This is CBS Eye on the World.

Here's John Batchler.

Oceania, vast part of the globe stretching from the California coast all the way to the

East African coast.

We call it the Indo-Pacific, but Oceania also describes a number of sovereign states and

territories that are or not looking to the U.S. in this most tense time of threat of war

in East Asia.

I welcome Cleopascal of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

She is traveling.

She's in the Palau Islands in the Oceania Pacific.

And she's reflecting upon her testimony to Congress mid-June before she left for overseas.

And has encapsulated much of her testimony and her colleagues testimony before a subcommittee.

In a document I recommend to everyone, it's at the FDD site, how the compacts of free

associations support U.S. interests and counter the PRCs influence.

Cleop, a very good day to you in Palau.

You're somewhat ahead of me in summertime, but in any event we can speak of the same planet

and the part that you occupy right now is Palau.

We're going to do some geography first because the canvas here is so vast, just the territories

that are described in your essay of free associated states.

I believe cover a vast piece of the planet that we otherwise would call Turkey, Asia Minor.

These are distances that are humbling.

So I want to begin with what is not the free associated states in this chain of islands.

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