(MENAFN- Asia Times) The US government let financing for the Marshall Islands and Palau lapse at the end of September, less than a week after hosting the US-Pacific Islands Forum Summit meeting in Washington DC. The earmarked funds were not included in the last-minute 45-day stopgap budget passed last week.
If not restored, the funding failure could allow China to step in and provide economic assistance that is of great importance to the strategic Pacific Island archipelagos. Neither the Marshall Islands nor Palau can make budgetary ends meet without US assistance.
The US maintains Compacts of Free Association with three Pacific island states, namely the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia.
In exchange for security guarantees, economic assistance and rights for their citizens to live, study and work in America, the three island nations grant the US the prerogative to operate military bases in the islands and make decisions related to their external security.
The US military operates a ballistic missile defense test site on the Kwajalein atoll in the Marshall Islands, is installing long-range over-the-horizon radar in Palau and plans to establish a permanent military presence in the Federated States of Micronesia. These facilities are and will be backed up by large US air and naval bases situated in Guam.
The three island republics are located west-southwest of Hawaii on the way to the Philippines and Australia. Taken from the Japanese in heavy fighting during World War II, they cover an enormous maritime area but have small populations and minuscule economies. Approximately 42,000 people live in the Marshall Islands, 18,000 in Palau and 115,000 in the Federated States of Micronesia.
From 1945 to 1978, the island states were administered by the US as districts of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, which also included Saipan and the other Northern Mariana Islands. The Northern Marianas chose commonwealth status in 1975. The other three districts chose to become nominally independent states in free association with the US.
The Marshall Islands are best known for the nuclear weapons tests – 67 of them in total – carried out on the atolls of Bikini and Enewetak between 1946 and 1958. Residents were evacuated and radioactive fallout contaminated these and several other islands, causing sickness, death and long-lasting environmental damage.
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