OPINION | NWA EDITORIAL: The U.S. needs to strengthen its unique relationship with the Marshall Islands

FILE - An aerial photo shows a small section of the atoll that has slipped beneath the water line only showing a small pile of rocks at low tide on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands on Nov. 8, 2015. For decades, the tiny Marshall Islands has been a stalwart American ally. Its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has made it a key strategic outpost for the U.S. military. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)
FILE - An aerial photo shows a small section of the atoll that has slipped beneath the water line only showing a small pile of rocks at low tide on Majuro Atoll in the Marshall Islands on Nov. 8, 2015. For decades, the tiny Marshall Islands has been a stalwart American ally. Its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean has made it a key strategic outpost for the U.S. military. (AP Photo/Rob Griffith, File)

Marshall Islanders, of which there are thousands in our neck of the woods, have a lot to worry about.

Their worries ought to be shared by U.S. citizens.

Many islanders have built new lives here in Arkansas, but no matter what benefits they find through their relocation, they are a people removed from their home. Those around these parts have migrated from their poverty-ridden western Pacific nation for a purpose every resident of Northwest Arkansas can appreciate: making a better future for themselves and their families. A labor shortage for businesses in Northwest Arkansas -- largely the region's massive poultry industry -- is opportunity for Marshall Islanders. The Marshallese Educational Initiative, a nonprofit organization in Springdale, says 12,000 Marshallese live there, with another several thousand elsewhere in Northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma.

Their homeland, about 2,400 miles west of Hawaii, is a mix of astounding beauty and rich culture overshadowed by economic hardship, existential threats from climate change, and health and ecological complications arising in part from nuclear radiation left behind by large-scale U.S. nuclear testing between 1946 and 1958.

In an ocean steadily rising, a few inches has and will make the difference between habitability and submersion.

"We're losing more than a place to live. We're losing our place in the world," Benetick Maddison, assistant director of the Arkansas Coalition of the Marshallese in Springdale, recently told Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reporter Doug Thompson.

It's a situation perhaps difficult to fully comprehend for native Arkansas landlubbers, a good many of whom live and work today not far from the places where they were born and raised. Perhaps the only possible similarity might be the Arkansans who gave up homesteads in the middle of the 20th century for the construction of man-made lakes such as Beaver Lake and Lake Ouachita. But even then, their entire state and way of life didn't face the threat of being consumed by the waters.

Sea-level rise is perhaps the most serious threat to the future of the Marshall Islands, but the nation of around 54,000 has other worries, not the least of which are the lingering effects of the nuclear testing inflicted on those islands after World War II, which had come under the control of the United States after the victory over Japan. The islands gained their sovereignty in the late 1970s, then entered a Compact of Free Association with our country in 1986. The U.S. influence in that part of the world has been, and continues to be, bolstered by U.S. military facilities there.

Under the compact, the Marshall Islands has received hundreds of millions of dollars as compensation for the environmental damage the U.S. caused, including a concrete dome over a crater created by a nuclear blast and subsequently filled by U.S. troops with 95,000 cubic yards of radioactive debris. The nuclear history is filled with reports of U.S. officials not being forthcoming about the dangers to the Marshallese people.

These days, U.S. officials say that dome -- the integrity of which is also under threat of damage from a rising ocean -- is the responsibility of the Marshall Islands. As the Compact of Free Association comes up for renewal in 2023, these issues, as well the islands' strategic military importance, loom large amid the ongoing questions of whether the United States has lived up to its responsibilities -- legal and moral -- to a nation it affected so dramatically in the 20th century.

Hilda Heine, now the former president of the islands, doesn't appreciate the U.S. stance, which has been described as a refusal to engage on issues of longstanding environmental and health concerns.

"I'm like, how can it [the dome] be ours?" she told the Los Angeles Times in 2019. "We don't want it. We didn't build it. The garbage inside is not ours. It's theirs."

All this is happening in the context of global influence. Particularly in the Pacific, where U.S. influence wanes, China stands ready to offer a helping hand. Generally speaking, it does the United States little good for its friends and allies to get cozy with the Red Dragon.

U.S. Rep. Steve Womack of Rogers recently told this newspaper renewal of the Compact of Free Association with the Marshall Islands is crucial in a time when China is seeking advantage in that part of the world.

"Where we unplug and where we vacate, other more nefarious actors plug in," Womack said.

So what to do? A lot about the relationship between the United States and the Marshall Islands is defined by the Compact of Free Association, but the need for the United States to respect its legal and moral commitments to the islanders and their country was forged in the glow of nuclear explosions. And the fallout, which continues today.

We will stand with our neighbors here in Northwest Arkansas and urge the federal government to strengthen, not weaken, the relationship with the Marshall Islands. That means following through on assistance with the impacts of nuclear testing and challenges the islands face with climate change. Preventing China from gaining more of a foothold in the region might seem like icing on the cake, but we would argue it's a pretty substantial portion of the cake.

Our bottom line is this: The people of the Marshall Islands should never be made to feel that the United States is not in their corner.


What’s the point?

The United States’ long history with the Marshall Islands demands it continues to nurture a positive relationship.


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