Talisman Saber and Australia’s Guam connection

Since September 11 the US, determined to ensure its dominance of the region should confrontation with China or Russia occur, has restructured its operation in the Pacific. The US strategy has moved away from siting land bases in foreign countries to developing jumping-off sites for its troops at bases provided by the host nations for example, Japan/Okinawa, South Korea, the Philippines).

This “lily-pad” strategy involves a series of in-host-country facilities to service expanded military bases in territories which the US considers to be its own. The US military is manoeuvring so that it will increasingly operate according to a “Pacific Strategic Triangle” America’s Unsinkable Fleet concept which links Guam, Hawaii and Alaska - all of which are US territories. The Pentagon’s perspective is that within the US’s “Global War on Terror” “Guam offers proximity and valued status as an American territory. ... [because] the military does not need to secure permission to engage in operations from the island - a concern, particularly during crises for forces utilizing operating platforms in non-U.S. territories” (Pacific Magazine, July/August: 27-28).

This ambition has resulted in a US military expansion on Guam. In September 2006, the US Pacific Command (PACOM) released plans for a military build-up on the island: including the relocation of 8,000 Marines from Okinawa; a Marines Corp base and training area; extending Andersen Air Force Base; refurbishing Naval Base Guam to enhance its capacity to transit nuclear air craft carriers; and building an Army base at Radio Barrigada for a Patriot Ballistic Missile Defence (BMD) task force. The BMD facility, expected to be constructed by 2012, will give the Army the capacity to intercept and shoot down incoming missiles aimed at the critical military assets on Guam.

An ideal location for the US’s Global Strike Force, Andersen Air Force Base will home base B-52s, and rotate 48 F-22 and F-15E fighter jets, state-of-the-art B-1 supersonic strike aircraft, B-2s “flying wing” Stealth bombers from US bases in the continent and Alaska. In addition, there will be ten Global Hawk unmanned spy planes home based in Guam. Guam already homeports three nuclear-powered Los-Angeles-class fast-attack submarines at Naval Base Guam on Apra Harbour, and more are scheduled for 2008.

The port is being modified to enhance its Nuclear Aircraft Carrier (CVN) transient operational capability. The US Navy currently has five of its eleven aircraft carriers in the Pacific, and intends to bring this to six by 2010. The Pentagon plans to have 60 per cent of its Navy’s global fleet in the Pacific arena.

Guam, however, is not US territory. Guam was entered onto the United Nations’ List of Non-Self Governing Territory by the US in 1946, but the US is only the “administering power”. Since then the US Pentagon has always anchored its strategy around the aspiration to make Guam the hub of its forward position close to the Asian continent. The result has been that the US has been holding Guam’s Indigenous Chamorro peoples hostage to its military ambitions for over 60 years.

In 1950, the US unilaterally signed what is known as the Organic Act which unilaterally granted Guam’s residents US citizenship (long desired by an element of Guam’s community) and guaranteed the Indigenous Chamorro peoples the right to an act of self-determination regarding their political status. The Act guaranteed that this right would be reserved for Chamorro. Granting US citizenship to the residents of Guam seems like a good thing until one realises that while the people of Guam (including the Chamorro) are American citizens they do not have the right to vote in Congress or to elect the US President. They are, in fact, US citizens without the rights enshrined in the American Constitution.

Guam is described by Washington as being an “Unincorporated Territory”, again a status which sounds beneficial until one realises that the “unincorporated” aspect of that title means that Guam is a non-entity within the parameters of the US, for no such designation exists within the context of the US constitution. The US has yet to uphold its promise of guaranteeing the inalienable right of the Indigenous Chamorro to an act of self-determination. The UN has failed in its commitment to the Second International Decade for the Eradication of Colonialism.

The impact of Guam’s political history has been “political subjugation” and a “situation of uncertainty, neglect and inattention to our basic human, civil and political rights”, according to Chamorro rights activist Hope Alvarez Cristobal.

If the planned military expansion in Guam goes ahead, then Guam’s 160,000 residents will experience a population explosion expanding it by about 35,000 strong. With control over Guam’s immigration, the US has increased that portion of the Guam population most likely to vote in local elections for local governments which favour the US military presence. The abrupt population increase, expected to start in 2008 and culminate in 2014, will put intense pressure on Guam’s infrastructure - and with a large portion of its population already living in poverty, many of which are Chamorro, local citizenship-based resistance is growing.

Talisman Saber implicates Australia in the increasing militarisation in the northwest Pacific, particularly of Guam. If Guam is the US’s “tip of the spear” then Australia’s role is to prepare the hand that throws the spear. Australian citizens must ask whether they are willing to acquiesce to that enforced role.

For more information about Talisman Saber 07 visit www.peaceconvergence.com or www.shoalwaterbay.org.