For over a hundred years, ever since the United States gained a quasi-empire (Philippines, Guam, et al.) when it defeated Spain in 1898, the dominant naval power in the western Pacific has been the United States. Is the US willing to relinquish that title as things change in that part of the world? A disturbing announcement by the Pentagon, that it is going to restore the airfield on Tinian Island—the field from which the Enola Gay took off on its way to drop the bomb on Hiroshima—suggests we are not. You can bet the Chinese see it that way.
Our strategic move is motivated by the challenge from the ever expanding, ever more potent Chinese navy, particularly in light of China’s claims to disputed islands in the South China Sea. To judge whether those disputes will be resolved peacefully or not, it is enlightening to review the history of how the US gained possession of some strategic islands in the Pacific. To do so, we have to go back to 1856 when Congress passed the Guano Islands Act. The act authorized any American captain who stumbled on an uninhabited, unclaimed island covered in guano (bird-droppings) to claim it in the name of the United States (There were still islands being discovered that late). Once an island had been denuded of its deposit of avian-poop fertilizer, we lost interest in it and nobody else showed much interest in claiming it, either.
Then came the Air Age and waystations for planes to refuel on the long flight across the vast Pacific became vital. The competition over any insular terra firma big enough to support a landing strip was on. The older imperial powers–Britain, France, and the imperial upstart Japan—already possessed most of the major islands (The Solomons, Tahiti, Okinawa, etc.) and we had Hawaii, but smaller islands to which no one had clear title were up for grabs. The Europeans competed with us over some of the islands, but the competitor we most feared was a rising Japan (and we all know what that competition led to!).
The tactics used in gaining possession of an island back then mirrors what is taking place in the South China Sea today. For instance, in 1935 we landed some Hawaiian Islanders (in the dead of night and telling no one) on three uninhabited, on three mid-Pacific islands to which both we and the British laid tenuous claim. After a year of surreptitious colonizing, President Roosevelt revealed the sneaky scheme and proclaimed the islands American territory.
A corollary to the military aspect of island acquisition is the economic aspect. A country can claim an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) out to 200 miles off its coast, but the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) makes a distinction between “islands”, which can support human habitation, and “rocks”, which cannot. An EEZ can only be claimed around an island, not a rock.
This distinction has not stopped Japan from claiming an EEZ around Okinotorishima, a rocky outcrop hundreds of miles from its shores.
China, South Korea, and Taiwan contest Japan’s claim; and, if oil is ever discovered there, you can bet we will, too. It might even move us to sign on to UNCLOS, something we have so far refused to do (while we justify our meddling in disputes in the South China Sea as in support of international law!).
The distinction between a rock and an island probably explains our refusal to ratify UNCLIOS. Were we to do so, we could be taken to court for claiming EEZs around what are clearly rocks, including many of the guano islands we found useful in World War II but have since abandoned (causing them to revert to their original state: uninhabited). There’s even a reef in the Hawaiian Islands chain we claim an EEZ around which is entirely under water at low tide! Joining UNCLOS would also open us up to the sort of disputes roiling the waters of the South China Sea, as several of our islands are claimed by other countries, including another island of WW II fame, Wake Island (claimed by the Marshall Islands).
Our restoration of Tinian Island’s runway is a worrisome sign of our unwillingness to recognize and accept that the world is a changing place and that, unlike the case of Israel, no divine being has ordained our possession in perpetuity of some part of the earth’s surface, in our case a salty, wet part. The peace-loving people in both China and the USA have no wish to go to war against each other. Yet, our talking heads, both military and civilian, glibly talk about a coming war as if it is inevitable. To put it nicely, this tiny fraction of our population, who have the fate of us all in their hands, have things blown way out of proportion. Can’t they foresee what their loose talk could lead to? Are they unable to picture what such a war would be like? It’s not like the old days where two armies battled in some field and not even nearby villages were harmed. In today’s world, the death and destruction from a war with China—or any nuclear power—would be of such awful magnitude it would be hard to tell the victor from the vanquished.
War with China is not inevitable if the US is willing to relinquish its historic role as the dominant naval power in the western Pacific. Then, level-headed, intelligent men of goodwill could arrive at a compromise, as the European powers did at the Berlin Conference of 1884-45 when they divvied up Africa into “spheres of influence” (perhaps not the most high-minded example, but an example nonetheless). For instance, it might be agreed that China or a consortium of the countries whose shores are lapped by the waters of the Pacific would assume responsibility in the western Pacific for guaranteeing that all countries abide by the Convention on the Law of the Sea, while the United States assumed the same role in the eastern Pacific.
If, on the other hand, our hawkish foreign policy mavens, with their constant prattle about China gaining on the US militarily, prove unbending, implying the cardinal tenet of their strategic thinking is “You have to do it to them before they do it to you”, it will have disastrous consequences. If we do not challenge their fatalism (a double entendre), the last plane ever to depart from Tinian Island, or any island, will carry a payload that makes the one in the bomb bay of the Enola Gay look like a firecracker.
(For further discussion on this topic, see my articles “Why the US Will Not Sign the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea” and “South China Sea Ironies”.)
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