Palau under CCP pressure to switch recognition from Taiwan to China

The President of Palau, Surangel Whipps Jr., speaks to The Sunday Guardian on what his Pacific Island Country is facing.

- CLEO PASKAL

The United States has exceptionally close defence and security relationships with three countries—closer than it has with any others. And they aren’t the ones you think.

Through the Compacts of Free Association (COFAs), the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI), and the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM)—together known as the Freely Associated States (FAS) have voluntarily granted the United States uniquely extensive defence and security access in their sovereign territories.

In the words of the Compacts: “The Government of the United States has full authority and responsibility for security and defence matters in or relating to the Marshall Islands and the Federated States of Micronesia [and Palau].”

That includes the right to base and to deny entry to the FAS by someone else’s military. This “strategic denial” has happened at least once, in 2019.

Apart from defence and security provisions, the COFAs also give citizens of the FAS the right to work in the United States, to serve in the US military and they provide financial support and services (such as the postal service) to the government and people of the FAS.

The FAS extend over an enormous swath of the central Pacific Ocean. Combined, their maritime exclusive economic zones cover an area of the Pacific comparable in size to the continental United States. The relationship with the FAS is what allows the US military largely unimpeded deployment from Hawaii to Guam (and through Guam and the Marianas to treaty ally Japan).