG’s longstanding relationship with China and PNG’s commitment to the One China Policy. That distinction is important. PNG can maintain a strong relationship with China while still asking serious questions about military activity in the Pacific.

But PNG should ask the same questions of all powers.

The real test will come when the United States conducts another ICBM test across the Pacific. Will PNG issue the same public concern? Will it ask Washington for the same transparency, notification, and respect it expects from Beijing?

That is where PNG’s foreign policy credibility will be tested.

PNG does not need to be anti-China or anti-America. It needs to be strategically consistent.

An “Ocean of Peace” sounds good, but it is not enough. PNG needs a realist Pacific security doctrine: equal standards, prior notification, environmental protection, and sovereign respect from every major power.

Not only China. Not only the United States. All of them.

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