The following piece appeared in The Australian. Authors Richard Herr and Anthony Bergin of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute are co-authors of ‘Our near abroad: Australia and Pacific islands regionalism’.

Strong but unconfirmed reports indicate that the United States secretary of state Hillary Clinton will be attending the post-Forum dialogue, an event that’s been held since 1989 for non-members of the Forum.

The US isn’t a member of the Forum. So it will have to compete for attention with 13 other post-Forum dialogue partner states attending the one-day dialogue’s plenary sessions and a score of observer states and agencies attending the Forum.

Last year, the US sent a 50-strong delegation to the Auckland post-Forum dialogue. Vice foreign minister Cui Tiankai led China’s delegation of eight.

Next week’s US entourage is expected to be even larger than last year.

There are reports that the US Navy has moved a number of large naval vessels toward the Cook Islands to support the American delegation.

China’s vice foreign minister Fu Ying may participate, although someone closer to Clinton’s status might be substituted.

What qualifies the Forum meeting and the post-Forum dialogue as an arena for diplomatic posturing of this magnitude?

The Forum’s agenda of reviewing the Pacific Plan, regional trade, climate change, and similar issues will not have done it. Nor is the region’s economic value to the Asia-Pacific the reason.

Except for the four large Melanesian members of the Forum, the only significant regional assets are its pelagic fisheries resources. Indeed, this year’s Forum theme is ‘Large Ocean Island States – the Pacific Challenge.’

The small island countries that make up the larger share of the Forum’s membership have large ocean claims. These claims don’t in themselves confer much strategic value.

But the islands that generate these claims can. They proved their value as coaling stations and in World War II as military stepping-stones across the Pacific.

The Pacific challenge is how the Forum’s members cope with the enormous responsibilities of these vast oceanic expanses.

The American and Chinese views of this challenge are of a different order.

President Barack Obama was at pains during his visit to Darwin last November to make the point that this would be an Asia-Pacific century, not just an Asian century.

The Pacific Islands could be a complication if they were alienated from Western interests, this would leave a vast open stretch between the US military assets in Micronesia and the emerging southern anchor in Darwin.

But to date Washington has only marginally increased its political and financial investment in the region.

China’s Pacific challenge is more complicated.

It’s focused on residual concerns for Taiwan’s role in the region and expanding its economic ambitions in Melanesia.

But the value of the Forum, and next week’s meeting in Rarotonga, to this broader diplomatic manoeuvring is over-rated.

The Pacific Islands Forum isn’t the most influential South Pacific voice at the UN.

That honour now belongs to the Pacific Small Islands Developing States group; it’s basically the Forum without Australia and New Zealand.

The continuing exclusion of Fiji from Forum meetings has strengthened the Melanesian Spearhead Group, which also excludes Australia.

Australia has to some extent been side-lined in the Forum due to Fiji’s exclusion from the Forum under our leadership. That also partly accounts for the higher US presence.

The US interest in the Forum is contributing to diplomatic inflation, the post-Forum dialogue is even beginning to overshadow the main event.

Ironically, this could work against the US by giving China an equal claim and standing in the Forum.

And that would further undermine Australia’s influence in a region that’s no longer a strategic backwater.