Forget China: In the Pacific Islands, the US Is Its Own Worst Enemy

The United States is competing with China for influence and access in the Pacific Islands, a region that could play a crucial role in winning a war in Asia, much as it did during World War II. In September, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to strengthen ties with the region and counter Beijing.

But most leaders in Washington overlook the gravest impediment to U.S. foreign policy in the Pacific Islands. It’s not China’s strength, but the United States’ weakness: in particular, its failure to address the legacy of U.S. nuclear testing in the region.

The United States conducted 67 nuclear and thermonuclear tests in the Marshall Islands from 1946 to 1958, equivalent to detonating 1.6 Hiroshima bombs every day for those 12 years. The Marshallese people are still grappling with the effects, including cancer and other health problems, environmental contamination, and indefinite displacement from uninhabitable islands.

The region is watching. Pacific Island countries see U.S. treatment of the Marshall Islands as fundamentally unjust – not only in the past, but in the present – and it has severely damaged their perceptions of the United States.

In August, Western media zeroed in on the Pacific Islands Forum, Oceania’s top regional organization, after it acquiesced to China and removed Taiwan’s name from its joint communique. But missing from the headlines is something that should matter far more to U.S. policymakers: how the forum talks about the United States.

As the islands’ main platform for cooperation, the Pacific Islands Forum is key to understanding the region. So it’s significant that after member states welcomed Washington’s climate funding, they pointed to U.S. injustice toward the Marshall Islands. They agreed to continue “bilateral, regional and multilateral action” to support the Marshall Islands in achieving “a justified resolution” to U.S. nuclear testing.

Forum leaders have also spoken out. In March, then-Secretary General Henry Puna visited the Marshall Islands for the 70th anniversary of the United States’ largest test, Castle Bravo. That single detonation was 1,000 times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb.

“We must hold our great friends, the U.S., accountable to this,” Puna said in his address, emphasizing the “overwhelming foreign disrespect” of nuclear powers that used the Pacific as a testing ground. He believes that U.S. efforts to resolve the nuclear legacy have been “inadequate” and “therefore remain unfinished.”

When will the United States listen to the region’s collective voice?

Washington claims that $150 million constitutes a “full and final settlement” for nuclear testing. The Marshall Islands received this amount in 1986 when it gained independence from the United States under the Compact of Free Association. Adjusted for inflation, the settlement would be worth roughly $430 million today.

The Marshallese government and the Pacific Islands Forum, however, consider it grossly insufficient. As the Compact required in 1986, an independent Nuclear Claims Tribunal was established, and it later found that U.S. compensation should be $2.3 billion – adjusted for inflation, over $3 billion today.

Not only that, the Marshall Islands signed the Compact when it was still controlled by the United States, and when critical information remained classified, including the immense range of fallout and the U.S. government’s cruel experiments on non-consenting Marshallese test subjects.

The Marshall Islands has sought full nuclear compensation for decades, supported by the Pacific Islands Forum, and Washington has always refused. While many U.S. initiatives in the region are welcome, they fail to right past wrongs. Nothing short of full compensation will constitute nuclear justice for the Marshallese.

“There is great awareness among Pacific Island leaders that the United States has not fully addressed the damage it caused,” said Giff Johnson, editor of the Marshall Islands Journal and a leading expert on the nuclear legacy. He is the author of “Don’t Ever Whisper,” a biography of his wife Darlene Keju, who was a powerful Marshallese advocate for nuclear test survivors.

“The nuclear legacy is a black mark on the long-term ties between Washington and the Marshall Islands, and on U.S. pledges and promises in the broader Pacific region,” Johnson continued.

Most U.S. policymakers weren’t concerned by this shameful reputation when the Pacific wasn’t a priority. Now it is a priority. That’s why Washington must pay attention to the stance of the Pacific Islands Forum. Without nuclear justice, U.S. rhetoric in the Pacific Islands – no matter how well-crafted – will always ring hollow.

In August, the U.S. ambassador to the Marshall Islands called the country Washington’s “closest partner.” The U.S. government has claimed that it is “listening and responding to Pacific priorities,” that it supports a peaceful and resilient region where “the environment can thrive,” and that it is committed to human rights. All of these messages are contradicted by the refusal to pay full nuclear compensation.

“Letao is an ancient Marshallese deity known for mischief and trickery. For Marshallese, especially elders, no other country embodies these traits more than the United States, given the nuclear legacy and what their generation witnessed,” said Benetick Kabua Maddison, executive director of the Marshallese Educational Initiative, which serves Marshallese communities in the United States.

“Pacific Islanders want a region that is nuclear-free and independent,” he added, “not an arena for competition between China and the U.S., two nuclear-armed states.”

As geopolitical tensions rise and the world faces the threat of nuclear war, the Pacific Islands consider nuclear justice more important than ever.

In 2022, a United Nations resolution requested the preparation of a report on the human rights implications of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands. The United States opposed it on the grounds that Washington claimed to have “accepted, and acted on” its responsibilities. The Pacific Islands Forum disagreed, and endorsed the resolution.

The final U.N. report, published in late September, concluded that the United States must consider a formal apology and full reparations to the Marshall Islands for nuclear testing.

Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine drew attention to that finding in her address to the United Nations General Assembly in September, saying that nuclear testing “left behind deep scars, with communities remaining in exile from their home islands, billions of dollars in unmet adjudicated claims, and a social and environmental burden upon our youngest and future generations.”

Speaking to the U.N. Human Rights Council in Geneva in early October, she said that the nuclear legacy must be addressed, but there has been “no meaningful reconciliation” with the United States and no official apology. “The Marshallese people were misled, forcibly displaced and subjected to scientific experimentation without their consent,” she said.

The threat of China has refocused U.S. attention on the Pacific Islands, but when it comes to strengthening ties with these crucial partners, the United States is its own worst enemy. If Washington wants to win against Beijing – if it wants to appear as a trustworthy partner that respects human rights and the rules-based order – it must heed the calls for nuclear justice.