Students Review PNG’s Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 Using Four Levels of Analysis

 By Bernard Yegiora

Students in PG428 Foreign Policy in PNG recently completed a special online activity reviewing the PNG Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 using Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of foreign policy analysis: strategic, contextual, organisational, and operational.

The activity required students to move beyond simply summarising the White Paper. Instead, they were asked to review it as a foreign policy decision-making document. This meant examining how PNG’s national interests, domestic and regional challenges, institutional actors, and implementation issues shape the country’s foreign policy direction.

The session was conducted through Zoom, with student groups presenting their analysis to the class. Each group reviewed the White Paper through the four levels of analysis and identified which level best explained the document overall. Most groups selected the strategic level as the primary level of analysis, arguing that the White Paper is mainly concerned with PNG’s long-term national interests, foreign policy direction, security priorities, economic prosperity, and strategic partnerships.

At the strategic level, students discussed how the White Paper promotes PNG’s national interests and seeks to position the country more effectively in the international system. Several groups highlighted the importance of sovereignty, national security, economic prosperity, regional leadership, and strategic partnerships. They also noted that the White Paper reflects PNG’s attempt to move from a largely reactive foreign policy posture towards a more proactive and coordinated approach.

At the contextual level, students examined the domestic, regional, and international factors that shaped the White Paper. They identified domestic challenges such as law and order problems, corruption, weak governance, limited institutional capacity, and development pressures. At the regional level, students discussed border security, climate change, regional diplomacy, and PNG’s role in the Pacific. At the international level, they considered strategic competition in the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific, including the need for PNG to manage relations with traditional partners and emerging powers.

At the organisational level, students considered the institutions and actors involved in PNG’s foreign policy process. These included the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Affairs Minister, Cabinet, Parliament, senior public servants, diplomats, and other government agencies whose responsibilities affect PNG’s external relations. Students recognised that foreign policy is not made by one institution alone. It requires coordination across government, and this remains one of PNG’s major policy challenges.

At the operational level, students focused on implementation. This was one of the strongest areas of discussion. Groups raised concerns about funding, staffing, human resource capacity, weak inter-agency coordination, overseas mission capacity, and the difficulty of translating ambitious foreign policy goals into practical programs. This point is critical. A White Paper can provide strategic direction, but without resources, institutional discipline, and implementation capacity, it risks remaining a statement of intent rather than a working policy framework.

One important theme that emerged from the discussion was the tension between PNG’s traditional foreign policy principle of “Friends to All, Enemies to None” and the more active and selective engagement required in the current strategic environment. Students debated whether PNG can continue to maintain broad diplomatic openness while also entering into deeper security and strategic arrangements with partners such as Australia and the United States.

This debate is important because it goes to the heart of PNG’s foreign policy identity. On one hand, PNG wants to maintain independence, sovereignty, and flexibility in its external relations. On the other hand, the country faces real security, economic, and development challenges that require stronger partnerships. The challenge is not whether PNG should have partners. The challenge is how PNG can manage those partnerships without compromising its national interest or strategic autonomy.

Students also discussed whether recent agreements, including security arrangements such as the Pukpuk Treaty with Australia, are consistent with the principle of “Friends to All, Enemies to None.” Different views were expressed. Some students saw these agreements as necessary for PNG’s security and development interests. Others questioned whether such arrangements could create perceptions of alignment in an increasingly competitive regional environment. This showed that students were not simply repeating the White Paper. They were critically engaging with the real dilemmas of foreign policy-making.

The discussion also showed that the four levels of analysis are interconnected. The strategic level may provide the broad vision, but that vision is shaped by contextual pressures. Organisational institutions must then convert the vision into policy, while the operational level determines whether the policy can actually be implemented. In practice, weak organisation and poor implementation can undermine even the strongest strategic vision.

This is where the work of Dr. Philip Mitna is relevant. Mitna used Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of foreign policy-making in his PhD research on the factors influencing PNG’s foreign policy in the twenty-first century. His work shows that PNG foreign policy must be understood through the interaction of strategic direction, contextual pressures, organisational processes, and operational realities. This gives the class activity a strong PNG-specific foundation.

The session also raised an important historical point. PNG had a foreign policy framework in the early post-independence period, including the 1981 White Paper and the doctrine of active and selective engagement. However, students noted that there has been a long gap between the earlier foreign policy framework and the 2025 White Paper. This gap raises serious questions about policy continuity, institutional memory, and the ability of the state to maintain a coherent foreign policy direction over time.

The main lesson from the activity is that foreign policy analysis requires more than reading government documents. It requires asking how policy is made, why it is made, who shapes it, what pressures influence it, and whether the state has the capacity to implement it.

The PNG Foreign Policy White Paper 2025 is therefore not just a diplomatic document. It is a statement of national ambition. It reflects PNG’s desire to protect sovereignty, strengthen partnerships, promote economic prosperity, engage the region, and respond to global change. However, its success will depend on whether PNG can align strategic vision with organisational capacity and operational delivery.

The student presentations demonstrated a serious attempt to apply theory to a real policy document. By using Gyngell and Wesley’s four levels of analysis, students were able to examine the White Paper as a product of decision-making, not merely as a list of policy priorities.

The class recording is available here:
https://youtu.be/9EzLrWHcqe0

This activity encouraged students to think critically about how foreign policy is made, shaped, contested, and implemented in PNG.