A new Guam-based security study warns that accelerating U.S. military activity in Palau is straining the island nation’s environmental safeguards and stoking local discontent, with fresh allegations that required permits and community consultations were bypassed for a major radar site on Angaur. The Pacific Centre for Island Security’s Micronesia Security Outlook 2025, published this month, says existing “guardrails” in arrangements between Palau and the United States have been undermined by rapid militarisation and that Palauans are being sidelined from decision-making that affects land, sea and livelihoods.
The Palau chapter of the report was authored by Jodean Remengesau, director of the Bureau of Agriculture in Palau’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Environment. Remengesau argues that while the Compact of Free Association grants the U.S. military wide access to Palauan territory, it also obliges U.S. actors to meet Palau’s environmental requirements — obligations the report says have not been consistently honoured. The study highlights one instance in which land on Angaur was cleared for the first site of a U.S. tactical mobile over‑the‑horizon radar system without an environmental earthmoving permit or the consultations mandated under Palauan law.
The report details environmental consequences it attributes to the clearing: large quantities of shredded tree debris that, the authors say, created conditions inviting an outbreak of invasive coconut rhinoceros beetle and were then dumped on residents’ yards during a hurried clean-up. Those actions, the report asserts, are exactly the kinds of impacts the environmental stipulations in the compact were designed to prevent.
The allegations re‑ignite a legal dispute that began in 2023, when Angaur Governor Steven Salii filed suit against Palau’s central government, the Palau Environmental Quality Protection Board, the U.S. government and military contractors. The 2023 complaint challenged the clearing of some 271,807 square metres of land in Angaur without an environmental impact assessment or required permits. The Pacific Centre report references that litigation as evidence of mounting local resistance to how military projects have been implemented.
The security study also places the Palau developments in a broader geopolitical frame, noting that heightened U.S.–China competition in the region has helped drive an expansion of U.S. military activity across Micronesia. It says the U.S. radar project in Palau, budgeted at about US$118 million and expected to become operational in 2026, is one visible outcome of that strategic pressure. The report cautions that the military’s footprint in Palau could grow further because of the re‑negotiated compact: the United States pledged an US$890 million aid package to Palau over 20 years, which began on October 1, 2023, and a large portion of Palau’s national budget now depends on compact funds.
The Pacific Centre’s findings amount to a clear call for stronger enforcement of environmental safeguards, meaningful community consultation and greater transparency around military projects. The report says the nation’s “peace and sovereignty as its people once knew it has been increasingly compromised by accelerated militarization,” language that echoes concerns raised by local leaders and the Angaur lawsuit. The report does not document any formal response from U.S. military authorities or Palau’s national government; it remains unclear whether the litigation is proceeding toward resolution or whether agency-level enforcement actions will follow.
As the radar installation moves toward its planned operational date next year, the report signals that environmental, legal and sovereignty issues will remain central to Palau’s public debate on the price and benefits of hosting expanded defence infrastructure.
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