The Pacific Islands face cascading difficulties arising from great power competition and a range of overlapping transnational governance, environmental and technological challenges. The Pacific Islands have become an arena of intensifying geopolitical competition. 

This policy brief proposes Australia should lead the creation of a formal intelligence-sharing framework – a 'Pacific Eyes agreement' – initially involving Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, and Fiji, the four most closely aligned countries in the region. 

Key findings

• The Pacific Islands face converging transnational and geopolitical threats that exceed the capacity of any single country to address. Organised crime, illegal fishing, cyberattacks, political instability and climate shocks are compounding and being increasingly exploited by external powers, creating systemic vulnerabilities across the region.
• Existing intelligence exchanges are fragmented and inadequate to meet the scale of these challenges. Current bilateral channels and ad hoc networks leave critical blind spots in regional awareness, undermining the ability of Pacific Island governments, and Australia and New Zealand as principal partners, to anticipate and respond to 'strategic surprises'.
• A dedicated intelligence-sharing framework – a 'Pacific Eyes' agreement – would transform regional security cooperation. By embedding structured, continuous intelligence collaboration between Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and Fiji, the initiative would build capacity, deepen trust and lay the foundations for a resilient Pacific Islands security community.

The policy brief is accompanied by an audio version.