Borders and Buildups

The issue of wall funding in the United States for President Trump is another point at which we can see ideological lines become distorted and distinct when moving from the community of the colonizer to the community of the colonized. Left and right, liberal and conservative have particular meanings within a community and within groups within a community. Part of the colonizing process is not solely those things which the colonizer does to forcibly integrate the colonized peoples, but also the ways in which the colonized peoples may accept a particular framework for understanding themselves and their issues. This is a key point people often miss. Colonialism isn't inherently conservative and therefore decolonization is liberal. Colonialism can be both faces and many more. There can be liberal forms of colonization and conservative ones. Movements or conversations that are liberal or progressive in the US can still be colonial. 

We are reminded about this every once in a while in Guam when an issue emerges and the lines are not clear cut, where something that we might champion as being in our ideological interest across the sea, is problematic in this part of the Pacific. I collect these sort of moments and enjoy writing about them and analyzing them. Something like equality or voting rights can seem so obvious in terms of a cause that everyone should be able to get behind. But it becomes toxic when it is used to override or erase attempts to assert the right of self-determination for a particular people. In Guam, saying that everyone should vote in franchise elections for governor or senators is something everyone agrees upon. But when it comes to something unique to Guam, such as a decolonization plebiscite, that simple idea becomes divisive, because one version of equality means to erase another's claims and history. We see equality not being used to protect the integrity of a community, but rather protecting the claim of superiority of the colonizer's ideas and interests. 

The issue of the military buildup and border wall funding is another example. Most people on Guam do not like Donald Trump. This was evidenced by the straw poll in the 2016 election going strongly in favor of Hillary Clinton. It is evidenced by how Trump's nativist and white supremacist message resonates with small groups of people on Guam and many active-duty or retired military, but does not appeal to the majority. As such, when people hear about the border wall, they tend to connect Trump's anti-brown people and anti-Other message with their own experiences of feeling alienated in the world, especially in relation to the US. For liberals or progressives in Guam, being against Trump and his border policies, keeping kids in cages and so on is of critical importance. We imagine ourselves in connection to the US, outraged and hoping for some justice or balance to over. 

But what happens when Trump acts in a way that is clearly a very conservative exercise of power, the idea that he can defy congressional control of the purse strings and move things around to provide for projects that were not funded, such as his border wall. And what happens if that act ends up providing a boon to people on Guam who are engaged around a local liberal and progressive and decolonial cause of protesting the US military buildup?

Because the circuits of empire are legion, something which may take resources from one end to give to another, may end up creating possibility in unexpected places. If Trump were to raid the DOD's coffers for projects like those in Guam for its increases, it ends up creating a whole host of possibilities in terms of delays and poking holes in the federal rationale that these projects are necessary and essential and must be completed quickly. 

But this is the problem. If you accept being an extension of the colonizer, you have to accept also your role as an imagined extension of its power, of its debates, of the way it frames the problems of the world. Your own issues may be lost, since all you'll be able to do is advocate for more colonialism as the way of solving problems. More integration, or perhaps self-hate and self-immolation to argue you don't deserve more and to justify your distance and discrimination by the colonizer. 

Seeing things from a decolonial perspective requires recognizing in a fundamental way that you have a set of interests that are your own. They can sometimes line up with causes you favor in the colonizer's conversation, but they may diverge wildly and in unexpected ways. Your place cannot be accounted for in the liberal and conservative imaginary, because in a way, that entire foundation is based on your exclusion and the ability to use you as the currency for engaging in those very political debates. 

AS such, you can find friends, you can find allies. But your colonial status requires you to be true to yourself. To not to do, ensures your interests will surely be subsumed and lost. The very power that you should have to determine how you engage on an issue, whether it be borders or buildups is lost, and you are reduced to a pawn moved back and forth across the spectrum. 

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Large chunk of border wall funding diverted from tiny Guam
AUDREY McAVOY
Associated Press
September 29, 2019

HONOLULU (AP) — President Donald Trump is raising a large chunk of the money for his border wall with Mexico by deferring several military construction projects slated for Guam, a strategic hub for U.S. forces in the Pacific.

This may disrupt plans to move Marines to Guam from Japan and to modernize munitions storage for the Air Force.

About 7% of the funds for the $3.6 billion wall are being diverted from eight projects in the U.S. territory, a key spot in the U.S. military's efforts to deter North Korea and counter China's growing military.

The administration has vowed it's only delaying the spending, not canceling it. But Democrats in Congress, outraged over Trump's use of an emergency order for the wall, have promised they won't approve money to revive the projects.

"The fact is, by literally taking that money after it had been put in place and using it for something else, you now put those projects in jeopardy," said Carl Baker, executive director of Pacific Forum, a Honolulu-based foreign policy think tank.

The Senate on Wednesday passed a measure blocking Trump from raiding the military construction budget for the wall. The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill on Friday, but Trump is expected to veto it as he did with an identical measure in March.

The tiny island of Guam holds a naval base with fast attack submarines and an Air Force base with bombers that rotate in from the mainland.

The U.S. currently plans to start moving 5,000 Marines there from Okinawa in southern Japan around 2025. This is part of a decades-long effort by Tokyo and Washington to relieve the congested Japanese island's burden of hosting half the U.S. forces stationed in Japan. The total cost of relocating the Marines is $8.7 billion, of which Japan is paying $3.1 billion.

The projects put on hold by the border wall are a small share of this total, yet critical to the relocation.

There's $56 million to build a well system that will supply most of the water to be used by a new Marine base. The area's existing water supply is inadequate to meet the needs of the transferred troops.

There's also a $50 million live-fire training range and a $52 million munitions storage facility. Documents about the projects the military provided to Congress say the Marines won't leave Okinawa until replacement facilities in Guam are ready. The documents say failure to complete these two projects could delay or prevent the Marines from moving.


Guam activists opposed to the live-fire range said the delay will give them time to study ancient settlements found in the area. They said it would be irresponsible to move forward on projects that would destroy cultural sites and cause irreversible environmental damage when there's so much uncertainty about the relocation.

"Our organization is conflicted about the means in which the pause was achieved because these are two instances of colonial injustice, one impacting the other," the group Prutehi Litekyan: Save Ritidian said in a statement.

The U.S. reassured Japan immediately after the announcement that it would stick to the existing timeline.

"We have received explanation from the U.S. side about the shifting of the budget that it will not affect the planned movement of Marines on Okinawa to Guam, and that the U.S. government commitment to the realignment plan is unchanged," then-Defense Minister Takeshi Iwaya told reporters earlier this month.

Discussions to reduce the U.S. presence on Okinawa began in the mid-1990s after the rape of a 12-year-old Okinawan girl by three U.S. servicemen sparked mass demonstrations. The allies in 2006 said they would send Marines to Guam by 2014, a deadline that slipped as they revised plans.

Although Okinawa makes up less than 1 percent of Japan's land space, it hosts about half of the 54,000 American troops stationed in Japan and is home to 64 percent of the land used by the U.S. bases in the country under a bilateral security treaty.

Jeffrey Hornung, a researcher at the RAND Corporation, a public policy research institute, said even before the latest development, some Okinawa residents were frustrated with the lack of progress in moving the Marines.

"The fact is, the longer that the projects on Guam are delayed, that means the longer that there's not going to be any forward movement on some aspects of moving the Marines off Okinawa," Hornung said. "And this all comes from taking money to build a border wall."

Diverted spending also will affect the Air Force, including $45.1 million for two projects to update 70-year-old munitions storage.

The Air Force has been rotating bombers — the B-2 stealth bomber as well as the B-1 and B-52 — through Guam since in 2004 to compensate for U.S. forces sent from the Asia-Pacific region to fight in the Middle East. In 2017, the U.S. dispatched a B-1 bomber from Guam to the Korean peninsula as a show of force after North Korea accelerated its efforts to test intercontinental ballistic missiles and expand its nuclear weapons program.

Project documents say existing facilities won't adequately support the mission of the 36th Munitions Squadron on Guam. They say upgrades are needed to correct a faulty door design, address earth cover lost during typhoons and house new long-range air-to-ground precision missiles.

U.S. Rep. Ed Case, a Democrat from Hawaii who sits on the House appropriations subcommittee for military construction, said he's concerned the administration diverted so much from Guam, given the island is key to the nation's defense posture in the Pacific.

But he said rewarding these funds in another budget would set an "incredibly dangerous precedent."

"That is a very difficult situation because these are priority projects. However, if we simply said yes to this president on that basis, which he is very much hoping that we will do, then we have essentially said to him and any future president that Congress' role as the responsible branch of government for appropriations no longer counts," Case said.

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Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to this report.

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