Reviewing PNG’s Foreign Policy White Paper 2025: A Decision-Making Exercise for Students

By Bernard Yegiora

On Friday, 10 July, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, our online class will focus on reviewing the Papua New Guinea Foreign Policy White Paper 2025. This session will form part of Assessment Task 2: Online Participation, which means students are expected to do more than simply attend the Zoom class. You must actively participate by asking questions, making comments, contributing to group discussion, and helping your group complete the Zoom Whiteboard activity.

A screenshot of Week Two on Moodle. Students are required to complete both Lesson 2 and Activity 2 during the same week. Lesson 2 focuses on The Two Worlds of Foreign Policy — Academics, Practitioners, and Implementation, while Activity 2 is a separate online participation task reviewing the PNG Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 using Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of analysis.

The focus of this activity is straightforward but important: we will review the Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 as a foreign policy decision-making document. In other words, we are not only interested in what the document says. We are interested in how it reflects PNG’s national interests, strategic priorities, institutional processes, policy pressures, and implementation challenges.

Foreign policy is not made in a vacuum. It is shaped by leaders, institutions, national interests, domestic pressures, regional developments, and global changes. For a country like Papua New Guinea, foreign policy is also shaped by our history, geography, development needs, sovereignty concerns, economic ambitions, and relationships with major partners. This is why the White Paper must be reviewed analytically, not just summarised descriptively.

To guide our review, we will use Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of foreign policy analysis: the strategic level, contextual level, organisational level, and operational level. These four levels help us examine foreign policy as a process. They allow us to ask: What national interests are being advanced? What domestic and international pressures shaped the policy? Which institutions and actors were involved? How will the policy be implemented in practice?

This framework has already been used in PNG foreign policy scholarship. Dr Philip Mitna, in his PhD thesis Factors Influencing Papua New Guinea’s Foreign Policy in the Twenty-First Century, used Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels to analyse PNG foreign policy-making. Mitna explains that foreign policy occurs across strategic, contextual, organisational, and operational levels, and that these levels are connected in producing actual foreign policy initiatives and responses.

This is important for our class. We are not applying theory in the abstract. We are using a framework that has already been applied to PNG’s foreign policy experience. Mitna’s work reminds us that PNG foreign policy has often been affected by weak institutional coordination, limited bureaucratic capacity, political leadership, domestic pressures, and external relationships. He also shows that foreign policy-making in PNG has not always been neatly tied to one institution, with responsibilities spread across the National Executive Council, the Department of Foreign Affairs, other departments, agencies, and political leaders.

This makes the Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 a useful document for analysis. The White Paper is not just a list of diplomatic priorities. It is a statement about how PNG wants to position itself in the world. It reflects questions of sovereignty, national interest, strategic partnerships, economic diplomacy, security, development cooperation, regional engagement, and institutional reform. It must therefore be reviewed as both a policy document and a decision-making product.

At the strategic level, students should ask: What long-term national interests does the White Paper promote? Does it clearly define PNG’s foreign policy direction? How does it protect sovereignty, security, economic prosperity, and PNG’s diplomatic identity? Does the principle of “Friends to All, Enemies to None” provide strategic clarity, or does it remain too broad?

At the contextual level, students should examine the wider environment that shaped the White Paper. PNG is operating in a changing regional and global order. Geopolitical competition, climate change, border issues, economic dependence, development pressures, security risks, and the growing importance of the Pacific all shape PNG’s foreign policy choices. Students should ask whether the White Paper responds adequately to these pressures.

At the organisational level, students should focus on the institutions and actors involved in foreign policy-making. This includes the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Foreign Affairs Minister, the Prime Minister, Cabinet, Parliament, senior public servants, diplomats, advisory groups, and other departments whose work affects foreign policy. Students should ask whether PNG has the institutional capacity and coordination required to implement the White Paper effectively.

At the operational level, students should examine the practical side of implementation. A policy document is only useful if it can be translated into action. Students should therefore ask: What programs, resources, partnerships, timelines, diplomatic tools, and administrative mechanisms are needed to implement the White Paper? What gaps or challenges may affect implementation? How will PNG’s overseas missions, public servants, and partner agencies turn the White Paper into real foreign policy practice?

During the Zoom class, students will be placed into breakout rooms. Each group will use Zoom Whiteboard to record its findings. The whiteboard activity will require each group to identify one key finding from each of the four levels of analysis, select the level that best explains the White Paper overall, and present a short review to the class.

Students must come prepared. Before the class, read or review the PNG Foreign Policy White Paper 2025. Identify its main priorities. Think about what it tells us about PNG’s national interest, foreign policy direction, institutional capacity, and implementation challenges. Each student should prepare at least one question or one comment for the class discussion.

This activity counts towards Assessment Task 2: Online Participation. Attendance alone is not enough. Participation requires active engagement. Students must ask relevant questions, make meaningful comments, respond to group members, engage with the White Paper, and apply Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of analysis.

The main question for the activity is:

How does the PNG Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 reflect foreign policy decision-making in Papua New Guinea when reviewed through Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of analysis?

By the end of the session, students should be able to explain whether the White Paper is mainly a strategic foreign policy document, a response to changing domestic and global conditions, an institutional reform document, an operational guide for implementation, or a combination of all four.

The purpose of this activity is to move beyond description. Students must not simply say what the White Paper contains. They must analyse how the document reflects PNG’s foreign policy-making process. That means asking harder questions about national interest, power, institutions, policy coordination, implementation, and PNG’s place in the international system.

This is the value of foreign policy analysis. It helps us understand not only what governments say, but how policy is made, why it is made, who shapes it, and whether it can be implemented effectively.

On Friday, students will be expected to think critically, participate actively, and contribute meaningfully to the review of PNG’s Foreign Policy White Paper 2025.