THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2024 43 Newly retired FSO John T. Hennessey-Niland is the former U.S. ambassador to Palau. He has worked at the National Security Council, as a United Nations war crimes investigator, and at a number of diplomatic posts in Europe, as well as multiple assignments in the Pacific—including Fiji, Australia, and Hawai’i, where he was the foreign policy adviser to the commander of U.S. Marine Corps Forces Pacific (MARFORPAC). He is currently head of the diplomacy concentration and professor of practice at the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University. As the former U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Palau, let me be the first to admit that I have a bias. I believe that “the security of America, quite frankly, and the world depends on the security of the Pacific Islands.” This was President Joe Biden’s statement at the U.S.-Pacific Island Country Summit in September 2022, where the president unveiled the first-ever “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States.” One has only to look at a map or know a little about history, particularly World War II in the Pacific, to appreciate the strategic importance of these islands. America’s official diplomatic footprint in the Pacific Islands dates largely to the conclusion of WWII. Today, more than 60 percent of global maritime trade transits the Indo-Pacific, much of it passing through the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) of Pacific Island countries. This region matters, always has, and will continue to do so. Yet, despite this understanding and some questionable claims in the “Indo-Pacific Strategy” document, U.S. attention and engagement with the region has, in fact, waxed and waned over the decades. Administrations over the years have issued numerous policy documents and periodically stated that the U.S. “is back,” and that America has “pivoted” to the Indo-Pacific (again)—so much so that some commentators have asked, “When does a pivot become a pirouette?” What is indisputable today, however, is that the Pacific Islands, at the center of the global maritime crossroads connecting America with Asia, are increasingly the scene of a new great power contest. And the challenge for America’s diplomats in our small and remote island posts there is to make our rhetoric real regarding U.S. interests in the region. The “Blue Continent” The small-island nations that make up the vast geographic area of the Pacific Islands are sometimes called the Blue Continent. The EEZs of just three island nations—the “Freely Associated States” of Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia, and Republic of the Marshall Islands (FAS)—are equivalent to more than half the size of the continental United States. But they have largely been viewed as a backwater for U.S. diplomacy, at least until recently. Official U.S. presence has been limited, with U.S. policy often considered one of benign neglect. Indeed, the view from the region was summed up in 2022 by then–Acting Prime Minister Aiyaz Sayed-Khaiyum: “Fiji and our small-state neighbors have felt at times, to borrow an American term, like a flyover country. Small dots spotted from plane windows of leaders en route to meetings where they spoke about us, rather than with us, if they spoke of us at all.” At the policy level, the belated approval and funding by Congress of $7.1 billion in March 2024 for the next 20 years of the Compacts of Free Association (COFA) with Palau, Micronesia, and the Marshall Islands was critical. Although these are agreements with sovereign nations, it is the U.S. Department of the Interior that will continue to manage the bulk of the funding to support basic public services in the three countries in areas such as health, education, and infrastructure, while bolstering the management and oversight of Compact trust funds previously established for each of the states. Congress also included $634 million over the next 20 years to ensure continued provision of U.S. Postal Service to the FAS, a key link between the U.S. and these islands even in this era of email and messaging apps. Our partners in the Pacific viewed the congressional negotiations on COFA as a litmus test of U.S. credibility and commitment. They see the success as a basis for further engagement and expansion of U.S. ties, not the limit of this relationship. Extension of benefits for the first time to veterans of the U.S. military in their home islands (something we worked very hard on while in Palau) and access to new health and education programs to citizens of the three states are so important and very welcome. In addition to the Biden administration’s hosting of two U.S.- Pacific Island Country Summits in Washington, D.C., announcement of the opening of new U.S. embassies in the region also signals a renewed commitment. New posts in the Solomon Islands and Tonga opened in 2023; a new embassy in Vanuatu is planned for later this year; and discussions continue with Kiribati regarding a U.S. diplomatic presence there sometime in the future.
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