This article’s header photo shows the flag-raising ceremony after the 1944 recapture of Guam. It also shows a Marine, Pfc. Ernest Kernen, who was killed in the preceding battle. Guam played an important role in providing a staging base for naval, amphibious, and air operations against Japan.
Eighty years later, as China ramps up its harassment of a U.S. treaty defense ally, the Philippines, and its preparations for a potential invasion of Taiwan, Guam has renewed strategic importance. Unfortunately, the commander in chief doesn’t recognize the island’s importance to any future war with China.
Consider that President Joe Biden‘s recently submitted defense budget does not fund Indo-Pacific Command’s $430 million request for missile defense improvements on Guam. There’s a good reason that this is INDOPACOM’s top priority unfunded request. Namely, that China’s People’s Liberation Army would saturate Guam with missiles in any war. Indeed, if the U.S. military were already massing in response to warning indicators of an imminent Chinese attack on Taiwan, Xi Jinping might order a preemptive strike against Guam.
Such an attack would likely center on the PLA’s CJ/”long sword” cruise missiles and its Dongfeng-26 intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The PLA is churning out long swords that can variably be delivered from air, naval, and ground forces. Its DF-26s pose a similar challenge. Road-mobile and solid-fueled, they can hide from U.S. surveillance efforts, rapidly fire their weapons with little notice, and then hide again before moving and firing from another location. Collectively, these threats mean that the PLA has the credible means of overwhelming anything but the most potent air defense network on Guam.
But just as the Navy claims its aircraft carriers can maintain necessary proximity to Taiwan alongside effective defenses against PLA anti-ship ballistic missiles, the problem of scale looms preeminent. Namely, what happens when the PLA fires dozens of missiles utilizing dozens of independent satellites and command-control nodes against single targets? What happens when the primary targets of these missiles are Guam-based U.S. attack submarines (of which the U.S. doesn’t have nearly enough) and B-2 bombers, the critical ingredients of the U.S. military’s penetrating offensive power against the PLA?
House China Select Committee Chairman Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI) has pushed the Pentagon on this Guam-specific concern, but its response has been inadequate in both speed and scale. The best U.S. military commanders, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Charles Brown, Marine Corps Commandant Eric Smith, and Pacific Fleet Commander Samuel Paparo, recognize the problem. They want to disperse forces and better defend those dispersed forces so that they can less easily be targeted. But Guam’s role as a critical sustainment and logistics linchpin would be unavoidable in any war. Indo-Pacific Command’s Adm. John Aquilino must thus push harder in public to get the Guam defense capabilities he needs. It’s not just about Guam. Aquilino also needs a lot more long-range anti-ship and land-attack missiles. A lot more.
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Congress also bears responsibility here. For one, defense leaders should also publicly challenge those such as Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) who want to make it harder for the U.S. to build warships on time and on budget. And others, such as Rep. Kay Granger (R-TX), who want the Navy to waste funds and crews retaining ships that would be useful against China only as American at-sea graveyards.
Top line: The buck stops with Biden. And at present, the president’s approach toward the defense of Guam is very well suited to the interests of Xi Jinping.
