U.S. colonial expansion in the Pacific

José Luis Robaina García

THE United States has created a vast and purely colonial empire in the Pacific Basin, primarily for military purposes, although this fact has not been widely reported in the media.

This network of small islands, converted into military bases with large nuclear weapons arsenals, polygons for tests and space warfare experiments is structurally consistent with the expansionist history of the United States, given that this development began after the occupation of large areas of Mexico and continues through today.

Historically, the first steps in the process took place in 1853, when Commodore Perry demanded sovereignty over the Japanese Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands and, three years later, promulgated the Guano Island Act, a veritable colonialist manifesto, claiming sovereignty over no less than 60 Pacific islands.

From that moment, and confirming the consolidation of the United States as an imperialist power, those steps accelerated. In 1867, Midway Island in the Marianas archipelago and converted into a naval base, while the neighboring Palmyra and Wake were transformed into a communications center, and Western Samoa in Polynesia began its conversion into another military enclave. Other actions took place throughout the entire Pacific basin.

By the end of the 19th century, the United States had occupied Guam and the Philippine archipelago and annexed Hawaii, today the 50th state of the Union, and the base of the 7th Fleet, the largest naval force. These were three points of vital strategic importance for the U.S. offense system.

However, control over the former Spanish colony of the Philippines was only achieved after years of genocidal war, which cost the lives of more than one million national fighters and civilians, according to Philippine historians Manuel Arellano Remondo and E. San Juan Jr.

Colonial domination over the Philippines, severely criticized by the writer Mark Twain, among others, lasted until 1946, when it was granted independence, but with an amendment allowing the United States to maintain 20 bases in the archipelago for close to 100 years.

Imperial voracity continued during the first half of the 20th century. In 1900 Washington proclaimed full sovereignty over Western Samoa, subsequently establishing military enclaves; in 1922 the U.S. Navy annexed the strategic Kingman Atoll and, in 1934 and 1935 the Johnston, Howland, Barker and Jarvis islands were seized, converted into airbases and later, nuclear weapons storage facilities.

The Japanese defeat at the end of World War II removed all impediments. The United States occupied large stretches of Japanese territory, covering the whole of Micronesia with bases and claiming sovereignty over 40 countries and territories in the area, including Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Solomon Islands; Holy Spirit in Vanuatu; parts of New Caledonia, Cook and Tokelau islands; and Christmas and Kanton in Kiribati and Funafuti, capital of Tuvalu.

This gigantic expansionist effort had and still has specific objectives: to have bases installed as close as possible to countries considered enemies, from which to launch devastating attacks in conjunction with the 7th Fleet without directly exposing U.S. territory.

A few examples suffice. The bombings which savagely massacred the civilian populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first atomic attack in the history of humanity, left from Tinian in the Marianas.

During the Korean War (1950-1953), nuclear attacks on densely populated cities in Korea, China and the USSR were planned from bases in Japan, Guam and the Philippines, approved by President Truman.

In 1954, Operation Vulture was designed for an atomic attack on Vietnam in the wake of the historic victory of Diem Bien Phu. This particular act of aggression was intended not so much to rescue the defeated French colonial army, but to provoke a war with China and thus prevent its consolidation as a country which might one day become a rival for the United States, as Arthur Radford, chief of general staff, revealed at the time.

Once again against Vietnam, and after the saturation bombings on Hanoi and Hai Phong which failed to crush the heroic people, President Nixon ordered a study of variants for nuclear attacks against the country from bases in neighboring countries and, in October 1969, placed the B-52 bombers on maximum nuclear alert.

Meanwhile, taking advantage of conflicts in the Taiwan Strait, its obsession with China prompted the United States to plan nuclear attacks in May 1954 and August 1958, with the approval of President Eisenhower.

Declassified documents recently released by the Pentagon confirm the magnitude of this demented nuclear arms race. In 1971 the United States had 7,300 nuclear weapons stored in Europe and a further 12,000 in various locations outside of the country, in a number of cases without the knowledge or consent of the states involved.

These documents concretely state a total of 27 storage bases for these weapons but, strangely, only identify nine, in Alaska, the Guantánamo Naval Base, Puerto Rico, the United Kingdom, Germany and various Pacific locations (Hawaii, Guam, Johnston).

Experts state that the non-identified locations include Spain; NATO member countries, as well as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines. However, the facilities in the Pacific meet many other unscrupulous objectives: the United States undertook 60 nuclear tests in the Marshall Islands and 40 using hydrogen bombs around Line Island, Kiribati, with consequent effects on the health of local populations.

In the Marianas, specifically on the Kwajalin Atoll, intercontinental missiles launched from bases in California are being precision tested, in conjunction with research into wars in and from space, prepared many years ago.

The indigenous peoples of Guam, Hawaii and the Marshall Islands have all risen up in struggle against this abusive system of domination over minuscule countries and populations, to be met with total indifference on the part of U.S. authorities and an impenetrable wall of silence in the Western media.