The Pacific island states have never been at the center of geopolitical discussion. The names of the 14 Pacific Island Countries and Territories (PICTs) — nations such as Fiji, Kiribati, Palau and Samoa — may evoke a romanticized image of a remote paradise in the Pacific, but certainly not as a point of strategic importance.

Not anymore. Pacific island countries have become front and center in the geopolitical arena among the major democracies in the Asia-Pacific — the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan — as China steps up its geopolitical chess game in its quest for regional primacy.

The U.S., which had long taken the region for granted as the backyard of Hawaii, has begun to take the Pacific island states more seriously, at least outwardly. This May, then-acting U.S. Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan expressed his country's gratitude to Pacific island nations in remarks at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, crediting the island states' help in "upholding a free and open Indo-Pacific, and enabling U.S. regional presence." That month, President Donald Trump met with the presidents of Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands at the White House for the first time ever as a sitting president.