Marshall Islands

The Compacts of Free Association (COFA) between the U.S. and the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau touch on nearly every U.S. national priority. So why are renegotiations stuck in limbo?

The Pacific Islands have not been overlooked by the White House, although the region’s democracies face challenges, too.

Seventy-five years after the U.S. began testing nuclear weapons in the Pacific, the Marshall Islands stand at a new crossroads.

The United States tested 67 nuclear weapons from 1946 to 1958 in what is now the Republic of the Marshall Islands.

Many nations across the Pacific, directly impacted by nuclear testing, have backed the ban -- but not all.

Author Jon Mitchell discusses the environmental contamination that has accompanied the U.S. military presence in Japan, Guam, the Marshall Islands, and elsewhere.

A looming north-south split in the Pacific Islands Forum poses both challenges and opportunities to the rival superpowers.

With its eyes on China, the United States seeks to reaffirm its presence in the western Pacific.

Over the next few years, the United States is expected to start renegotiating the terms of its Compacts of Free Association.

In focusing efforts to promote its indigenous peoples and culture, Taiwan is making a political gambit in the Pacific as well.

The U.S. is finally taking a more overt interest in the strategic importance of the Freely Associated States.