Guns, Guam and Gun Tourism

An Associate Press story about Guam's gun ranges serving as an attraction for Japanese tourists caused me to wince.

Let’s start with this third graph:

The U.S. territory of Guam — a tropical island often described as a cheaper version of Hawaii — has long been the perfect place to put guns in the hands of tourists, especially from Japan, where gun ownership is tightly restricted and handguns are banned 

Is Guam, as this story claims, “often described as a cheaper version of Hawaii?”  It’s kind of like describing North Dakota as just like North Carolina except with fewer people.

Guam is place with its own unique history, culture, cuisine, traditions and may be more polyglot than Hawaii. It is not Hawaii-lite.

The story goes on to say: “But this Pacific island halfway between Tokyo and Honolulu is America.”

It’s America with an asterisk and it would be nice if the story explained what being part of America really means for Guam, because that's an important point in a story about American gun culture.

Guam is an unincorporated territory with only symbolic representation in Congress, and very little say over the military’s use of the island. Hawaii doesn't have its own entry in the CIA Factbook’s list of countries; Guam does.

But the thing that made me feel very uncomfortable was the idea that Guam is getting a reputation as a place for gun tourism. Evidently, there are a lot of Japanese tourists who want to do something they can’t do at home, and that’s fire off guns.

Japan’s gun laws are very restrictive. The Japan Times explains: “It’s almost impossible to get to a gun in Japan, and selling one or owning one is a serious crime.”

But on Guam, writes AP, it's much different.

Guam's gun ranges are to the Japanese what Amsterdam's cannabis cafes are to backpackers from the world over.

This story didn't probe the underlying problems around this issue.

What's missing in this tourist-from-Japan-love-going-to-Guam-gun-ranges is whether  people on Guam are comfortable with shooting ranges.

Does Guam really want gun ranges to proliferate? Is there concern about the influence of the ranges, the entirety of the gun culture, on the island itself?

Will media attention on Guam’s gun ranges increase gun tourism and, in turn, spur the creation of more gun ranges?

Will the growing wealth of gun range owners influence local laws, relaxing restrictions on gun use?

Shooting ranges have the potential, I suspect, of becoming as much as a turn-off for tourists as they are a potential draw. There’s something discordant about exploring pristine ocean waters, enjoying gorgeous sunsets and vistas, and then running off to a gun range.

The problem with the AP story is it will become one more thing for Guam to deal with. The story, and others that will follow, assume that because Guam is “America” it is somehow representative of America’s excessive gun culture. Guam becomes, through these news stories, a caricature of what it is not.

One Guam, Green Guam, Glow Guam

Nuclear power generation on Guam must be opposed with all heart and soul.

For sure, energy prices are high on Guam but that’s because the island is excessively reliant on fossil fuels. It should turn its attention, instead, to alternative sources. This is not a knee-jerk response to the obvious risks that nuclear power brings.

After Katrina hit New Orleans, architects and builders began to imagine a different city, one that’s less dependent on fossil fuels.  New Orleans is a good city to compare to Guam.

New Orleans is ecologically fragile. Although it is part of the continental U.S., it is nonetheless separate, below sea level and uniquely vulnerable to storms. Similar to Guam, New Orleans is also culturally rich, diverse, with a modest economy and wage levels.

 

Since Katrina, there has been a concerted effort to build homes that use energy efficient technologies; to create housing that registers net-zero, or low energy consumption. They have been successful at doing this.

One effort by Brad Pitt, the actor, led to the Make it Right foundation, which builds highly energy efficient homes for as little as $150,000. They use solar and other energy saving technologies to dramatically reduce power usage.

Homes that have solar technologies have reverse electric meters. There are points in the day when the solar systems produce more energy than is being consumed, and this excess energy is sold to the power company. Some of these meters will literally show the amount of money that you are making.

Nuclear energy will not deliver a Green Guam. It will deliver a new set of hazards to Guam.

The recent decision by the Consolidated Commission on Utilities to even consider the feasibility of nuclear power for the island is a colossal mistake. It is astonishing that one of the most solar rich places on the planet would even consider such a move.

Let’s look at this as an economic issue alone. One estimate puts the cost of a nuclear facility at about $250 million.  With that amount of money, you could provide $10,000 grants to 25,000 homes and businesses on Guam to install solar panels.

This is really about where Guam wants to invest its energy dollars. A $250 million investment to build a nuclear power plant equals about $1,400 for every man, woman and child on Guam. One way or another, the bill for nuclear power will get paid.

The Utilities Commission can’t simply look at nuclear power in isolation, detached from alternatives. It needs to consider, as well, the rapidly improving efficiency and declining cost of solar and what an equal investment into solar might produce.

Here are some other issues to consider as well.

One: A nuclear plant will concentrate investment and jobs. Solar energy has the potential of disaggregating the island's energy production and creating new employment opportunity for people, locally trained, to install and maintain solar energy systems. Green energy is self-reliant and represents, at the very least, symbolic decolonization. 

Two: A nuclear facility will require land and ample security. The needs of the military shooting range may be modest by comparison.

Three: A nuclear facility generates hazardous waste that remains hazardous for tens of thousands of years. It will have to be transported and stored somewhere. 

   

Four: The risks associated with nuclear generation are not zero. Guam doesn’t need to increase the risk the government is already creating by its expanding military presence. Remember, the U.S. has given serious consideration to the need for a missile defense system for Guam. Does Guam want a missile defense system and a nuclear power plant?

Five: Guam may be an unsafe environment for nuclear energy. It is seismically unstable. It is subject to massive typhoons.

The Utilities Commission should drop its investigation into the feasibility of nuclear power. It has to be opposed now, not later.

Once this feasibility study delivers its predictable conclusions, the lobbying will begin in earnest and the opposition to nuclear power will face increasing odds, not unlike the build-up.  By the time the build-up’s environmental impact statements arrived, it was already too late.

     

The status of Guam’s war reparations

It's time for Guam's political leadership to be frank about the status of war reparations. The $100 million being sought has an absolutely less than zero chance of being approved by Congress.

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Bordallo recently announced that her latest attempt to advance this issue has failed.

Supporters of reparations have a compelling case to make. The stories of what happened during the war are terrible and heartbreaking. The U.S. was too quick to settle with Japan. The needs of Guam weren't properly accounted for. But the politics of the issue in Washington are too impossible.

The continuing pursuit of reparations, at this point, is just political theater. Congress is not going to fund war reparations as it cuts programs for the poor, the medically uninsured, and others in desperate need.

Guam's political leadership needs to ask whether continuing pursuit of war reparations is becoming a political liability to other legislative efforts in Washington.

A better strategy may be for the island's political leadership to see if they can use to failure of war reparations as leverage on other issues. It may help them bolster the case to improve education and infrastructure on the island.

Guam as a ‘strategic hub’

Takeaways from the “Joint Statement of the Security Consultative Committee."

“In view of the increasingly uncertain security environment in the Asia-Pacific region … 

“... the U.S. intent to rebalance defense priorities toward the Asia-Pacific region ...”

“.. support the development of Guam as a strategic hub ...”

“In order to develop Guam as a strategic hub ...”

What this means: 

-- The “increasingly uncertain security environment” is a clear reference to China’s naval development. Other than the pirates, there’s not much else going on in this region unless you look afar to Pakistan.

-- The references to Guam as a “strategic hub” is in context to Okinawa's diminishing importance, but also defines Guam's new role.

The New York Times has a forum running that ask: Are We Headed for a Cold War With China?

Among its writers is Zhu Feng, a professor in the School of International Studies and the deputy director of the Center for International and Strategic Studies at Beijing University.

Feng sees the military rebalancing in Asia-Pacific as the creation of military programs "that very specifically target China."

Another is Stephen M. Walt, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University, who sees increased security competition with China but believes economic needs will keep the rivalry within bounds.

Map source: CIA analysis on China's naval capabilities, 1965

Climate change and the lost islands

The U.N. says it is vowing to help Pacific island states affected by climate change.  Its options are not good.

The U.N. can't help these islands unless Washington comes to terms with climate change. But the U.S. seems to be in complete denial about it. The newly elected House Republicans want to cut climate science funding and strip the EPA of much of its regulatory power. It’s just amazing, really, how self-destructive we've become on this issue. 

This issue is entirely political unless you live in the Federated States of Micronesia, with many vulnerable sea level population areas.

Climate change is a real, real issue in the FSM.

In 2009, H.E. Emanuel Mori, the president of FSM, gave a speech at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen. He said:

We are not certain if our biggest threat is from ocean acidification that will erode our islands from underneath, OR from sea-level rise that could submerge our islands under the sea, OR from changes in weather and typhoon intensity that could make inhabiting our islands impossible. But we know that our continued peaceful existence is totally at risk. We know that the enemy that gives rise to these threats is climate change. And we know that to survive, we must act now.

The only way to protect FSM and other Pacific islands is through adoption of climate mitigation and reduce the causes of global warming, namely Co2 levels due to emissions from fossil fuels. Adaptation may be an impossibility in low level Pacific islands. 

That means the future of the Pacific islands is dependent on the U.S. response, as well as that of other industrialized nations, to climate change. But that won't happen as long as the political process in Washington stays in denial and gridlock on this issue. U.S. leadership seems committed to accomplishing as little as possible for as long as possible. 

Here’s what H.E. Alik L. Alik, the vice president of FSM, said at a U.N. meeting in September about “Millennium Development Goals” (MDGs) and climate change:

We cannot meaningfully talk about the MDGs unless the international community addresses the real danger that Micronesia and other Small Island Developing States will disappear because of the adverse impacts of climate change. In short, Mr. President, we are the least responsible but most vulnerable.

Say goodbye to Guam war reparations

Guam's longstanding effort for war reparations ought to have won passage by Congress this year. The island is facing major upheaval as a result of the build-up, and approval of reparations would have been one way for Congress to demonstrate to Guam that it honors the sacrifices that the people of the island have made. But it was rejected, once again, this year. That's probably it for war reparations; it has zero prospects in the next Congress.

Consider the 9/11 health care bill, which began at more than $7 billion, but was chopped down to $4.3 billion. The 9/11 bill will help pay the medical cost of men and women who helped in the rescue. Many have suffered serious health problems, from long-term disability to death, as a result exposure to toxins.

But a significant group of Republicans opposed it for a laundry list of reasons. Among them, that the U.S. didn’t have the money for additional benefits.

U.S. Rep. Madeleine Bordallo said, in published reports, that she will try again next year to win approval of the $100 million war reparations bill and believes she has some key support for it. Bordallo is being strung along.

There will be little interest in the next Congress for bills such as war reparations. Lawmakers are expecting to seek cuts in many programs, including defense-related. Even if Bordallo can find a revenue source to offset reparations, that revenue source is more likely to get assigned to more pressing needs, such as school lunch programs.

The three phases of Guam’s buildup

I loved the headline in the Guam NewsWatch. “Hillary Clinton Spends ‘Productive' Hour on Guam.” Delightful sarcasm, I hope.

The buildup is now is entering several phases. 

One: The first is the babble phase. 

Guam isn’t registering with the news media and President Obama has crossed it off his list. There’s no interest in the Guam buildup in Washington and the Pentagon knows it.  It’s all done now and the Pentagon has sent out a new team to supervise the buildup.

“We’re not going to build a new Marine Corps base ... and the Marines are going to move here and we have Guam and then we have Marines. We’re going to build a next village on Guam. We want to have a Marine Corps village on Guam and blend into the local culture.” – Marine Corps Times,  comments by the director of the Pacific Division Headquarters Marine Corps.

"You know, people keep saying...'can't you put any of these ranges somewhere else?'" Wood said. "I don't want to be cynical, but sure, you could put the ranges in downtown Agana -- what good would that do for the Marine Corps or the people of Guam? We tried to find the place that has the least impact on the entire island, on the culture, on the people of Guam. The EIS has for the most part identified the Route 15 area. –  Guam NewsWatch.

The babble phase is where the U.S. has what it wants from Guam and officials no longer feel they are under any obligation to say anything that makes the least amount of sense.

Two: The philosophical phase.

This is the phase where Guam’s leaders, such as Gov. Camacho, see the buildup as an overwhelming and indefinable problem and leave the task, as Keats wrote, to the poet “capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason.”

Third:  The paranoid phase.

With the troops, military and the aircraft carrier parked in the harbor, comes the third phase,  the paranoid phase.

As Guam's military profile increases, so does the fear that something may happen. They go hand-in-hand. At some point, the fear will be processed, buried deep, and become a rarely noticed part of the psychological landscape. But it is still there.

Pacific Daily News:  Guthertz welcomes missile defense system for Guam, Oct. 28, 2010

Sen. Judith Guthertz says she welcomes word that a missile defense system for Guam is in the works.

 “To residents of the continental United States, the possibility of a ballistic missile strike anywhere near them is a pretty remote possibility," Guthertz stated in a press release. But on Guam, "a trigger-happy and nuclear armed regime in nearby North Korea" has already demonstrated that this American territory in Asia is within its range, according to Guthertz, who is seeking re-election. 

Since the announcement of the $15 billion Guam military buildup, those living within the potential bulls eye have wondered how they are supposed to be protected in the event of a shooting war, said Guthertz. 

The buildup isn't about North Korea and a random missile launch. It's about China. It's always been about China, the country no one wants to name (because they own our banks and manufacturing production capability).

Robert D. Kaplan, a frequent and influential writer in DC on global security issues explains why Guam should feel paranoid in an op-ed in the Washington Post.

We underestimate the importance of what is occurring between China and Taiwan, at the northern end of the South China Sea. With 270 flights per week between the countries, and hundreds of missiles on the mainland targeting the island, China is quietly incorporating Taiwan into its dominion. Once it becomes clear, a few years or a decade hence, that the United States cannot credibly defend Taiwan, China will be able to redirect its naval energies beyond the first island chain in the Pacific (from Japan south to Australia) to the second island chain (Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) and in the opposite direction, to the Indian Ocean. [emphasis added]