Angry Planet - Hawaii's Place at the Crossroads of Empire

Episode Date: October 29, 2021

Hawaii. America’s latest state is a tropical paradise, a vacation hotspot, and an important strategic military asset. If you’ve never been to Hawaii you might be shocked at how much of a presence the Pentagon has on the islands.It’s America’s gateway to the Pacific and an important part of its Naval might. Something we’re going to learn the broader importance of in an upcoming episode. Here with us today to talk about Hawaii is someone who has spent the last few years there covering the military. It’s Angry Planet producer Kevin Knodell.Angry Planet has a substack! Join the Information War to get weekly insights into our angry planet and hear more conversations about a world in conflict.https://angryplanet.substack.com/subscribeYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world and their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I am Matthew Galt. And I am Jason Fields. Hawaii, America's latest state. is a tropical paradise. A vacation hotspot and an important strategic military asset. If you've never been to Hawaii, you might be shocked at how much of a presence the Pentagon has on the islands. It's America's gateway to the Pacific and an important part of its naval might, something

we're going to learn the broader importance of in an upcoming episode. But here with us today to talk about Hawaii specifically is someone who has spent the last few years there covering the military. It's Angry Planet producer Kevin Nodell. Kevin, how are you doing? Doing great. Aloha. Aloha. So where are you working these days? Starting next month, I will be taking up a position at the Honolulu Star Advertiser.

There's so many military stories there. So much stuff I had no idea about. I had no idea how important it was. It's been kind of wild to learn from you. And that's what this episode is all about. And I would like to start off if we can with some history. because America has been fighting over Hawaii since before it became a state, correct? The fact of the matter is America and all the other imperial powers who ever had any interest in the Pacific definitely had an interest in Hawaii. Throughout the 19th century, it was a major trading spot. And it was also where a lot of the whaling industry was kind of setting up shop. You had these whalers who would be based in Maui or any of the other islands and they would go.

up to the Arctic North, harvest whales, and then come back to Hawaii at the end of the season. There's some good sea shanties about Hawaii specifically. If you want, anybody wants to look up old Maui, that's a good one. Yeah, it's been strategic. It's always been something that other powers were interested in. Remember that the kingdom of Hawaii's flag has a union jack on it. That's not an accident. The Brits were interested in this area. The French were, Americans were, you had missionaries and traders and people who were just on the islands. But the Hawaiian monarchy was pretty powerful, largely because it also had friends within these other empires and was able to balance that. But a bunch of white, mostly American

businessmen plotted the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom. And they did so with the help of a U.S. Navy vessel and some U.S. Marines who didn't have, this is before satellite phones, before radio. They didn't actually ask the U.S. government if this is something the U.S. government wanted to do. They just kind of went ahead and they did it. And there was a lot of really interesting fallout that happened afterwards. But that led to the creation of the Republic of Hawaii, which was overseen by these white, mostly American-born guys. And then there was the move toward annexation. Annexation ultimately happened for military reasons.

It was during the Spanish-American War. This area was a very useful place as we were trying to move ships from North America to the Philippines to fight the Spanish and also to fight the Spanish in Guam and other places that they are. Lots of islands out here. The Pacific Ocean is not just an empty blue expanse. But ultimately, the Hawaiian islands were annexed in the United States so that it It could just be a full-time place for the Navy to set up shop as it was expanding its Pacific Empire.

If people want a light, kind of breezy read through that portion of history, I would recommend Sarah Val's unfamiliar fishes, which does a pretty good job of giving the NPR version of that story. It's pretty entertaining, too. But let's pivot then, as everyone is pivoting these days, to now. So, you know, as Washington and the U.S. intelligence community pivots to China, I would say that there's a lot of eyes on Hawaii, I imagine. What's the mood there right now? Because, you know, like you said, you're at the beginning of, you're in the middle of the Pacific. You're surrounded by islands. You're at kind of the, you know, right, you're just right there. So how is everyone feeling? What's the military community like at the moment? But the military, definitely the mood is, is, it's busy. I don't, I wouldn't say that it's overly stressed. because we're not obviously in an active conflict, but they're having real conversations about things that could happen. And we're ultimately already kind of not on war footing exactly.

You have this thing called ACE. I am forgetting exactly what it stands for, but that is the Air Force's new posturing strategy out here in which they keep planes kind of moving around the Pacific, hopping from island to island to make sure that all the planes aren't in one place at one time. Agile combat employment. That's it.

But the point is that the Air Force is already thinking about the risk of missile strikes. We are having kind of a missile race in the region, not just the United States and China, also all the other regional countries who want their own missile capabilities and defensive capabilities and don't want to rely on either the United States or China because some of them aren't exactly sure where the chips are going to fall. So definitely around the region more broadly, there's a large awareness of that there is a contest between the two powers and other powers as well. We had the largest post-Cold War Pacific exercised by the Russian Navy recently. It was about 30 miles west of here, so not too far away from the Hawaiian Islands.

A lot of stuff. American planes scrambled twice because they felt like the Russian bombers got just a little too close to our airspace, but they never actually got into it. But that was definitely a time of kind of heightened tension. I don't think anybody really believed that something was going to happen, but it was definitely a signal of the fact that a lot of military assets are being moved out here and not just by the Americans. Well, and speaking of missiles, remember 2018, as I'm sure some of the most of the listeners do,

there was the false missile alert that went through Hawaii and made it seem as if, they were about to be struck by a nuclear weapon. Do people still talk about that or remember that out there? It was a big deal out here. And it also prompted definitely a renewed interest in missile defense and questions of, you know, how to protect Hawaii. But also among activists, it became a renewed call for people in the Hawaiian sovereignty movement to argue that, hey, maybe the U.S. military shouldn't be here because without that, we wouldn't be. a missile target, would we? How big is America's military presence on that island?

It's upwards of 40,000 troops, I think, a little bit more. All branches. Well, yeah, and that's one thing that's unique out here. It is all branches. And just to stress this, this is also the home of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command. That's at Camp Smith. It is the home of the, it's the headquarters of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. It's the nerve center for all U.S. military operations across the Pacific, parts of

the Indian Ocean and parts of the Arctic. The joke that they have is that they overlook everything from Hollywood to Bollywood, polar bears to penguins, as how they describe their area of operations. It's massive. I would argue that second to the Pentagon only in terms of a piece of critical military decision-making areas. And you also have the places like the Daniel Illinois Security Studies Center and Waikiki, where you have. regional people coming together to meet and have workshops and classes. There's a lot going on here that, you know, there's the more obvious things with the exercises, but there's also all this diplomatic activity. You have recently the president of the federated states of Micronesia

visited and signed an agreement at Camp Smith to basically agree that they're going to set up permanent U.S. military bases in Micronesia again. They didn't fly to D.C. to make that decision. They didn't go to the Pentagon or meet with the White House. They met directly with the folks at Camp Smith, and that was good enough for them. And they had meetings with the Coast Guard out here who were becoming increasingly part of the strategy in the region. We're reorganizing the entire Marine Corps, and the test unit that's going to be the template for everything going forward is being developed here on Oahu. Well, the Marines, they love to be reorganized.

Can you tell me a little bit about that? Because this is the first I'd heard at this. Yeah. So the Marine Corps is in the middle of a complete restructure to kind of refocus itself on being an amphibious fighting force. Over the last 20 years, they've been fighting in the mountains of Afghanistan, deserts of Iraq and Syria. It's been kind of a discussion, you know, what differentiates them from the Army even? Like, what is the point of a Marine Corps? historically these were the guys who used to be on the ships to help go take over other ships or or fight on islands as they were moving around it's kind of changed but yeah they're doing this reorganization they're getting rid of all of their tanks so the marine corps isn't going to have

tanks anymore so they can focus not not entirely but very much more so on fighting on islands fighting in the littorals, the coastal areas, and also getting a bunch of new missiles that they can launch it, other navies. The idea is kind of what they did back in World War II. They were doing these island hopping campaigns and set up forward areas on these islands, turn them into outposts, turn them into fighting areas to set up artillery and supply points, and then move from island to island. Is anybody actually thinking we're going to fight that war? It does seem to be that that's the idea. more specifically they're kind of looking at this in terms of setting up posts and kind of not maybe like the larger islands that we're thinking of like we're not thinking of big specific states this is more to train them to set up shop on i think more like these little islands of the south china sea or to be able to seize them from china that's kind of what they're thinking but yeah they're i think everybody's hoping we don't fight that war but that's what they're investing in and there's definitely

There's definitely a lot of criticism of it, like the feasibility of it. Yeah, it's just, it's interesting because it sounds like they want to refight World War II. It does, doesn't they? Well, it was a different time. And it is kind of the best, the best we've ever felt after a war was after that. It's, it's real easy to read. I'm still feeling the glow. I'm still feeling the glow.

I wasn't even alive then, but I feel it's starting to wear off, I feel. Oh, really? You need more glow. That's what happens when you're born in the 80s. It wears off faster. But regardless of, I don't know, I have, I'm not taking a position one way or the other. I take the position that I'm reporting on these things. But I mean, the answer to the question of, is this something that they're seriously thinking of?

Yes, they're very, very seriously thinking of these things. Now, they're also kind of working out exactly what that looks like because this is an in-progress reorganization. And they don't know everything just yet. They've ordered new ships that are going to be jointly operated by the Marine Corps and by the Navy. The Marine Corps has definitely been on ships for a long time, but this will be kind of their first time running ships and running amphibious operations that they can do on their own. They're thinking smaller forces and they're implementing more like thinking they're going to be using drones a lot more. They're going to be using missiles a lot more. And a big part of their big emphasis on this is a theme that we've definitely tested.

back old in our Angry Ocean series, that notion of sea blindness, this notion that really a lot of the action and increasingly and has been for a while is on the sea. It's on trade routes. It's on the Arctic. And definitely as our supply chains feel incredible new strains right now, people are really looking at what's going on out there and thinking about what does this actually look like. Is this a battle space that we've neglected to think about? Is this a a political space that we've neglected to think about. That's a position where I'm comfortable saying something. Yes, we absolutely have neglected these spaces. And the Marine Corps is definitely as a seafaring branch is looking to get back into that. And it also is capabilities that can be

used not just for warfare because they're also used for humanitarian response. And we're seeing more hurricanes out here. And we're going to see more. We know this with the climate projections, a more agile, more quick to respond for us that can move across the region quickly is something that is, you know, you have people in some of these island countries that are uncomfortable with being in the middle of a confrontation between superpowers. But also, you know, I've talked a little bit of this to some people. Like they're not all completely upset about the idea that the Marine Corps might be able to get there faster if something were to happen. Because we're not, a military, you know, is not just a war. fighting force. It's just, it's a crisis response force for better or worse. You know, that's, upsetting for some people to hear, but I have to ask the question when people don't want to hear that,

where are your helicopters and boats to respond to a giant cataclysmic crisis? Because if you don't have those things, I'm sorry, you have to live with needing to work with the military from time to time. Question for you, when we're talking about a place like Micronesia, so they came to meet with people in Hawaii. Do you think my thought is, like, if I'm Micronesia, I desperately want to have a U.S. military base on me. And I'll tell you why I desperately want it. Actually, there are many reasons. One, I want the economic benefits. And actually, I'm going to say two is like more important. I don't want to sink under the seas, which they actually are at the moment. And if anybody actually would have a vested interest in keeping them from sinking under the seas, it would be the U.S.

right? I mean, doesn't it sound like it's kind of a good deal? Yeah, and I think that that is definitely the argument on the pro side and that lots of people in Micronesia have used. And you also have to remember that these Kofa states that used to be under U.S. military kind of rule, essentially, they still have high enlistment rates. So you also have a lot of veterans and people who are pro-military. But on the other side of that, like I mentioned, one concern is by setting up a military base there, does that then make Micronesia a missile target that it wouldn't have been in ways before? And when you mention, you know, threat of climate change, the military is working on trying to use more renewable resources for a variety of reasons. But the fact

the matter is it's also, at least that we can track, we don't know exactly what the emissions are of the Chinese military. But in trackable greenhouse gases, the U.S. military is the largest contributor to climate change as a single entity in the way that it moves all those ships and planes all the time. So I think that you definitely have some activists there that would say we're sinking because of America. We're sinking because of American excess. That's why the sea levels are rising and that's why we are threatened. And now we're just threatened with an additional presence of military things that can bring more war back to our islands. So that's the counter. But, you know, but obviously the point you made, like there are many in myronisians who feel who have exactly the point that you express.

But it's divisive. It's complicated. People out here feel a variety of different ways. So something I feel like we've been talking around this whole time. There's like this big hole in the conversation, a big China-shaped hole in the conversation. Do, without throwing anybody under the bus, obviously, do people there, do soldiers specifically? Do the military there feel like that? is the enemy they're preparing to fight? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sometimes stated, sometimes not.

China or Russia or both in a nightmare scenario in which we just have a cataclysmic earth-shattering conflict where nobody walks away. But no, China is definitely what we're looking at. China is what we're talking about. And, you know, this, we said it before. Hawaii is the gateway to Asia always has been. You know, this Hawaii itself has a unique with China, with its large ethnic Chinese population. One of the oldest Chinatowns is in Honolulu. And it even has a very important history with China, with modern China itself. Sun Yat-Sin, the first president of the Republic of China, went to elementary school and high school out here. I forget which high school he graduated from. And you can find statues. And I pass by

when I leave my home, the Taipei Cultural and Economic Center, which is totally not a consulate because we don't have diplomatic relations with Taiwan. But I pass by that on the Pali Highway. And it is right next to the Korean consulate, which is also just a stone's throw from the Philippines consulate. All this is kind of around here. And it is definitely something that people feel. Well, with that in mind, can we, and we've kind of talked around to this a little bit too, what can we, can you allow, on some of these tensions between the military and the civilian population? How do the civilians, I mean, obviously, I know everyone has a different take, right? It's not as simple as the civilians feel one way, the military feels one way.

But what largely do people think about being on the forefront of a possible war with the superpower? Well, in terms of that, I think largely people don't think about that just yet. I think more and more people are starting to. But largely, I think that war feels far more. abstract. I mean, the war that we were actually fighting for the last 20 years has become increasingly abstract. This sort of thing, I don't think, feels real to John Q. Public. I think that there's definitely a segment of people who find it to be a nuisance, because you do have those loud aircraft and you have. And, you know, even people around the country when you say, you know,

you support the troops, like, you know, you support the troops until you got 20 of them in your local bar. And then, you know, you get to know the troops in a different way. And you have a little bit of that out here. But it's also complicated because you have relatively, because of the proximity and also some of the demographics out here, you have a relatively high level of enlistment. You have a lot of veterans out here, just an enormous amount. And historically, there have also been usually a fair amount of veterans in Hawaii's congressional delegation, at least one. And we're still keeping that up with having at least one with Kaika Haley, who replaced Tulsi Gabbard, keeping our tradition of having at least one.

It sounds like no matter what Hawaii is always going to be at that crossroads, right? Yeah, yeah, that's that I think is something that is, regardless of how you feel about it, I think that's unavoidable when you look at the history. That was something that was kind of expressed to me in a very interesting way by a Vietnam veteran whose name is Alan Ho. he's native Hawaiian and people were to Google him, you'd find a bunch of things. He's, he's been on NPR and stuff. He's, he's, he's pretty high profile. But I talked to him about some land use things. And he surprised me with one of his takes, which is he's, he's, he's somebody

who is more pro-American and pro-U.S. military. But he said straight up, he said, I, I contend that Hawaii is illegally occupied. He said that to me. But he then followed up and said, but, you know, that's preferable to the occupations that the other islands across the Pacific got from the other imperial powers. We have a higher standard of living than pretty much anyone in the Pacific. But yeah, it's inevitable that these islands are going to attract to the interest of anybody with shipping, trade, interests in Asia or the Americans. And definitely, you know, so it's one of those things where you might not be interested in China, but China's interested in you. China's definitely interested in Hawaii.

They've spoken about it before, kind of unveiled threats to, in terms of the fact that America gets very close to their territory and how are you going to feel when we get close to you? They don't say if, they say when, because that is the reality of where we are and how things are. Yeah, Hawaii, given its location, is unavoidably and necessarily related to what's happening around.

the region. That's not to say that there's different ways it could interact with it. It doesn't have to be militarily. I think that even the state of Hawaii itself is looking at the possibility of they may have contingency plans economically for what happens if military resources go away. Because at various times the U.S. government has divested militarily and reinvested in Hawaii. But I would say definitely it's very unlikely that the military is leaving or that the world's attention is going to leave away. Kevin Nodell, thank you so much for coming on to Angry Planet and walking us through this. Where can people find your work in the very near future? They can find me on Twitter at KJ. Nodell.

And in the near future, pay attention to the Honolulu Star advertiser. That's where I'm going to be working starting next month. That's all for this week, Angry Planet. The listeners, as always, Angry Planet is me, myself, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell. It's nice to have Kevin on the show today. It's created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like what we do here, we do have a substack. We're at Angry Planetpod.com or AngryPlanent.substack.com.

We're for $9 a month. We get two bonus episodes, which I'm about to put out in the next bonus. There's a conversation with Edward Watts, a Roman historian, about the television show, Foundation. and its parallels to Roman history and the collapse of empires. So if you want to listen to that, go over to Angry PlanetPod.com, kick us $9 a month. You get the bonus. You also get commercial-free versions of the mainline episodes.

We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe. Until now.