From Hawaii to Okinawa, Pacific islands seem relegated to serve as neverland vacation getaways — as well as outposts for our military empire.
Just ‘An Island in the Pacific’: How Washington Demeans Its Colonial Conquests
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Hawaii
The U.S. Is Militarizing the Pacific — and Not Taking Questions
Hawaii’s members of Congress sit at the linchpin of a huge realignment of U.S. military power. Good luck getting them to talk about it.
Open Fire and Open Markets: The Asia-Pacific Pivot and Trans-Pacific Partnership
Thomas Friedman once said the hidden hand of the market needs the hidden fist of the military. The TPP and the Obama administration’s Pacific Pivot pack both.
Cost of War: An Interview with Tulsi Gabbard
FPIF contributor Jon Letman interviewed Tulsi Gabbard shortly before she won her congressional race in Hawaii’s second district. Gabbard, who will be the first Hindu to serve in the U.S. Congress, ran on winding down the U.S. role in Afghanistan ahead of schedule. But when it came to drones and the military spending, Letman didn’t throw a single softball.
Hawaii: Head of the Tentacled Beast
The announcement of America’s “Asia-Pacific pivot” by its first Hawaiia-born president was highly fitting, since the Hawaiian Islands are at the piko (“navel” in Hawaiian) of this vast region. A less flattering metaphor for Hawaii’s role in the Pacific is what Maui educator and native Hawaiian activist Kaleikoa Kaeo has called a giant octopus whose tentacles reach across the ocean clutching Japan, Okinawa, South Korea, Jeju island, Guam—and, at times, the Philippines, American Samoa, Wake Island, Bikini Atoll, and Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.
Gender and U.S. Bases in Asia-Pacific
The power dynamics of militarism in the Asia-Pacific region rely on dominance and subordination. These hierarchical relationships, shaped by gender, can be seen in U.S. military exploitation of host communities, its abuse and contamination of land and water, and the exploitation of women and children through the sex industry, sexual violence, and rape. Women’s bodies, the land, and indigenous communities are all feminized, treated as dispensable and temporary. What is constructed as “civilized, white, male, western, and rational” is held superior to what is defined as “primitive, non-white, female, non-western, and irrational.” Nations and U.S. territories within the Asia-Pacific region are treated as inferiors with limited sovereignty or agency in relation to U.S. foreign policy interests that go hand-in-hand with this racist/sexist ideology.