Politics Risk Derailing One of America’s Most Important Strategic Agreements

Politics Risk Derailing One of America’s Most Important Strategic Agreements

China is the biggest winner from the current train wreck that is the Marshall Islands–United States COFA negotiations.

By Cleo Paskal

Of the Pacific Island states, the three countries that are unquestionably the closest allies of the United States are the Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) and the Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI).

The closeness of the relationship between the United States and each of the three is legally captured in the Compact of Free Association (COFA) each of them has with Washington.

The COFA agreements allow citizens from the Freely Associated States (FAS) to live and work in the U.S. or serve in the U.S. military. The COFAs also provide for some U.S. federal services in the FAS – to the point that not only are they served by the U.S. Postal Service, but they have U.S. zip codes, and mail to and from the U.S. is charged at domestic rates. They are, as then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan put it when the agreements were first being set up, “family.”

The COFAs also give the U.S. defense rights in the air, waters, and on the land of the FAS that are second only to what the U.S. has in the homeland (and likely more). The U.S. also gets the right of strategic denial, allowing it to block others – including foreign militaries – from the area that Washington deems a risk.

And the area involved is enormous, and strategically essential. The three countries are contiguous and cover a section of the Central Pacific the size of the United States. The uncontested operational environment granted to the U.S. by the COFAs allows the U.S. to deploy unimpeded from roughly Hawaii to the Philippines.

Think Guam, Saipan, the First and Second Island Chains, and bases in treaty partners like Japan and South Korea are important? Try resupplying them if the FAS are under hostile control.