Contested And Congested: Pacific Regional Architecture Getting Complex, Security Expert SaysJohnny Blades RNZ Pacific senior journalistA Pacific geopolitical expert there is a risk that Pacific Islands' priorities and security concerns are being sidelined by increased geopolitical competition and tensions in the region. There is rhetoric and the strategic narrative that the Pacific Islands Forum is at the centre of the regional architecture. We are seeing the regional security architecture itself becoming increasingly broadened, and there are certainly concerns about what this means for the region itself, for what it means for a genuinely Pacific-led regional security architecture. AP: Well, certainly, what we are seeing increasingly is a sort of lattice work security architecture, or this highly networked security architecture in the Pacific. We need to be finding those answers before the regional security architecture is inadvertently weakened as a consequence of this effort to strengthen it.