In 2022, the Solomon Islands government signed a security agreement with China. A senior official, speaking to ISPI researchers, described the negotiation process candidly: the government did not have the institutional capacity to fully evaluate what it was signing.
This is not a story about a government making a bad decision. It is a story about a government making any decision it could with the resources available to it. A Pacific Island nation of 650,000 people maintains a government with fewer full-time professional analysts than a mid-size U.S. city department. The legal review, the strategic assessment, the technical evaluation of what a bilateral security agreement means in practice — these functions require specialized expertise that small island governments structurally cannot maintain in-house.
The Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat identified this institutional capacity gap as the primary security vulnerability across Forum member nations in its 2025 Pacific Security Outlook Report. The finding was consistent across the 18 Forum member nations: the governments most vulnerable to external security pressure were not the poorest — they were the ones with the smallest analytical and technical workforce relative to their governance responsibilities.
What independent research provides that in-house capacity cannot
When a Pacific Island government commissions ISPI for independent security research, it is not purchasing a report. It is accessing the specialized analytical capacity that its own government cannot maintain permanently — on-demand, for a specific policy question, at a fraction of the cost of building that capacity internally.
ISPI's Pacific Island government commissions address six categories of research need. Democratic resilience and governance capacity assessment — examining where institutional gaps create vulnerability to external pressure. Emergency management framework development — building island-specific preparedness architecture that continental frameworks cannot provide. Law enforcement workforce policy — addressing the structural retention and training access challenges that every Pacific Island police force faces. Supply chain security assessment — quantifying and addressing the supply chain singularity vulnerability that makes Pacific Island communities uniquely exposed to disruption. Insider threat framework development for small government agencies. And post-incident policy analysis following natural disasters, security incidents, or governance failures.
ISPI's research on Pacific Island governance and democratic resilience is available in full in the ISPI research library. Governments in the Pacific, Caribbean, and Indian Ocean regions are invited to contact ISPI to discuss commissioned research engagements tailored to their specific policy environment.
ISPI maintains worldwide research capacity from its Honolulu, Hawaii headquarters — positioned at the intersection of U.S. policy, Pacific Island governance, and Asia-Pacific security. Contact: ISPIGlobal@proton.me.