American hegemonic aspirations place forward bases like Guam as nuclear hostages – all whilst racheting up risk of catastrophic military conflict

[Van, “Trapped By Empire,” Dissent, February 8th 2023, , Accessed 6/20/23, JCP – PL]

The most morbid value that Guam has in U.S. strategy makers’ fever dreams is its role as a shock absorber during war. If U.S. officials once sought to make Japan America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier”—a phrase attributed to Japan’s Prime Minister Nakasone in 1983—they are now making Guam its human shield: a priority target because of its strategic value to the United States.

The Japanese empire bombed and invaded Guam as part of its multi-country offensive in December 1941 (which exists in the popular imagination only as the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i). One occupier displaced another. Today, Guam’s people are subject to the same kind of existential threat, and once again it is not of their own making. North Korea has had plans to strike Guam with nuclear warheads since at least 2013, because the U.S. nuclear-capable bombers often fly out of Guam. During the nuclear crisis of 2017, the North Korean military warned it would fire missiles meant to land directly adjacent to Guam—proving it could strike Guam at will without technically doing so—and its leader Kim Jong-un suggested he was ready to nuke Guam if the United States followed through with threats to conduct “bloody nose”—preventive, not retaliatory—strikes against the North. As I wrote at the time, nuclear war was a real and growing risk and Guam would have been among its first victims. Today, America’s conflict with North Korea over its nuclear weapons remains unresolved, in almost every respect worse than in 2017. And that means Guam remains something of a nuclear hostage.

The threat of annihilation facing Guam isn’t limited to North Korean crises. As University of Guam political scientist Kenneth Gofigan Kuper lamented, Washington’s think tank industry is confident that China’s People’s Liberation Army would target Guam with missile strikes very early in any conflict with the United States. Defense intellectuals know that one of the deftest blows China can deal to the U.S. military is to launch a salvo of ballistic and cruise missiles at U.S. bases in Guam. In response to this hypothetical, Washington is planning for an expanded missile defense architecture to make U.S. operations from Guam marginally more survivable, though its facilities and runways will ultimately remain vulnerable to attack. Ratcheting up military capacity for a marginal combat advantage only increases the risk of a clash in the real world. For the Pentagon, in the context of war, a few warheads landing in Guam is preferable to landing on Hawai’i or the U.S. mainland. For Chamorro society, as Kuper stresses, a few warheads could destroy everything that matters.

The hegemonic aspirations that endure in U.S. foreign policy put Guam at risk by design. Unless or until the United States revises its fundamental approach to the Asia-Pacific, that risk must be borne by someone. As Senator Lindsey Graham confessed amid the North Korean nuclear crisis, “If thousands die, they’re going to die over there. They’re not going to die here.”