Whatever happened to Yap's $1.3 billion demand?
A billion dollars is a lot of money. Even in Washington, where politicians toss around billions and trillions as casually as the rest of us discuss the price of groceries.
But on Yap, with a population of roughly 7,000 on the main island, a billion dollars is almost unimaginable.
So imagine the stir when reports surfaced that the FSM government had proposed a $1.3 billion compensation package associated with U.S. military plans to improve Yap's airport and seaport.
The American response was hardly enthusiastic.
According to an August report in The Diplomat, Adm. Samuel Paparo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, objected strongly to the proposed compensation and warned that the military could take its planned investments elsewhere.
Suddenly, what had been presented as an extraordinary opportunity for Yap appeared to be in jeopardy.
Fast-forward a couple of months.
On Oct. 8, the Yap U.S. Military Operations Office issued an upbeat public update following a visit by U.S. Embassy Chargé d'Affaires Andrew Wylie and Rear Adm. Joshua Lasky, commander of the Joint Task Force Marianas.
The projects were moving forward, the announcement said. Yapese and American officials would review proposed defense sites, equipment storage and construction areas and environmental safeguards. Public comments would be taken into account.
All very reassuring. But something rather conspicuous was missing.
Whatever happened to the $1.3 billion?
Was the demand withdrawn? Reduced? Quietly set aside? Or is it still sitting on the negotiating table? The public announcements don't say.
Perhaps both sides decided there was little to be gained by continuing to argue about the money in public.
Fair enough.
But the silence is curious, particularly in a place where spectacular promises of outside investment have not always ended well.
Many residents of Yap remember another time when the island was being courted by investors with seemingly bottomless pockets. In the early 2010s, Chinese businessman Deng Hong's Exhibition and Travel Group arrived with extravagant plans to transform Yap into a major tourist destination.
Ten thousand hotel rooms. Golf courses. Charter flights carrying thousands of Chinese tourists. New jobs. New businesses. A new era of prosperity.
The vision was breathtaking. So were some of the land agreements.
In 2018, I reported that Yapese landowners had entered into 99-year leases believing they would receive lump-sum payments worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Only later did some discover that the money would be paid over the entire 99 years, leaving them with relatively small monthly payments while control of their ancestral land was tied up for generations.
The promised tourism developments never materialized as advertised.
One of the properties I visited, the former Village View Resort in Maap, stood in a state of deterioration, its buildings damaged and its grounds neglected. The landowners could no longer use their property as they once had.
It was a painful illustration of how an agreement that sounds lucrative can become something entirely different when the fine print is finally understood.
Now Yap is contemplating another enormous financial windfall.
To be clear, the proposed American military investments are fundamentally different from ETG's failed commercial ambitions. The U.S. and the FSM have an established defense relationship, and airport and seaport improvements could provide valuable infrastructure.
There are also legitimate reasons to seek compensation for land use, environmental risks and potential disturbance of cultural sites.
But Yap's earlier experiences offer a lesson that applies regardless of who is making the offer.
The number is not the same as the deal's value.
An open letter circulating on social media under the title "An Open Letter from the Citizens of Yap" challenges the reported compensation demands and calls for the studies and calculations used to justify them.
The letter questions figures of roughly $800 million associated with graves and land acquisition and $350 million for environmental mitigation. Those figures have not been independently verified in the underlying negotiating documents, and the letter's authorship and representativeness are unclear.
Nevertheless, the questions it raises are reasonable. How were the amounts calculated? Who proposed them? Who would receive the money? How would it be distributed? And perhaps most importantly, who would be responsible for accounting for it?
These aren't necessarily questions about corruption. They are questions that ought to accompany any agreement involving public funds, private land and obligations that could extend far beyond the lives of those negotiating today.
Yap's traditional leaders have an important constitutional role in safeguarding custom and tradition. Elected officials have responsibilities of their own. Landowners and affected communities have rights and interests that cannot simply be lumped together under a single billion-dollar figure.
Protecting ancestral graves, compensating landowners and funding environmental safeguards are not interchangeable expenses. Nor should payments to government automatically be treated as compensation to individuals.
The distinctions matter.
A government's negotiating position may sometimes need to remain confidential. But that doesn't eliminate the need to explain the terms of an eventual agreement, particularly when those terms involve the use of land and resources that communities depend upon.
The October YUMO announcement promises that public comments will influence environmental safeguards. That's encouraging. But public participation in an environmental review is not the same as public understanding of a financial agreement.
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Residents deserve to know not only where construction will take place and what protections are planned, but who will control any compensation, how it will be spent and what obligations will accompany it.
Which brings us back to that elusive $1.3 billion. Maybe it was an opening negotiating position. Maybe the U.S. military's threat to look elsewhere persuaded officials to reconsider. Or maybe discussions are continuing privately.
For now, those are possibilities, not answers.
And Yap has learned before that the most consequential part of a deal may be what people don't fully understand until years later.
There's nothing inherently wrong with negotiating aggressively or insisting that the United States pay a fair price for the rights and resources it needs. But securing a headline-grabbing dollar amount doesn't necessarily mean securing a good deal.
As election season gives way to another round of governing, that's something worth remembering well beyond Yap.
The celebrations fade. The officials change. The money gets spent. But the agreements—and their consequences—can last for generations.
Yap doesn't need another billion-dollar promise. It needs to know exactly what is being promised, to whom and at what price.
Joyce McClure is a former senior marketing executive and former Peace Corps volunteer in Yap. Transitioning to freelance writing, she moved to Guam in 2021 and relocated back to the mainland in 2023. Send feedback to joycemcc62@yahoo.com
