Vanuatu - USA Relations
The United States and Vanuatu established diplomatic relations in 1986. Between 1977 and 1987, Vanuatu received just under $3 million from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), including projects focusing on assisting the transition to indigenous plantation management. In June 1994, the regional USAID office located in Suva, Fiji, was closed due to U.S. Government budgetary cutbacks. The U.S. military retains training links and conducts ad hoc assistance projects in Vanuatu.
In March 2006 the United States Millennium Challenge Corporation signed a 5-year $65.69 million Compact agreement with Vanuatu. The Millennium Challenge program was expected to increase average income per capita by 15% within 5 years and directly impact the lives of more than 65,000 of the rural poor in Vanuatu. The Compact was completed in April 2011 and helped to rehabilitate the two main national roads, the Efate Ring Road and the Santo East Coast Road, and improved the capacity of the Public Works Department to better maintain and manage the country’s transportation infrastructure.
The United States also remains a major financial contributor to international and regional organizations that assist Vanuatu, including the World Bank, UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Fund for Population Activities, and Asian Development Bank. In 1989, the United States concluded a Peace Corps agreement with Vanuatu. The Peace Corps has been welcomed there and currently has over 80 volunteers in-country. The United States also provides security training assistance.
In August 2017, the United States announced plans to install two radar systems on Palau to monitor North Korean missile launches. By April 2018 Australian media reports suggested that China aimed to establish a permanent naval base on the Pacific island republic of Vanuatu. Vanuatu would be a logical location for China to establish a new satellite-tracking station and ground support facility for its Yuan Wang spy ships, but it is also one of the Pacific’s least politically stable nations.
And by 2020 the Missile Defense Agency had decided to abandon its plans to set up ballistic missile defense radars in the Pacific. According to Vice Adm. Jon Hill, the agency’s director, MDA had decided to push the Pacific radars “to the right because of host nation issues that we have to come through,” Hill said. “We still have that issue and the Pacific radar is no longer in our budget. We moved it out.” Neither the Homeland Defense Radar-Hawaii (HRD-H) or the Homeland Defense Radar-Pacific (HDR-P) appeared in supporting fiscal 2021 budget request documents released 10 February 2020.
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