MARSHALL Islands President Dr. Hilda C. Heine has made a state visit to Australia, the first by a Marshallese leader in more than three decades.
Her meetings with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and senior ministers comes at a time when the United States has withdrawn its Ambassador from Majuro. The Trump administration has also withdrawn from dozens of UN agencies and multilateral institutions – including global climate agreements of vital importance to the atoll nation.
The Republic of Marshall Islands (RMI) delegation, led by President Heine and Foreign Minister Kalani Kaneko, held meetings in Canberra with Prime Minister Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong and Minister for Pacific Island Affairs Pat Conroy, who pledged support for RMI’s Resilience and Adaptation Trust Fund.
Describing Heine as “a trailblazing Pacific leader – exemplifying the importance and impact of women in leadership in the Pacific”, Senator Wong also announced Australian support for Women United Together Marshall Islands, a leading women’s rights organisation in Majuro.
Meeting Prime Minister Albanese, Heine discussed the climate emergency and Australia’s role in the lead up to this year’s Pacific Islands Forum in the Republic of Palau.
After the failure of the ALP government’s bid to host COP31 in South Australia later this year, Australia’s Climate and Energy Minister Chris Bowen recently met the troika of Pacific Island Forum leaders – the past, current and future chairs – to discuss plans for a pre-COP meeting in the Pacific. This meeting would be an opportunity to highlight regional climate priorities in the lead up to this year’s global COP negotiations, to be held in Antalya, Türkiye between 9-20- November, where Bowen will serve as head of negotiations (a consolation prize after Türkiye’s President Erdogan refused to stand aside for Australia to host the COP).
Heine’s visit to Australia comes as the Trump administration has announced US withdrawal from key climate treaties and institutions. After withdrawing from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change on his first day in office in 2025, President Donald Trump has now gone further, announcing that the United States will withdraw from the United National Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) – the only country in the world to stand outside the global framework.
Looking south
In a statement this week, President Heine welcomed closer ties to Australia, and “recognised the soon‑to‑be‑opened Australian Embassy in Majuro as a major milestone in the bilateral relationship.”
For decades, Australia has played a limited role in the three US Freely Associated States in Micronesia: the Republic of Palau, Federated States of Micronesia and Republic of Marshall Islands. But it is becoming harder to ignore the strategic importance of the northern Pacific, as successive US administrations increase military build-up in Hawai’i and Guam, and expend new infrastructure across Micronesia, including airstrips on Yap, Tinian, and Peleliu that will allow the dispersal of US forces from Guam in times of conflict.
RMI has extensive ties to the United States, through Compact funding, provision of US federal services, and migration rights to the United States (with a large Marshallese community living in Arkansas).
The islands are also vital for US warfighting strategy in the Asia-Pacific region, hosting the US Kwajalein Atoll missile testing range. The US base is used to test new anti-missile defence systems, and serves as the splashdown point for intercontinental ballistic missiles test-fired from Vandenburg Space Force Base in California.
Together with Tuvalu and Palau, RMI is one of only three Forum member countries that has diplomatic ties to Taiwan. Both Washington and Canberra are eager to bolster the remaining Taiwan-aligned Pacific states against Chinese influence (since 2019, the People’s Republic of China has replaced Taiwan as diplomatic partner of choice in Solomon Islands, Kiribati and Nauru).
Seeking new friends
Despite ongoing strategic and economic ties with Washington, Dr. Heine’s visit to Australia – the first by an RMI President since 1993 – reflects collapsing US hegemony in the region, as island nations seek new friends.
Currently serving her second term in office, President Heine has long sought to extend diplomatic and development ties to other partners. This effort has only increased since the second Trump administration reduced funding for federal services, abandoned climate action and withdrew the US Ambassador from Majuro.
Last month, the United States announced it would withdraw immediately from the Green Climate Fund (GCF), the global climate finance mechanism, and give up its seat on the GCF Board. The Trump administration, as it assaults scientific and environmental agencies across the United States, has also abandoned the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the global scientific network that prepares Assessment Reports on the state of the climate emergency and projections of future adverse effects.
Given the vital importance of climate science, climate finance and climate action for the low-lying atoll nation, it’s hardly a surprise that the Marshall Islands is looking elsewhere for partners.
In October 2023, RMI renewed its Compact of Free Association with the United States, with the Biden Administration pressing for an urgent agreement despite unresolved issues (including Washington’s refusal to address longstanding Marshallese calls for extra resources to respond to the health and environmental effects of US nuclear testing).
However when this correspondent visited Majuro in March 2024, the US Congress has not yet passed legislation that would begin the transfer of US$7.1 billion dollars pledged to the three Compact States over the next 20 years. Speaking to Islands Business at the time, President Heine was open about her concern over disfunction in the US legislature, and suggested “we are now at the crossroads with our relationship with the United States.”
President Heine warned: “At some point, our nation to needs seriously consider other options available to us if the US is unable or unwilling to keep its commitments to us. Our nation has been a steadfast ally of the United States, but that should not be taken for granted.”
Regional support
At the annual meetings of Pacific Island Forum leaders, President Heine has championed more urgent action on the climate emergency. She has also sought regional allies to press Washington on the health, environmental and cultural legacies of 67 US nuclear tests on Bikini and Enewetak atolls. Speaking at the 2024 Pacific Islands Forum in Tonga, Heine said: “We emphasise the need for regional solidarity in addressing not only historical injustices but also the ongoing challenges associated with nuclear testing.”
To advance this agenda, the Marshall Islands has twice won a seat on the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). At the Nuku’alofa Forum, President Heine said: “We are now working to reshape the narrative, from being victims to one of active agency, in helping to shape our own future and the world around us. Having a small island developing state like the Marshall Islands on the [Human Rights] Council ensures diversity, ensures a focus on those that are the most vulnerable to human rights violations.”
Through its HRC membership, the RMI National Nuclear Commission worked with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to investigate the impact of the US nuclear testing on human rights. In 2024, OHCHR published a major report to the HRC on “the challenges and barriers to the full realisation and enjoyment of human rights stemming from the nuclear legacy.”
Once again, current US policies have undercut this initiative – last year, President Trump withdrew the United States from the HRC, part of a wider assault on multilateral agencies.
Last month, in a further blow to US regional influence, the Trump administrations withdrew three US ambassadors accredited to eight Forum member countries, before the end of their normal term – including Ambassador to the Republic of the Marshall Islands Laura Stone, who only took up her post in July 2024.
Stone is a 35-year career diplomat with extensive service across the globe, including a stint as State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Mongolia. But the replacement of foreign service officers like Stone by political appointees is a hallmark of Trump’s diplomatic practice, surrounding himself with business cronies and “America First” ideologues, while spurning the expertise of career public servants.
So with more than three decades between presidential state visits to Australia, the current trip by an RMI delegation was making a point to Washington. In Canberra, the RMI government was also sending a message to the Albanese government on the need for urgent climate action.
President Heine has long called for developed countries to step up their contribution of climate finance for adaptation and loss and damage. But she joins other Forum leaders concerned that the Albanese government has continued to expand exploration and exports of fossil fuels since its May 2022 election.
As major OECD nations in Europe and North America slash their overseas development assistance budgets – diverting resources to re-armament and the modernisation of nuclear arsenals – Australia will be expected to do more in the Pacific islands, as Forum member states move beyond old alliances to expand their global networks.