The United States must strengthen its unique relationship with the Marshall Islands.

What’s the point?

The United States’ long history with the Marshall Islands requires it to continue to have a positive relationship.

The Marshall Islanders, of whom there are thousands in our forest, must be very concerned.

Their concerns should be shared by US citizens.

Many islanders have started new lives here in Arkansas, but whatever benefits they find in their relocation, they are a people who have been removed from their homeland. The people of this area emigrated from their poverty-stricken western Pacific nation for a cause every resident of northwest Arkansas will appreciate: creating a better future for themselves and their families. A corporate labor shortage in northwest Arkansas – mainly the region’s massive poultry industry – is an opportunity for residents of the Marshall Islands. The Marshallese Educational Initiative, a nonprofit in Springdale, says 12,000 Marshallese live there, and several thousand more in northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma.

Their homeland, about 2,400 miles west of Hawaii, is a mix of amazing beauty and rich culture overshadowed by economic hardship, existential threats from climate change, and health and environmental complications partly caused by the radiation produced by Great The U.S. nuclear test was left behind between 1946 and 1958.

In a steadily rising ocean, a few inches have and will make the difference between habitability and immersion.

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

For the local landlubbers in Arkansas, many of whom now live and work not far from where they were born and where they grew up, this situation may be difficult to understand. Perhaps the only possible resemblance could be the Arkanser, the middle of the 20th. But even then, their entire condition and way of life was not at risk of being consumed by the waters.

Sea level rise is perhaps the greatest threat to the future of the Marshall Islands, but the country of roughly 54,000 people has other concerns, not the least of which is the continued impact of nuclear tests on these islands after World War II. which came under the control of the United States after the victory over Japan. The islands gained sovereignty in the late 1970s and entered a Compact of Free Association with our country in 1986. US influence in this part of the world has been and is being increased by US military facilities there.

Under the pact, the Marshall Islands have received hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation for the environmental damage caused by the United States, including a concrete dome over a crater created by a nuclear explosion and then filled with 95,000 cubic meters of radioactive debris by US forces. The nuclear history is filled with reports from US officials who did not comment on the dangers to the Marshallese people.

Today, US officials say the dome, the integrity of which is also damaged by a rising ocean, is the responsibility of the Marshall Islands. With the Compact of Free Association scheduled for renewal in 2023, these issues, as well as the islands’ strategic military importance, will grow large in the face of persistent questions as to whether the United States has lived up to its legal and moral responsibilities as a nation it did in the twentieth century so dramatically affected.

Hilda Heine, now the former President of the Islands, does not appreciate the US stance, which has been described as a refusal to engage on issues related to long-standing environmental and health problems.

“I’m like, how can it be? [the dome] are ours? “she told the Los Angeles Times in 2019.” We don’t want it. We didn’t build it. The garbage in there is not ours. It belongs to you.”

All of this happens in the context of global influence. China stands ready to help, especially in the Pacific, where US influence is waning. In general, it does little good for its friends and allies for the United States to befriend the Red Dragon.

Rogers MP Steve Womack recently told the newspaper that the renewal of the Marshall Islands Free Association Pact is vital at a time when China is seeking advantages in this part of the world.

“Where we pull the plug and where we clear, put other more nefarious actors,” said Womack.

So what to do Much 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 obligations to the islanders and their lands was forged in the glory of nuclear explosions. And the fallout that continues to this day.

We will stand by our neighbors here in northwest Arkansas and urge the federal government to strengthen, not weaken, relations with the Marshall Islands. This means aid will continue on the effects of nuclear tests and the challenges the islands are facing from climate change. Preventing China from gaining a foothold in the region might seem like the icing on the cake, but we’d argue that it’s a pretty essential part of the cake.

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