Today The Guam Roundtable, hosted
by the Guam U.S. Asia Security Alliance (GUASA), kicked off in Tumon, Guam. The first of two days was spent discussing
the National Defense policies of the United States and the greater importance
of the impacts of such mandates on security across the Pacific Rim-with a focus
on Guam and Micronesia.
The room was filled with Guam's
business elite, lawmakers and influential opinion makers of our island community. GET, LLC was privileged to be counted among
such an esteemed group. Each of us listened
intently to the panel who is using this opportunity to share their respective
views on this important issue, but to also listen to our community and gain
perspective of what security means to the greater Micronesian populous.
Center for a New American
Security Senior Director Patrick Cronin kicked off the event asking a key
question-why is the United States re-balancing Asia? His group has spent the better part of the
past couple of years analyzing the Guam Buildup Program and is tasked with
advising Congress on what will be the way forward for the re-distribution of
forces across the Pacific. Cronin
chronicled three major events in Guam's history that has set the stage for
today's current state of the island as a center of the theatre of operations in
the Western Pacific-the island being discovered by Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, Guam
becoming part of the U.S. following the conclusion of the Spanish American War
in 1898 and the invasion and eventual liberation of Guam during World War
II. Cronin remarked that the actions
were the part of America's power shift to the West. Today, Cronin said, the power shift is not
seen through conflict but via the expansion of commerce and trade between the
U.S. Mainland and Asia. His description
of Guam being in the "Cockpit of the 21st Century" was profound and
resonated with the conference-goers. The
term linking the new system being developed in Asia via the expansion of China
and the emerging of our neighbors in the Philippines and Vietnam are just the
examples Cronin said that Guam will be leading centric to American foreign
policy in the years to come.
Global Strategies and
Transformation thought leader and Office of the Secretary of Defense US-Japan
Alliance veteran Paul Giarra presented a
primer on how past Pacific campaigns were waged. His presentation was filled with historic
photos and thoughtful analysis into the role of the region during World War
II. His description of the U.S. Navy's
constantly changing "education crucible" during the years of the
conflict from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima highlighted the staggering figure of
6768 US Navy Sea Vessels that were used into 1945 and the conclusion of the
fight with Imperial Japan.
These two sessions were only the
tip of the "Pacific Security Iceberg". The panelists were very engaging and even
spurred thoughtful questions from the audience who were glued to their
seats. People this blogger spoke with during the breaks were impressed by
the level of the discussions and the excitement of taking the results of The
Guam Roundtable and turning it into a White Paper to be distributed all across
Washington DC and the Nation as a whole.
Day two will bring the discussion
on security closer to home and will feature an update on the U.S. Marine Corps
in the Pacific, the basing options for the US in Asia and the role for Guam in
the larger geopolitical context of security across the vast Pacific Ocean.