Compact colonialism

For decades, the United States has administered compacts of free association with the Republic of Palau, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia. Scholars have criticized the United States for using the compacts to limit the sovereignty of the compact states, but they have not determined how the compact states fit into the American empire in the Pacific Ocean. A review of the U.S. documentary record from the early twenty-first century indicates that the United States has ruled the compact states through its own particular form of neocolonialism, or ‘compact colonialism’. Under the compacts, the United States has exercised several powers, including military controls, political controls, economic controls, cultural influence and humanitarian indifference. With this neocolonial approach, the United States has exploited the compact states to maintain a large oceanic empire in the Pacific Ocean

Ancient history · China · Colonialism · Dominion · Economic history · Empire · Expansionism · Neocolonialism · Political science · Politics · Sovereignty · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Law · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

• Lessons From the Peripheries

  Open Access•Sione Lynn Pili Lister•Sociological Forum•2026

  Add to list

• Enduring Ascriptions of Dependence

  Open Access•O G Berta•Antipode•2025

  Add to list