November 4, 2003

By Michael Field

Lawmakers in Washington have taken a crucial legislative step to pay three billion dollars to two the world’s smallest states once crucial in The Cold War but now forgotten.

For Jesuit priest Francis Hezel of the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) negotiating a compact between the United States and FSM and neighbouring Marshall Islands (RMI) came down to some simple realities.

“Geopolitics counts more than anything else in determining compact funding,” he says.

Both island groups were Japanese held from 1914 to 1945 when they became United Nations Trust Territories under US control.

Washington used the Marshalls to test its nuclear weapons to the continuing severe detriment of the Marshallese.

After independence in 1986 was anxious to deny Soviet access to the islands, and in the case of the Marshalls, retain its crucial Kwajalein Atoll strategic missile-testing base. Independence was negotiated around a “compact of free association” which gave self-governance in return for guaranteed US access and payments to both states over 15 years amounting to around 3 billion dollars.

Last week Compact II was unanimously passed by the US House of Representatives, providing more than 3 billion dollars over 20 years to FSM and RMI - a severe cut in real terms.

Legislation for the Compact now goes to the Senate for approval.

FSM is composed of 607 small islands extending over a large area of the central Pacific. Four states, Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei and Yap, make up the federation with a population of 108,000. The Marshalls, made up of atolls including Bikini, Enewetak, Kwajalein and Majuro has 56,000 people.

FSM faces internal pressure with Chuuk, home to just over half the population, exerting political and cultural domination over the other three states with the possibility of break up looming.

“We’re now thinking the unthinkable,” FSM President John Hagelegam told “Pacific” monthly magazine.

Hezel in the magazine noted that when Compact I was negotiated 25 years ago the two “freely associated states” had the Cold War aces.

“The readiness of the Freely Associated States to make concessions that would help the US neutralise communist-bloc nations overrode whatever other concerns Washington might have had with Island economic and social policy.”

This time around Washington could dictate terms and after 60 years of funding the islands “it is now clear that Washington would like to see its aid come to an end.”

Hezel told AFP in an interview from Pohnpei in FSM that it was clear Compact I did not bring the economic success to the two countries Washington had hoped for.

As to whether FSM and RMI were viable as independent states he said everybody had their own formula: “That is something everybody is still struggling with.”

But they exist and Hezel said the same kind of questions FSM and RMI faced could have been posed over Ireland as it was losing people and that was its variability: “raising sheep and growing crops on scraggly land.”

Washington, he said, did not have any sense of White Man’s Burden towards its former territories. Negotiating Compact II had been a pragmatic deal: “how much do we have to give these guys to get us off our backs….

“They seem to think you can get a country and economy and develop it in a given amount of time and say adios.”

Under Compact I around 35,000 people have left RSM and RMI to live in the US -- over 4000 alone attracted to the chicken processing industry in Arkansas.

“The portals to the US … remain open,” Hezel says.

“Thousands of others will follow unless they find what they’re looking for at home.”

Both nations face the reality of being MIRAB (migration, remittances, aid and bureaucracy) economies, he says.

Those going were retaining their cultural associations with the islands. Just as happened in Polynesia to the south, those in the home islands became dependant on the money sent home.

Hezel said he felt optimistic about the prospects of the Micronesian states.

“I know the people who are here. They have got brains, energy and they will work out whatever problems they have.

“They will not easily let this thing go down the tubes.”

Bitter rivalries and religious and ethnic animosities did not exist in Micronesia.

“Okay, its true, these people are not workalcoholics for sure, but they are survivors and there is no reason to believe they will stop surviving now.”

Copyright: Michael Field