Less than a week after hosting the US-Pacific Islands Forum Summit gathering in Washington, DC, the United States government allowed funding for the Marshall Islands and Palau to expire at the end of September. The 45-day temporary finances passed last week did not include the earmarked funds.
If the money is never restored, China may be able to intervene and offer crucial financial support to the Pacific Island archipelagos. Without US guidance, neither Palau nor the Marshall Islands may fulfill their budgets.
The Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Federated States of Micronesia are the three Western island states with which the US maintains Compacts of Free Association.
The three beach nations give the US the right to run military bases in the islands and generate decisions pertaining to their physical security in exchange for security guarantees, financial support, and rights for their citizens to live, research, or work in America.
In addition to installing long-range over-the-horizon detector in Palau and operating a nuclear weapon protection test site on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, the US military also intends to maintain armed presence there permanently. Big US air and naval bases located in Guam support these facilities and will do so in the future.
On the way to the Philippines and Australia, the three beach states are situated west-southwest of Hawaii. They cover a vast maritime region but have smaller populations and meager economies after being taken from the Japanese during large battling during World War II. The Marshall Islands are home to about 42 000 individuals, Palau has 18, 000, and the Federated States of Micronesia has 115 000.
The US governed the beach claims as regions of the Pacific Islands’ United Nations Trust Territory, which also included Saipan and the other Northern Mariana Islands, from 1945 to 1978. In 1975, the Northern Marianas decided to become a republic. The various three towns made the decision to formally join the US as free state.
The Marshall Islands are best known for their nuclear weapons testing, which were conducted between 1946 and 1958 on the islands of Bikini and Enewetak. Residents were forced to flee, and nuclear fallout contaminated these islands as well as a number of others, resulting in illness, fatalities, or long-term economic harm.
A 15-million dwt blast from the 1954 Castle Bravo hydrogen bomb on Bikini was roughly 1,000 times larger than the World War II nuclear weapon the US dropped on Hiroshima.
Since then, the US government has paid out roughly$ 600 million in compensation for damages, environmental recovery and rehabilitation, resettling displaced people, and health and medical applications.
However, the Marshall Islands are requesting an further$ 3 billion and a formal apology. When compared to the US defence budget, which is currently over$ 800 billion, and the guidance given to Ukraine so far, these sums pale in comparison.
The US, however, is pushing a tough agreement. Joseph Yun, President Biden’s special minister in charge of negotiating the Compacts of Free Association contracts, claimed to have told his Marshall Islands peers,” Listen, there is no more money ,” during a legislative hearing in July. He added that the nuclear topic had been resolved in the 1980s, according to The Guardian.
David Stilwell, an Air Force colonel colonel and former assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, was quoted by Voice of America, which was supported by the US Congress, as saying,” We have to draw a line there.”
Over the following 20 years, that line is$ 7.2 billion in President Biden’s budget for 2024 for all three island states. Of this,$ 2.9 billion would go to the Marshall Islands, and$ 700 million would be set aside to address nuclear-related problems.
Given that both Yun and Stilwell are obviously worried about China, it is difficult to accuse them of being unable to discover the Pacific for the palm trees. A general election is scheduled for November 20 in the Marshall Islands, where the US contributes roughly 40 % of the federal budget.
The financial situation of Palau is likewise severe. President Surangel Whipps Jr. recently stated in an interview with the Voice of America that Palau will be unable to give its payments as of January 1, 2024, if the US Congress does not reinstate the originally agreed money.
Additionally, he added,” When the US commits to everything, are they really committed?” I believe this is the most significant impression it projects on Palau and the citizens of Palu.
In retaliation for its unwillingness to cut ties with Taiwan, China, which was once Palau’s main cause of holiday revenue, reduced the number of visitors it permitted to the beach.
Whipps claims that as a result, between 2016 and 2019, the number of Chinese visitors who came to Palau fell by more than 50 %, which led to the city’s GDP falling by over 30 % and its state having to borrow money from the Asian Development Bank. The international tourism sector was then hit by Covid-19.
Palau may have resumed its fiscal stability on October 1 if US funding had been provided as anticipated, but it is currently in a precarious position.
However, according to Yun,” If we don’t approve that package in a timely manner, we seriously jeopardize our credibility in the region and obviously in relation to what we are saying about competing with China. “& nbsp
The Marshall Islands and Palau continue to have political ties with Taiwan. A proposed local security pact with China was rejected by the Federated States of Micronesia in 2022 despite their political ties to the People’s Republic of China. They typically have a favorable attitude toward the US and are afraid of China, but Kiribati’s example cannot be disregarded.
Southeast of the Marshall Islands and Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Kiribati changed its designation from Taiwan to People’s Republic China in 2019.
In exchange, it has gotten help in the fields of agriculture, medical, and tourism, including the improvement of an airport that the government of Kiribati claims is for human use but which the US and others see as giving China a potential defense foothold.
The Biden administration has made a sincere effort to improve relations with Pacific Island says after years of abuse. The second US-Pacific Island Country Summit meeting took place in Washington, DC, in September 2022.
Since then, the US has established diplomatic ties with the Cook Islands and Niue, plans to open an ambassador in Vanuatu in 2024, opened offices in the Solomon Islands, and extended diplomatic recognition to those nations.
Biden stated a number of priorities at the next meeting, which was renamed the US-Pacific Islands Forum Summit and took place from September 25 to 26, this yr. These priorities included providing extra development aid, strengthening local institutions, enhancing modern connectivity via undersea cables, supporting the Compacts of Free Association, and working” quickly to meet the needs of the Republic of Marshall Islands.”
We know that the United States stands high for its renewed relationship with the Pacific Islands, and it is crucial for all of us to maintain that words are met with actions, but it’s unclear if he was paying attention when Marshall Islands President David Kabua stated to the UN General Assembly on September 20 that” we even have grave growth challenges.”
They most likely will remain, but China is likely to pick up the game if the US lets it go.
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