Pacific leaders are descending on the stunning Micronesian nation of Palau for the region's most important political gathering.
This year's Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) leaders meeting could be particularly politically charged and has already got off to a slightly tumultuous start.
Palau is famous for its stunning karst landscape — with hundreds of rainforest-covered limestone islands — and for its powerful international advocacy on climate change.
It is also one of Taiwan's three remaining Pacific allies and a key link in the US military's second island chain, which means that debates over Taipei's role in the Pacific and China's growing military might will take on more urgency this year.
That does not mean that a diplomatic bust-up is inevitable.
But when Anthony Albanese flies into Palau's largest city Koror this evening, he will know there is a real chance that — at some point — he will find himself in the middle of one.
The departure of Solomon Islands Prime Minister Matthew Wale — who had to race back home to deal with a looming leadership challenge — as well as the absence of Kiribati's President Taneti Maamau, Vanuatu's Prime Minister Jotham Napat and Samoa's Prime Minister La'auli Leuatea Schmidt, has stirred fresh uncertainties about regional unity.
Beyond that, there will be plenty for leaders to discuss on climate change, regional security, the devastating narcotics trade and the way Pacific nations deal with outside powers.
So what is likely to happen over the next four days? How might some of these debates play out? And what does it tell us about geopolitics in the Pacific right now?
China's missile test
The intercontinental ballistic missile that China tested from a nuclear-powered submarine in July might only have been armed with a dummy warhead, but it still sent political shock waves through the Pacific after it landed near Tuvalu's exclusive economic zone.
Several Pacific nations delivered unusually sharp criticisms of the test.
And there was a tense exchange over the issue during the PIF Foreign Ministers meeting in Fiji, when Kiribati and Nauru, which have warm ties with Beijing, blocked a joint statement condemning the test.
Kiribati's President Taneti Maamau told his parliament last week that his country had lodged objections with the Chinese embassy over the missile launch, but suggested it was unreasonable to single out Beijing when America also conducts regular nuclear missile tests in the Pacific.
"We are trying to be fair," he said.
"America has been … testing its bombs and what else, in the Marshall Islands, [which are] islands near us."
The US has indeed conducted vastly more missile tests in the Pacific than China.
But Kiribati's argument does not wash with Australia. Officials point out privately that the United States has a compact agreement with the Republic of the Marshall Islands which allows it to conduct missile tests, while China has no such agreement with any of the Pacific states which saw the test missile sail overhead.
Palau's President Surangel Whipps Jr has publicly called for Pacific leaders at PIF to use this meeting to issue a clear condemnation, drawing an angry response from Beijing, which has accused its critics of double standards.
Mr Whipps Jr told reporters on Sunday that leaders would "do our best to bring everyone together" on the joint statement.
"But also every country can speak out [against the test]," he said.
"I encourage other leaders to speak out and not be afraid to speak the truth."
But with Kiribati and Nauru seemingly holding firm — and countries like Palau, Australia and New Zealand unwilling to back a statement criticising US tests — the chance of Pacific leaders issuing a joint statement on China's test looks increasingly slim.
It is more likely they will compromise by including a paragraph on the very sensitive issue in the leaders' communiqué, which is the closest thing you get to a definitive political statement from the whole region every year.
Secretary General Baron Waqa hinted at the shape of the compromise when he told reporters last week that the Pacific "want [ed] to make a strong statement to everyone, not just China".
Officials have already spent quite some time wrangling over that text, and there's no doubt that every word within that section will be negotiated to within an inch of its life.
Earlier this month, Pacific foreign ministers called for "transparency and reassurance" around ballistic missile tests and said "all states" should respect the sovereignty of Pacific nations when conducting them.
It will be fascinating to see if Pacific leaders are willing to go further than that in Palau.
China and Taiwan
For China, when it comes to Taiwan, there is a simple rule: no question around protocol is too small to worry about.
Beijing remains intent on taking control of the democratically ruled island, and has ramped up efforts to isolate it on the global stage.
The Pacific Islands Forum is one of the battlegrounds in this diplomatic stoush, with Taiwan desperate to get any scrap of international space it can in the face of relentless pressure from China.
That means that questions which might strike outsiders as absurdly obscure ("can Taiwan's foreign minister legitimately attend the PIF dialogue partners meeting even though it's not strictly speaking a dialogue partner!?") quickly take on outsized importance.
After failing to convince the Pacific to lock Taiwan out of PIF leaders meetings — despite its energetic efforts in both Tonga and Samoa — Beijing is on the back foot this year.
Taiwan maintains official diplomatic ties with Palau, which means it won't be forced to skulk around the margins of PIF.
Its foreign minister, Lin Chia-lung, has already spent several days in Koror with a large and visible delegation, drawing a predictable denunciation from Beijing, which said he was making a "futile" grab for attention.
China also issued fresh travel warnings about Palau to its citizens, leading Mr Whipps Jr to accuse Beijing of running a campaign of coercion against it.
The key question this week will be whether Taiwan and Palau try to push the envelope further.
Under the slightly awkward compromise Pacific leaders have held onto for more than three decades, Taiwan can meet its Pacific allies as a PIF "development partner" — but it is not meant to attend official PIF meetings like the "dialogue partners" gathering that includes countries like the US, China, France and the United Kingdom.
If Taiwan's foreign minister makes a surprise appearance at any official PIF events — especially one where Chinese diplomats are also attending — then there could be real fireworks from China's lead diplomat at PIF, Pacific envoy Qian Bo.
That is something that PIF officials will want to avoid at any cost.
And even if Taiwan and its Pacific partners do stick to the script, as expected, Qian Bo will still probably complain loudly about the fact that Lin Chia-lung is in Palau at all.
Climate change
The wrangling over China and Taiwan will no doubt frustrate those Pacific leaders who see the issue as little more than a painful distraction, and who are desperate to keep this year's meeting sharply focused on the region's most profound challenge: climate change.
The meeting comes at a critical moment in climate politics, with Pacific leaders increasingly worried that global momentum for decarbonisation is stalling just at the moment when it desperately needs to ramp up.
On top of that, the United Nations is set to hand down a new report on Tuesday warning that the world will exceed the 1.5 degree Celsius goal to limit global heating — which sits at the heart of the Paris Agreement — within the next decade.
All this while Australia prepares to co-host a "pre-COP" meeting in Fiji and Tuvalu, which is meant to build global momentum for emission cuts by bringing leaders into the region to see the impacts of climate change here first-hand.
Palau will also hold its own "Ascent" climate meeting tomorrow with international partners designed to bolster support for the Pacific's own energy transition, which helps the region cut emissions, bolster its fuel security, and allow Pacific nations to funnel more money into things like health and education — instead of the diesel which keeps its generators running.
Mr Whipps Jr flagged on Sunday that leaders were on track to endorse a high-profile plan to get the Pacific to 100 per cent renewables by 2035.
Pacific leaders are also preparing to issue a climate declaration at the end of this meeting as they try to shape international climate negotiations — both at the Pacific pre-COP and at the main UN climate meeting in Türkiye later this year.
Many Pacific nations have joined a call for countries to make firm, time-bound commitments to phase down fossil fuel production and consumption.
This is always a fraught issue for Australia, which is keenly conscious that its massive coal and gas exports are a source of quiet frustration and anxiety across the region, even if leaders usually hesitate to criticise Canberra publicly.
Climate campaigners are keen for the Pacific to hold Australia's feet to the fire, with Simon Bradshaw from Greenpeace Australia Pacific saying every new project approved by the government "means greater harm for the Pacific and for communities worldwide".
"The science is unequivocal: new coal and gas is utterly incompatible with our legal obligation to help limit warming to 1.5 degrees Centigrade."
Surging drug trade
There is another scourge which is also front of mind for Pacific leaders — the surging drug trade across the vast Pacific, and the increasingly sophisticated operations of the international smuggling syndicates operating in the region.
As the syndicates' tentacles dig deeper into Pacific communities, the brute reality of the drugs crisis is becoming increasingly clear.
In countries like Fiji and Tonga, the impacts are obvious: police corruption, an astonishing surge in HIV rates and the destruction of lives caught up in both the abuse and the trafficking of drugs to the lucrative Australian market.
Governments and police are scrambling to respond, and Pacific leaders are likely to announce a sweeping new anti-smuggling initiative — called the Waqa Moana — providing they can reach agreement.
The plan is likely to see governments across the region agree to step up political and police coordination, intensify patrols across the region and develop more sophisticated maritime infrastructure in order to slow the surge of drugs across the Pacific.
Jose Luis Sousa-Santos, a transnational crime expert and head of the Pacific Regional Security Hub at Canterbury University, said that Waqa Moana was likely to develop a "regionally agreed response" to deliver "greater coherence and coordination".
But he warned that police and governments would need to think big and deploy both sophisticated technology and local communities across the Pacific who can be the "eyes and ears" of the authorities.
"Creating what I call maritime sentinels across the Pacific in partnership with using technology is one part of the answer," he said.
"Transnational organised crime and crimes on the sea are not occurring in isolation, so we need responses which are not siloed and meet the gaps — interdiction at sea as well as eyes in the sky, as well as enhanced intelligence sharing, and greater community and education."
It will also be interesting to see if leaders are ready to endorse a proposal which would make it easier for the Pacific Response Group to deploy to the region to deal with natural disasters or unrest.
Earlier this year, Australia sounded optimistic about getting the treaty over the line, but the signs now seem to suggest more time will be needed.
And if all of that was not enough, this year's PIF leaders meeting should end with a revealing little moment about how the region sees all the outside powers who have been jostling for influence.
After much wrangling, the forum is set to hand down a new "tier" system which will — rather neatly — divide forum dialogue partners into two tiers.
Those in Tier 1, who PIF believes have made more substantial contributions to the region, will keep direct access to Pacific leaders at PIF.
Those relegated to Tier 2 will have to be satisfied with dealing with ministers until they can prove they should move up a grade.
It might not be top of the agenda for Pacific leaders, but you would imagine for the diplomats from those countries teetering on the knife-edge of relegation, this decision will be very much front of mind.
