By Zhang Yifan

The US signed a new Compact of Free Association Agreement (COFA) with the Marshall Islands the other day, completing the renewal of the agreements with this country as well as another two Pacific Island countries of the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau. The US has major military and strategic considerations around signing these agreements with the three countries.

According to reports, US Special Presidential Envoy for Compact Negotiations Joseph Yun has disclosed that the new COFA reached between the US and the Marshall Islands spans 20 years. The US media said that the Biden administration had renewed the agreements with the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau earlier in May 2023.

Why is the US eager to renew the agreements with the three countries?

After the WWII, the Pacific Island countries, which had been the main battlefields of the Pacific War, had successively declared independence, but the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of Palau, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands (including Saipan, Rota Island, Tinian and other regions near Guam) become the United Nations trust territories under the trusteeship of the US. In the 1980s and 1990s, the US allowed the above three countries to be independent on the premise that they signed the COFAs with it. The agreements stipulate that only the US military aircraft and warships are authorized with free access to the territorial waters and airspace of the three countries, while the entrance of those of any other countries needs to be approved by the US. The agreements signed before are about to expire in 2023 or 2024, so the US has started to facilitate their renewal since the end of 2021.

As the main battlefields of the Pacific War, the three countries still retain various relics from the WWII, even with unexploded ammunitions posing threats and harm to local people's lives. The US had once turned the Marshall Islands into proving grounds for nuclear weapons after the WWII, carrying out 67 nuclear trial explosions there between 1946 and 1958, which caused serious nuclear pollution and are thus constantly argued by this country to claim compensation from the US government. The Ronald Reagan Ballistic Missile Defense Test Site currently built on Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands by the US is a key test facility for missile defense and space research programs of the US. Most of the US military's missile interception tests were performed here, demonstrating its importance to the US missile defense system construction.

Meanwhile, as the US military-strategic focus switches to the Asia-Pacific region, the Pacific Island countries, especially the above three countries located between the first island chain and the second island chain, are considered as the priority regions of the US military deployment. For example, the Republic of Palau close to the Philippines has become an important fulcrum to support the US military bases in the Philippines. The US not only cleaned up ammunition and fairway relics around the main harbors of Palau but also renovated the airfields on the island to handle the operations of C-130 transport aircraft and other large planes. The US is currently launching infrastructure construction on the island to support the deployment of the Tactical Multi-Mission Over-the-Horizon Radar (TACMOR) system, which is expected to be completed and transferred to the US Air Force by June 2026. The system can provide long-range warnings on incoming hypersonic weapons, cruise missiles, ballistic missiles, combat aircraft and ships for its intra-field defense systems to respond.

In addition, the US has significantly increased various military exercises in Palau in recent years. For example, the US Army launched the first ever Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) air defense missile system in Palau in Exercise Valiant Shield 2022, and the US Air Force also practiced the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept in this country.

Moreover, the US had announced plans to build a military base in the Federated States of Micronesia in 2021. Since the beginning of 2023, Commander of US Indo-Pacific Command Adm. John Aquilino has repeatedly visited the country to survey the site selection and the new base is expected to serve as an effective supplement to the US military base group on Guam.

Before the settlement on the renewal of these agreements, there was great anxiety within the US military regarding the possibility of reaching a final agreement on the accords. At the end of 2022, former commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command Philip S. Davidson led several experts and scholars to release a research report urging the US government to speed up negotiations.

The Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia and the Republic of Palau have great military significance to the US. First, they are marine and aerial channels for the US to deploy troops in the Western Pacific region. If failing to conclude the agreements, the US would no longer have the exclusive permission to utilize the territorial waters and airspace of the three countries, meaning that it would confront substantial obstacles when sending military forces in East Asia from its West Coast, Hawaii and Guam regions.

Second, the three countries will be reserved as an alternate to the Guam base group. The US has always believed that Guam is no longer safe under the strategic environment of great power competition, which calls for the implementation of distributed operations, thus all its services have also introduced various operational concepts with distributed operations as their core. For example, the ACE concept advocated by the US Air Force claims that they should shift from the traditional pattern of centralized deployment of massive aircraft groups in large airports to more dispersed deployment in increasing small or temporary airports to enhance their survivability and recoverability, resolve the air to ground tactics of adversaries, and enhance the resilience of their aerial combat systems. The US has attached importance to and reused the large number of makeshift airports constructed in the three countries during WWII.

Third, the three countries will become important logistic replenishment bases for the US military. The US will consider pre-store a large quantity of ammunition, oil, spare parts and other materials there to facilitate the on-demand maneuver of its ships, aircraft and troops at any time.

Editor's note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.