By Chen Hong

The Senate of the United States Congress approved a USD 95 billion overseas military aid bill that mainly involves huge budgets for Ukraine and Israel this week. However, the USD 2.3 billion fund in aid to the countries related to the Compact of Free Association (COFA) that the Biden administration had promised was excluded. The news came with disappointment and dissatisfaction from the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands.

The Pacific island countries including the Federated States of Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall Islands had paid a heavy price for the US military operations against Japan during the Pacific War. After the war, they have long been administered and controlled by the US in domestic and foreign affairs until they gained independence in the mid-1980s. However, they signed the so-called COFA with the US to transfer their defense powers to the US, enabling unrestricted access to the territorial lands, air spaces and waters of the three countries and to deploy military forces and equipment there.

In other words, the three COFA countries are ceding their major sovereignty over national security in exchange for economic aid from the US. The so-called "free association" is virtually an extremely unequal relationship, territorial and sovereign fishing and encroachment upon weak countries from a superpower to seek geographical advantages in the Pacific for hegemonic strategic purposes of the latter.

In fact, these island countries and their peoples are completely treated as pawns and even victims in their relations with the US. Between 1946 and 1958, the US conducted up to 67 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands in disregard of the human rights and environmental concerns of the local community and transported nuclear wastes from nuclear tests within the US to the Bikini Atoll for landfill. Meanwhile, most assistance provided by the US and some of its allies in recent years has been clearly politically motivated, such as investing in the so-called institutional building and capability training, completely porting Western political systems and governance models, and brainwashing the political parties, civil servants, non-governmental organizations and media of the relevant island countries with Western ideology. The ultimate purpose is to turn these countries into vassals of the US-led West ideologically and institutionally.

Pacific island countries have increasingly engaged in mutually beneficial cooperation with China in recent years. China's assistance and relevant cooperation projects to these countries do not attach any political strings and are pragmatically effective. These efforts have fundamentally improved local infrastructure and living conditions of residents and facilitated their economic development, thus having been widely acclaimed by the local governments and people.

However, to contain and undermine China's peaceful development, the US has continuously implemented and vigorously promoted the so-called "Indo-Pacific Strategy" over the years, and the South Pacific region has become an important link in its strategic game. Washington obviously wants to build these three countries into its forward bases against China strategically by taking full advantage of its special military relationships with them.

With the imminent expiration of the COFAs between the US and these countries last year, the Biden administration renewed them with promises of USD 7.1 billion in aid as bait. Washington has made lofty claims, but it has proved difficult for it to follow through. Given the US' already strained constant huge military assistance to Ukraine and Israel, coupled with the context of the election year, the aids to the COFA countries were removed from the US agendas under its geo-strategic calculations.

The current capabilities of the US can no longer keep pace with the advance of its global hegemonic strategy. For some of its allies and partners, Washington often adopts pie-in-the-sky tactics to tie them to its anti-China chariot by means of inducement and coercion. In fact, such words are usually just empty talks, and this is not the first time that the US' promises to the three countries related to the COFA have fallen flat, and it won't be the last. These accord participants and other relevant countries pressing for aid reimbursement from the US should also be soberly aware that instead of acting as a tool of the US hegemonic strategy, they should uphold their sovereignty and dignity with integrity, which is truly conducive to their long-term national interests.

(The author is the executive director of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Studies, East China Normal University.)

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.