[The government of Guam has appointed a Commission on
Decolonization, but U.S. control means that all of the island’s
options, including the status quo, have substantial downsides.]
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TRAPPED BY EMPIRE  
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Van Jackson
February 8, 2023
Dissent
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_ The government of Guam has appointed a Commission on
Decolonization, but U.S. control means that all of the island’s
options, including the status quo, have substantial downsides. _

The flags of the United States and Guam are seen during the SMS
Cormoran II 100 Years Memorial Ceremony at the U.S Agana Navy Cemetery
in April 2017 in Guam., Matt Roberts/Getty Images

 

The specter of geopolitical violence looms anytime Washington turns
its attention to the Pacific.

In 1898, the Treaty of Paris ended the Spanish-American War and
transferred Guam and the Philippines to the U.S. empire. In the Second
World War, the United States focused on the Pacific not just as a
theater of war but also as an avenue to reclaim colonial territories.
In the early Cold War, the Pacific had fleeting importance to
policymakers as a site for nuclear testing. And during the Vietnam
War, the United States used its Pacific territories—in particular
Guam—to stage large-scale bombing and counterinsurgency campaigns
across Southeast Asia.

As America’s rivalry with China has accelerated in recent years,
U.S. moves in East Asia tend to draw the most attention—including
expanded military base access in the Philippines just announced this
February. But the United States has begun focusing on the Pacific once
again too. In May 2022, China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited
eight Pacific nations during a ten-day tour that sought (but failed)
to secure a region-spanning “Common Development Vision.” In
classic one-upmanship, the White House answered by hosting a
U.S.-Pacific Island Summit four months later.

As official policy, the United States seeks a “free, open, and
inclusive” region. In practice, it seeks to preserve and expand the
U.S. sphere of influence in the Pacific to preclude China from doing
the same. That intention is evident not just in its explicit warnings
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Pacific nations against cutting deals with China, but also in the
guest list for the summit. The White House invited
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countries but Guam—one of the world’s seventeen remaining
territories denied
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not on the list. Instead, its governor was part of the U.S.
delegation. And in the “Pacific Partnership Strategy” the White
House issued in parallel with the summit, Guam was mentioned only
once, in a list of U.S. territories.

The obvious reason for this is that the United States is Guam’s
colonizer. To this day, the U.S. military occupies roughly one-third
of Guam’s landmass. And the Pentagon has plans
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expand that presence further still.

Guam exists as an imperial relation within U.S. liberal
internationalism—a key node in what historians call America’s
“pointillist empire.” Guam’s relative absence from how the White
House portrays the Pacific is a politically convenient blind spot.
Exclusionary control of Guam is logically incompatible with the claim
that the U.S. government is defending a “rules-based order”—the
very claim it uses to justify rivalry with China. But it is essential
to U.S. strategic machinations in Asia.

Unfortunately, Washington’s narrative erasure of Guam has also
trapped the territory in an existential Catch-22. The Chamorro—the
indigenous people of Guam—are actively seeking self-determination.
The government in Guam has appointed a Commission on Decolonization
(some version of which has existed since 1980) to advise the country
on its options ahead of a plebiscite to determine its future, which is
hard to schedule without confidence that the United States would allow
Guam to decide its own fate. But the ongoing practice of “empire
without imperialism”—preserving formal empire-like control without
a formally imperial ideology to justify it—has saddled all of
Guam’s strategic choices, including the status quo of indefinitely
deferring self-determination, with substantial downsides.

U.S. law designates
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as “foreign in a domestic sense” and “domestic in a foreign
sense.” That is, while Guam is geopolitically important enough to
make U.S. influence there worthwhile, U.S. legislators have neither
permitted self-governance in the territory nor extended to the
Chamorro full democratic enfranchisement as part of the U.S. federal
system. In American history, white supremacy has been both
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to colonize new lands and a reason not to expand the frontier of
American federalism. Guam’s situation is an enduring legacy of that
duality. Unlike Hawai’i, with its large U.S. settler colonial
population and entrenched U.S. corporate interests, Guam was not
granted statehood.

Since the Organic Act of 1950, Guamanians have been granted U.S.
citizenship. That enables them to enlist in the U.S. military, which
they do at a rate higher than
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in almost any other part of the United States, and to move to other
parts of the country. But as part of an “unincorporated organized
territory” without statehood, they do not have representation in
Congress. And Guam has no head of state. Prior to the 1968 Guam
Elective Governor Act, Guamanians could not even elect their own
governor—an intermediary who oversees not just Guam’s local laws
but America’s laws in Guam, and who must issue an annual report
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the Secretary of the Interior detailing all of the “transactions of
the government of Guam.”

American defense officials are convinced that this mundane
administrative colonialism benefits _them _immensely. Guam is
optimally situated as a base for U.S. power projection into East Asia,
the conceptual core of U.S. Asia strategy. U.S. policymakers believe
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the credibility of their alliance commitments and their ability to
maintain primacy depend on America’s readiness to prevail in
hypothetical wars—and every conceivable warfighting scenario in East
Asia would require the large-scale mobilization of U.S. forces from
outside the region through the Pacific. The large basing
infrastructure the United States maintains on Guam would facilitate
that mobilization.

U.S. control of Guam also makes its forward-basing in East Asia more
politically sustainable by easing the burden on sovereign allies. This
was the essence of Richard Nixon’s “Guam Doctrine,” which sought
to downsize America’s East Asian military outposts by retrenching
U.S. forces along the Pacific periphery in places that were seen as
more controllable and less politically unpredictable.

That strategy continued into the twenty-first century. The George W.
Bush White House reached an agreement with the Japanese government to
relocate the Okinawa-based III Marine Expeditionary Force to Guam as
part of a “United States-Japan Roadmap for Realignment
Implementation.” By moving thousands of Marines and their dependents
to Guam, that deal
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to alleviate some of the sociopolitical burdens that Japan endures as
a U.S. ally, such as protests by Okinawa residents who see the U.S.
military as an occupying presence and the source of crimes and
accidents committed by Marines.

Unlike Australia, Japan, and South Korea, Guam has no Status of Forces
Agreement constraining the terms of the U.S. military presence on
their territory. Accordingly, there was little recourse for Guamanians
to oppose the base-building required to house the influx of troops
from Japan.

The move from Okinawa to Guam was delayed partly because Washington
and Tokyo haggled over who would pay for which parts of the shift. The
Environmental Protection Agency had also judged
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2010 that the project would “significantly exacerbate substandard
environmental conditions on Guam.” Nevertheless, construction
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a fifty-nine-acre live-fire training range complex is already
underway. The expansion of the U.S. military’s footprint promises to
destroy hundreds of acres of forests and coral reefs. And because a
version of these relocation plans is still scheduled
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figures project 5,000 Marines and 2,400 dependents arriving around
2024), Guamanians have no political framework to challenge the
preferences of the Pentagon. From the U.S. perspective, this is the
point.

Washington’s relationship with Guam remains incontrovertibly
imperial—an arrangement it exploits to manage the frictions that
inevitably arise in America’s security alliances with sovereign
nations.

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
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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
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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
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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
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the North Korean nuclear crisis, “If thousands die, they’re going
to die over there. They’re not going to die here.”

Despite the obvious downsides to Guam’s importance to the U.S.
national security state, getting free is not so easy.

When Guam lobbied the United States for commonwealth status in the
1980s, Congress rebuffed the idea because it would have prevented
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U.S. Government and U.S. Military from taking any action in Guam
without mutual consent of the people.” Since then, the government of
Guam has sought to put its peoples’ fate to a vote: seek statehood
and fully merge with the United States (like Hawai’i), seek national
independence (like the Philippines), or seek a euphemistic “free
association” in a U.S. sphere of influence, through which Guam would
maintain autonomy over its domestic affairs but would formally
outsource foreign policy and national security to Washington (like
Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated States of Micronesia).
The plebiscite to decide Guam’s political status remains
unscheduled, caught in U.S. judicial red tape and lacking any
indication from the U.S. government that it would respect the results.
But weighing these strategic choices is more than a thought
experiment; it prepares Guam for the moment that self-determination
becomes possible.

_Statehood_

Guam could elect to become America’s fifty-first state. With all of
the rights and obligations of any other state in the U.S. federal
system, Guamanians would also have voting representation in Congress.
Statehood would expand Guam’s options for managing its economy
through financing and federal programs. And the option is compatible
with an existing strand of American patriotism in Guam due to high
rates of military service.

But statehood has a price. Assuming Congress would admit Guam as the
newest state—which is exceedingly unlikely in the current
conjuncture—it does nothing to alleviate the geopolitical dangers
Guam faces. The U.S. military would still remain, but no longer as an
occupying force.

There is also a problem of cultural preservation in the face of
assimilation, and the unintentional legitimation of colonial history.
Shifting from invisible imperial relations to overt political
authority consummates the process of American takeover of Chamorro
life and could set back justice-based demands for the indigenous
population.

_Nationhood_

Alternatively, Guam could choose to become an independent
nation-state. Guam has its own history, culture, and language. There
is no moral reason why the Chamorro should not declare independence,
giving Guam full formal sovereignty and empowering its political
leaders to negotiate (or expel) the U.S. military presence in a manner
that does justice to Guam’s people and environment. Nationhood would
allow Guam to decide whether it wants to accept the geopolitical risk
of being a U.S. ally or whether it would rather take itself off the
target list of America’s enemies.

But nationhood is not cost-free either. Breaking away from the United
States does not guarantee Guam’s safety in an international
political environment that has become increasingly perilous. True
independence reduces the risk of North Korean nuclear attack, but a
Sino–U.S. war could well engulf small nations like Guam regardless
of its desire to sidestep power politics. Moreover, if an independent
Guam wanted an independent military, it would have to raise
substantial new debt to train and equip it, which would be a drag on
economic development.

Guam’s political economy depends disproportionately on America’s
gratuitous military spending. Booting out U.S. forces would cause
near-term economic harm. Therefore, even an independent Guam allied
with the United States would have limited ability to veto, authorize,
or adjust America’s military footprint.

_Free association_

In between statehood and nationhood is free association, a musty,
imperialistic concept that permits formal entry into a sphere of
influence. Through the “Compact of Free Association” (COFA), the
United States permits Palau, the Marshall Islands, and the Federated
States of Micronesia a form of political independence that is
circumscribed by Washington’s role as their security guarantor.

Under free association, residents of Guam could still serve in the
U.S. military while achieving a greater degree of freedom in managing
their domestic affairs. Guam could claim formal sovereignty while
giving up what it already lacks: the right to conduct foreign policy
as it sees fit.

Yet the free association option actually incurs higher military risks
than either of the alternatives; it would formally make Guam not just
a nuclear target of America’s enemies but also an object in
Sino–U.S. competition. One of the features of great-power rivalry is
the securitization of everyday politics and diplomacy. As a client in
a U.S. sphere of influence, Guam would be subject to the jockeying and
cross-pressures of the great powers. As it does with the COFA nations,
the United States would be able to exercise a de facto veto over any
decisions by Guam’s government that it deems to have “national
security implications.”

Guam’s strategic choices are freighted with steep costs and risks,
products of the conditions that the United States has imposed on the
Chamorro.

Guam’s subordinated political status, a useful instrument for U.S.
policymakers, is a stain on the values they burnish in speeches and
summits. While hypocrisy is nothing new in U.S. foreign policy, we
must bring to light America’s disenfranchisement of Guam and the
structural violence it has imposed—conditions that Washington makes
invisible. We should also challenge the grim fantasies that sustain
the idea of Guam’s vital role to U.S. national security.
Washington’s approach to power-politicizing the Pacific rests on a
feeble intellectual construction that improves nobody’s security and
makes more likely the very nightmare of war that it prepares for.

_VAN JACKSON is a senior lecturer in international relations at
Victoria University of Wellington and most recently the author
of Pacific Power Paradox: American Statecraft and the Fate of the
Asian Peace (Yale University Press)._

_DISSENT is a quarterly magazine of politics and ideas. Founded by
Irving Howe and Lewis Coser in 1954, it quickly established itself as
one of America’s leading intellectual journals and a mainstay of the
democratic left. Dissent has published articles by Hannah Arendt,
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Dorothy Day, Bayard Rustin, Czesław Miłosz, Barbara Ehrenreich,
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* Guam
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* U.S. history
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* colonialism
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* China
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* U.S. Military
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* self determination
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* The Chamorro
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* citizenship
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