Researching, analyzing and writing about the making, content and implementation of Papua New Guinea foreign policy since independence is complicated by a number of quite practical factors (apart from the requirements of public service confidentiality, respect for the records of previous governments, and the secrecy which applies to exchanges and a very small number of agreements with other governments).

While the Department of Foreign Affairs has not experienced as many changes of secretary as some other government agencies, it has certainly seen increasingly frequent changes of minister (there were twenty-four changes of foreign minister between 1975 and 2002), as well as repeated organizational restructuring and significant cutbacks in staffing. These changes, together with the recall and (re-)assignment of personnel which accompany the normal cycle of overseas postings, and political appointments at the level of head of diplomatic mission or consular post, have combined to weaken institutional memory. Funding cuts have meant that a very useful journal of record, the Papua New Guinea Foreign Affairs Review, has ceased publication. The physical reconstruction and rearrangement of offices in the mid 1990s, which followed a previous minister’s desire for a larger ministerial suite, together with the subsequent removal of the department’s headquarters from one building to another, have taken a heavy toll of the registry and the filing system (a departmental library which was finally becoming useful after years of painstaking collecting and cataloguing no longer exists).

Like its counterparts in other policy areas, the Permanent Parliamentary Committee on Foreign Affairs has not been a major player in the making, management or monitoring of Papua New Guinea foreign policy. It has, apparently, met only rarely, and barely (if at all) since committee allowances ceased to be linked to members’ attendance.

Thus, many of the records required to write a well-researched history of the Papua New Guinea Department of Foreign Affairs in its various manifestations or of Papua New Guinea foreign policy, or to make systematic comparisons with other government agencies or policies, do not exist or cannot be readily retrieved, or, in the case of possible oral sources of information, are beyond ready access.

More generally, it is fair to say that foreign policy has not featured prominently among the issues in successive Papua New Guinea elections, in the reasons advanced for changes of government, or in parliamentary debate (the Foreign Policy White Paper containing the results of the first major review of Papua New Guinea foreign policy since independence was barely discussed when it was formally tabled in the National Parliament in 1981, and not reported in detail or depth in most media).

The only exceptions, where aspects of Papua New Guinea’s foreign relations have been prominently on the public agenda, have been the political situation and future in Indonesian Papua (especially when large-scale border-crossings coincided with elections, which they tended to do during the 1970s and early 1980s); the Sandline affair in 1997, which was widely perceived by Papua New Guineans as a test of strength with Australia over the right of Australian media and officials to intervene, rather than, say, a moral issue; the Bougainville conflict, where Australia’s role in providing logistical support for the Papua New Guinea Defence Force, and demands for external intervention to stop the conflict or safeguard human rights were significant political issues during the 1990s; and the Bougainville peace process, in which New Zealand and Australia have hosted important meetings, the United Nations has provided observers, and regional governments peace and truce monitors, and these, together with other organizations and states, have supported efforts to make and build peace. Even then, political interest in foreign policy issues other than the Bougainville peace process has tended to be occasion-specific, perhaps even somewhat opportunistic, with remarkably little carry-over into government of views expressed in media interviews or electoral context (one former minister for Foreign Affairs, when asked about the relationship of views expressed about Indonesian Papua during an election to his previous record and future policy implications, responded quite firmly that what he said then was for electoral purposes, not government).

However, insofar as electoral promises and demands depend on the availability, terms and uses of foreign aid, foreign investment and Papua New Guinean participation in development, including decision-making, ownership (in every sense) and employment, aspects of foreign policy have, of course, been implicit in many other issues.

Even so, foreign policy has generally been a significant concern only for educational and official elites, as well as communities on or close to the borders with Indonesia, Solomon Islands and, especially before the Torres Strait Treaty was concluded in November 1978, Australia.

One outcome has been relatively greater continuity in policy and, in this case, practice — or, at least, the basic approach — than in government personnel, especially until the late 1990s.

Foreign policy-making has, in practice, been largely a matter of government trying to take advantage of external opportunities or responding to external pressures (and sometimes seeing — and taking advantage of — opportunities in external pressures, and even crises, as shown in the initiatives which led to the Treaty of Mutual Respect, Friendship and Co-operation with Indonesia [MRFC — as in the acrostic in the treaty’s preamble), and the Joint Declaration of Principles Guiding Relations (JDP) with Australia, when difficulties on the common border and in the aid relationship respectively provided openings to propose arrangements directed towards refocusing and restructuring relations).

As far as Papua New Guinea’s first foreign policy is concerned (set out in some detail in Papua New Guinea 1976), it may be a cliché but it is nonetheless true that Universalism was clearly a product of history and circumstance. This policy had three main elements (not always expressed with absolute uniformity or even consistency, but nonetheless clear and persistent):

The first was, in certain respects, an almost inevitable posture for the government of a newly-independent state concerned to display and maintain its independence. It focused on the most obvious and immediate priority of a newly-independent country, especially as far as formal diplomacy and diplomats (whose previous training and experience had focused on protocol) were concerned: the opening of formal diplomatic relations. In doing so, it addressed, and provided a very effective instrument for dealing with, a particular circumstance of the Cold War: the competition for diplomatic recognition and advantage of divided states, such as East and West Germany, North and South Korea, and China and Taiwan. It provided a rationale for resisting embroilment in rivalries where Papua New Guinea had little interest and even less capacity to affect outcomes by treating all-comers on a uniform basis, provided they respected Papua New Guinea’s independence both formally as a state and diplomatically as an international actor.

The main shortcoming of (1) was that, over time and especially in the formulation that Papua New Guinea wanted to be ‘friend to all, and enemy of none,’ it did not provide a clear rationale for the future development of relations, especially as it might involve setting priorities or making choices. Once formal diplomatic relations had been opened with the major players in the Asia-Pacific, including countries in Europe and North America, it exhausted its original purpose and scope. Its relevance and application declined. The part came to be regarded as the whole as Universalism came to be widely described, even applied, in terms of the first theme on its own. The phrase became a slogan for continuous evenhandedness, even a rationale for timidity and inaction, giving rise to doubts and confusion in situations where the further development of relations was clearly to Papua New Guinea’s advantage. Discussions about the wider implications of Universalism, including whether further development of relations in some cases might amount to a form of alignment, sometimes resembled those about the implications of neutralism for the neutrality of other newly-independent countries; the result was sometimes indifference to professed understandings of policy, and frequently similar to that described in a very different context as ‘the tyranny of policy’ (Galbraith 1999, 160–161), when adherence to established policy comes before all else, including the need for review and change.

Universalism provided the basis on which Papua New Guinea successfully opened formal diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China in 1976, becoming the first state in the world that did not have to denounce Taiwanese aspirations — and each of the next few words is important — by declaring publicly it regards China as one country on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. But success here has, in certain respects, been the mother of subsequent problems, as succeeding governments have attempted to deal with Taiwan either ignorant of, or indifferent to, what has been achieved, or at least its significance.

The second element of Papua New Guinea’s first foreign policy, often described as the natural product of ethnic similarities, was, in fact, equally a result of history: the contacts made and experiences gained through the South Pacific Conference and regional educational and church institutions, including the Central Medical School in Fiji, where Papua New Guineans went for medical training during the 1950s, and Christian missions which were organized on a regional basis (sometimes with their regional headquarters in Solomon Islands or another country in the Pacific). It was also, at least partly, the product of fears among Australian officials concerning the likely conduct of Papua New Guineans if they participated more actively in wider Asia-Pacific or specifically Asian settings (would they be corrupted or charmed? or might they identify strongly with their Melanesian neighbours in Indonesian Papua and cause difficulties for, or in Australian relations with, Indonesia?), and the consequent encouragement for Papua New Guineans to focus on and identify their country’s future with other Pacific island countries. The last consideration might help explain — and was certainly reinforced by — the apparent reluctance of senior Australian officials employed by the Papua New Guinea government to involve Papua New Guineans in issues related to the common border with Indonesia (to the extent that some would not even discuss policy openly in the Department; they insisted on meeting for briefings outside). It certainly explains some of the difficulties that arose in managing the border — and dealing with Indonesia — in the mid-1980s, including the lack of relevant experience among Papua New Guinean officials, and the need for the almost-instant localization of key positions which followed.

The third element represented an early attempt to reach out to Papua New Guinea’s Asian neighbours — cautiously, for the reasons just outlined. The main outcome was a number of statements promoting cooperation between the South Pacific Bureau for Economic Co-operation (SPEC, which later became the South Pacific Forum Secretariat, now the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat) and the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN), and not-very-productive meetings between senior officials of the two regional organizations.

The feature shared by each of the three main elements of Universalism was that none of them, singly or together, provided clear guidance — indeed, to some extent they hindered the further development of Papua New Guinea’s foreign relations (perhaps, incidentally, buying time for making much wiser decisions). Together, they helped to avoid the temptation of opening missions and posturing on issues where national interests and likely influence were not clear, which had bedevilled other countries in the first few years of independence, and sometimes led to subsequent closures and policy changes (Boyce 1977, 145).

The first element, in particular, provided a basis for resisting external pressures to embroil Papua New Guinea in rivalry between other states by being ‘friend to all, and enemy to none’. The second, identification with other Pacific island countries, did not have an obvious basis in the interests of the new nation-state (as distinct from sentiment; culture or physical appearance — which are, obviously, not uniform throughout Papua New Guinea; clear sources of significant national interests, or adequate guides to the development of relations with other countries and international organizations). While identification and solidarity with other South Pacific (island) countries might be a source of support in contexts where states are equal and numbers count, such as the United Nations General Assembly, it did little to strengthen Papua New Guinea’s role in the world. Insofar as it led others to see Papua New Guinea as part of a generally less important and less influential region in a remote part of the world, where Australian, New Zealand and other Western interests were dominant, it might even have weakened Papua New Guinea’s international standing (the South Pacific has been, in certain respects, a source of weakness in some contexts, if a source of strength in others, as far as Papua New Guinea — the most populous country in the region, with the largest and most diverse economy, and a unique land border with an Asian country — is concerned).

If the metaphor of being a bridge or link between regions had been given operational significance, the third element might, at best, have defined a possible role — though its focus was not on Papua New Guinea’s particular national interests (in which cooperation between regions could well be of greater or even exclusive benefit to other, smaller states, and might complicate relations with Indonesia over Indonesian Papua, for example). If it had any implications for questions of principle, such as contributing to regional or world peace, they were never clearly spelt out.

It was against the background outlined, including considerable awareness of the particular drawbacks identified above, that the then minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Hon. Ebia Olewale, who was also deputy prime minister, and the first secretary of the Department at independence, Anthony Siaguru, agreed there should be a foreign policy review, and obtained cabinet’s endorsement in early 1979.

A combination of independent judgment and responsiveness to Papua New Guinean circumstances was achieved by having an external consultant (E.P. Wolfers), submit his findings and generally work to a committee of departmental heads (from Prime Minister and National Executive Council, Foreign Affairs and Trade, Defence, Finance, and Primary Industry) to review the White Paper in draft, before it was presented to the National Executive Council for final approval. Additional inputs into the process had been provided earlier in the process by participants in a conference of heads of Papua New Guinea’s diplomatic missions and consular posts around the world, who travelled to Port Moresby for the purpose, as well as a variety of senior officials from other government agencies.

The key recommendation in the Foreign Policy White Paper (1982) was that Papua New Guinea should adopt a basic approach to foreign policy making of ‘active and selective engagement’. The approach was described as involving:

The White Paper made clear that, far from providing guidelines for immediate implementation, it proposed an evolutionary approach by outlining a basis for ongoing policy-making (it was intended to help generate policy from time to time, not to provide a detailed blueprint for implementation). Thus:

The new approach clearly looked to breaking out from the not-very-consistent-or-successful attempts at evenhandedness, the timidity and the inaction which had, by then, become features of Universalism in practice, by promoting a more outward-looking and purposeful posture towards Papua New Guinea’s foreign relations that allowed for clear distinctions to be drawn in the development of relations with different countries and international organizations (a point which was even clearer in the various strategies proposed). It envisaged the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade being the key point of contact — and the chief engine for managing relations — with the external world. However, this role was only partly fulfilled. Relevant factors in the failure to promote the Department’s role in coordinating all aspects of Papua New Guinea’s foreign relations included: inter-agency rivalries; failure to set up adequate machinery to facilitate consultation and cooperation across the whole of government and with the private sector and civil society (as proposed in the White Paper (1982, 72, 90)); the way in which membership of international financial institutions is reserved to finance ministries and their representatives; the practice whereby high commissions have direct access to national government departments and other agencies; the role that meetings at the level of head of government play in international relations; and similar considerations. Other factors included the priority that successive governments have (quite properly) given to domestic development, the Department’s and its senior officers’ relative standing in the wider bureaucracy, and such internal issues as the relative (in)experience, seniority and turnover of staff.

In distinguishing between the basic approach towards foreign policy making and the particular policy priorities or catchphrase of the government or minister of the day (and successive governments and ministers for Foreign Affairs each wanted their own), the White Paper attempted to avoid some of the difficulties that had arisen with Universalism by focusing on ongoing policy-making, not immediate policy, and so on furthering perceived state interests, essentially on Realist lines, not simple rules-of-thumb. It did so by distinguishing the basic approach from the particular concerns and preferences of the government/minister of the day, and leaving space for the latter to be announced as the basic approach is applied and new priorities are identified as conditions change. It therefore proved to be possible for successive governments to endorse and apply the basic approach of active and selective engagement even as ministries, responsible ministers and their specific preferences and priorities changed, and new catchphrases to describe particular governments’ and ministers’ priorities were announced and turned from words into actions.

Thus, the basic approach was formally endorsed, and, as time passed, simply accepted and followed, by successive governments and ministers for Foreign Affairs.

However, having been prepared at a time when a key objective was still to open diversify, strengthen and deepen Papua New Guinea’s foreign relations — and economic circumstances and prospects seemed to allow for ongoing budgetary growth, hence recruitment and training of staff, and the opening of new missions and posts — the basic approach pointed the way to expansion, not contraction. In doing so, it paid insufficient attention to the opportunity costs of implementation within Departmental and national budgets, especially in the more stringent economic and budgetary circumstances which developed from 1994 on. The same feature, therefore, became one of the reasons why the basic approach has become less and less relevant (at least, without modification) as cutbacks in funding, staff, and missions and posts, have become more usual orders of the day since the late 1990s.

The basic approach proposed in the White Paper led to, and was supported by, a three-pronged diplomatic strategy, which emphasized:

The particular policies/priorities/emphases/orientations and applications promoted by successive governments and ministers have included ‘purposeful direction’ (c. 1982), ‘independent commitment to international cooperation’ (c.1989), ‘look North’ (c. 1992), ‘opportunity and participation’ (c. 1994), ‘look North and work the Pacific’ (c. 1994) and ‘reinforcing core relationships’ (c. 1995).

In addition to ministerial statements presented to the National Parliament, occasional speeches and negotiated arrangements with various countries and international organizations, these policies were variously elaborated, notably in the United Nations Initiative on Opportunity and Participation undertaken by Hon. Sir John Kaputin in 1993–95, which resulted in the publication of quite a substantial book to promote the proposal (Kaputin 1993), and the subsequent convening of a panel of experts (with financial support from Papua New Guinea) at United Nations headquarters to prepare a report (UN 1995), and, separately, the Pacific Plan (Papua New Guinea 1995).

Consistent with one of its main general purposes, the United Nations Initiative on Opportunity and Participation proved to be a useful trial-run for officials (and others) who would later need to know what was involved in mobilizing support at the United Nations for the establishment of a United Nations presence to assist in the Bougainville peace process. This presence took the form of a United Nations observer mission in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, which was invited to help implement the Lincoln and Ceasefire Agreements after 1998, and the Bougainville Peace Agreement from 30 August 2001. The mission was formally known in New York as the ‘United Nations Political Office in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea’ (UNPOB) because it was funded from the United Nations Department of Political Affairs, not the peace-keeping budget, until the mission was formally reconstituted for diplomatic, not substantive, reasons, as the ‘United Nations Observer Mission in Bougainville, Papua New Guinea’ (UNOMB) for a final six months from the end of 2004, while still being funded from the same source (in both cases, the reference to Papua New Guinea was added by Papua New Guinean diplomats out of regard for — shared — nationalist sensitivities).

However, Papua New Guinea’s economic orientation and relative lack of complementarity with other Pacific island countries’ economies meant that the Pacific Plan served to reaffirm longstanding political commitments rather than produce tangible results (the minister responsible, Sir Julius Chan, since went on to become the architect of the Pacific Plan which the Pacific Islands Forum adopted in 2005).

General economic — hence fiscal and specifically budgetary — constraints since 1994 have coincided with an attempt to open formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan (in exchange for incredible claims of likely financial assistance) in mid 1999 and resulting tensions in the Department, compounded by allegations of irregularities and impropriety in the Migration Division, in particular, and growing instability of personnel. These developments have, in turn, given rise to questions about the continuing relevance of the basic approach, as well as capacity to implement or apply it effectively. The then minister for Foreign Affairs, Hon. Sir John Kaputin, therefore, announced a foreign policy review in 2000. A further review was announced by the minister for Foreign Affairs and Immigration, Rt Hon. Sir Rabbie Namaliu, in November 2005.