Antinuclear

Australia part of the USA’s militarisation of the Pacific

In the coming months, the world will mark the 70th anniversary of Pacific battles in Saipan, Guam, the Mariana Islands, New Guinea, Palau, the Philippines and Burma. More anniversaries will be recognized next year to commemorate battles in Bataan, Manila and Iwo Jima, followed by anniversaries of the firebombing of Tokyo, the battle of Okinawa and then, in August 2015, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each event represents death and destruction of the past in a region scarred by militarism and an ongoing legacy of war without end

The Militarized Pacific: An Anniversary Without End  14 May 2014  By Jon Letman, Truthout | Op-Ed  “……..(Another) Asia-Pacific Pivot The plight of the Marshall Islands is the back-story of today’s increasingly militarized Asia-Pacific, but David Vine, associate professor of anthropology at American University, sees nothing particularly new about Obama’s Asia-Pacific pivot.

“Very early on islands were identified as playing a very important role in expanding the reach of the United States, and US commerce in particular,” Vine says, citing early US military forays into Okinawa and the tiny Bonin (Ogasawara) Islands southeast of Japan. In the 1960s US nuclear weapons were kept in Okinawan ports and have been documented as passing through Japanese islands despite Japan’s stated opposition to introducing and storing nuclear weapons.

Similarly, in 1987, the nation of Palau, under pressure from the US, dropped its opposition to the entry of US nuclear armed and powered vessels into its territory.

Vine talks about the post-World War II “forward posture” of creating a wall of Pacific islands as close as possible to Asia for its own strategic interests. He describes Pacific island nations like the RMI, Palau and FSM as being technically sovereign but, like American Samoa, Guam, Saipan and the Northern Mariana Islands, effectively run as colonies. Vine says these islands exist under conditions that overwhelmingly benefit US military interests, perhaps best illustrated by the US insisting on the “right of strategic denial.” This “right,” claimed under COFA, grants the US exclusive military control over half a million square miles of the Pacific and includes provisions allowing for the use of RTS on Kwajalein through 2066 with the option to extend to 2086.

Pointing to small Pacific outposts that lack “Burger King bases” (sprawling military bases loaded with recreational and other amenities), Vine says, “while sometimes military facilities might be quite limited, they often can form the nucleus for what could be a much larger base.” He says austere bases with small numbers of personnel or “temporarily embedding” US forces within another nation’s military base (Australia, Singapore, the Philippines), are part of the “lily pad strategy.” Vine says what constitutes a US military base in name is often subject to semantic games, using words like “military place” instead of “military base.”

According to the Department of Defense 2013 Base Structure Report, the US has just one military base in the Marshall Islands: RTS at Kwajalein. However, it also controls 10 other sites in the RMI which are not counted as bases because they don’t meet the criteria of at least ten acres and $10 million PRV (“plant replacement value”). Regardless of the true number, in a country made up of just 70 square miles, every foot of dry land counts.

Vine has thoroughly documented the displacement of Chagos Islanders to make way for the US military base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean in his book Island of Shame: The Secret History of the US Military Base on Diego Garcia. He says the patterns of displacement in the Pacific, specifically the Marshall Islands, are similar to what happened at Diego Garcia.

Anniversaries Without End

According to Vine, this is a very dangerous time in the Asia-Pacific and the US is playing a largely unproductive role that is increasing danger and heightening tension between China and other nations. “The presence and build-up of US bases,” he says, “is not the way to ensure peace and security in the region.”

In the coming months, the world will mark the 70th anniversary of Pacific battles in Saipan, Guam, the Mariana Islands, New Guinea, Palau, the Philippines and Burma. More anniversaries will be recognized next year to commemorate battles in Bataan, Manila and Iwo Jima, followed by anniversaries of the firebombing of Tokyo, the battle of Okinawa and then, in August 2015, the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Each event represents death and destruction of the past in a region scarred by militarism and an ongoing legacy of war without end. http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/23688-the-militarized-pacific-an-anniversary-without-end

May 15, 2014 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | AUSTRALIA - NATIONAL, weapons and war