Australia and Vanuatu sign Nakamal Agreement to block foreign military bases

# Australia and Vanuatu sign Nakamal Agreement to block foreign military bases

Australia and Vanuatu have signed a sweeping economic and security agreement that bars any foreign military base on the Pacific island and commits Port Vila to rejecting the militarisation of infrastructure.

The Nakamal Agreement was signed on June 29 in Canberra by Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Vanuatu Prime Minister Jotham Napat, according to AFP via the Philippine Daily Inquirer. The deal is the latest sign that the South Pacific is becoming a sharper arena of strategic competition, with Australia, China and the United States all watching the region closely.

At its core, the agreement gives Australia greater certainty that no foreign military power will establish a base in Vanuatu. Albanese said the arrangement would provide that guarantee, while Napat said his government would reject militarisation of infrastructure. The pact also promises greater Australian economic support for Vanuatu, whose largest external creditor is China.

The language matters because Vanuatu has become a point of concern for Canberra and Washington in recent years. China’s navy has made repeated port calls to the country, and Beijing funded the expansion of a wharf in Luganville, once the biggest US military base in the South Pacific. Australian and American officials have worried that projects presented as commercial could also create strategic footholds.

The AFP report noted that China and Vanuatu had previously said the wharf was intended for cruise ships. That dispute shows why the Nakamal Agreement has significance beyond bilateral aid. It is meant to lock in a line against military basing and against upgrades to civilian infrastructure that might be repurposed for defence use.

For Australia, the deal is also about reassurance. The Albanese government has increasingly treated Pacific relationships as a core security issue, not just a development portfolio. In that context, pledging more economic support is a way of making the anti-base language workable. Small Pacific states often weigh sovereignty, aid, debt and infrastructure financing at the same time, which gives outside powers leverage if they can offer long-term funding.

For Vanuatu, the agreement offers the prospect of larger support without surrendering control over the country’s alignment. Napat’s public line suggests the government wants investment, but on terms that prevent military entanglement. That position echoes a wider Pacific pattern: states in the region want to avoid becoming staging grounds in a major-power rivalry while still extracting benefits from competition.

The agreement does not appear to end strategic pressure. Instead, it formalises the political terms under which Vanuatu will work with Australia while warning off military use by third countries. In practical terms, that means the island nation has set a marker on basing, infrastructure and security policy at a moment when the South Pacific is attracting more attention than at any point in years.

What the pact can do next will depend on implementation. Aid promises, infrastructure funding and diplomatic follow-through are likely to matter as much as the headline ban. But on June 29, the message from Canberra was straightforward: Vanuatu will receive more support, and it should not host a foreign military base.