Will Guam Be America’s Next Pearl Harbor?
Donald Trump’s neocolonial foreign policy could invite a surprise Chinese attack on an underprepared American island in the South Pacific.
From the April/May/June 2025 print issue of the Washington Monthly:
Will Guam Be America’s Next Pearl Harbor?
Donald Trump’s neocolonial foreign policy could invite a surprise Chinese attack on an underprepared American island in the South Pacific.
by Christian Caryl
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While much of the world is focused on Donald Trump’s selling out of Ukraine and aggressive threats toward America’s peaceful neighbors Mexico, Canada, Panama, and Greenland, if you’re in U.S. military intelligence, you’re more likely to be tracking with concern a specific Chinese threat to a piece of geography that is not in the headlines. The DF-26 intermediate-range ballistic missile represented a major upgrade of President Xi Jinping’s war-fighting toolbox when it entered service in 2016. The missile (of which about 250 have been built) is precise enough to target aircraft carriers, and it can be equipped with nuclear as well as conventional warheads. But perhaps the most striking thing about the DF-26 is its 2,500-mile range. That’s not enough to reach the continental United States, but it certainly suffices to target America’s westernmost territory in the Pacific. That’s why the DF-26 is sometimes called “the Guam killer.”
Americans rarely spare a thought for Guam, which bills itself as the place where “America’s day begins.” Most voters in this country don’t know that the island is part of the United States, or that its 150,000 native inhabitants are U.S. citizens in every way except their right to vote in presidential elections. Even fewer would be able to find it on a map. But such ignorance doesn’t apply to our armed forces, who know the island by another nickname: “the tip of the spear.”
Defense planners are acutely aware that any potential conflict with China will immediately involve Guam. When the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) war-gamed a Chinese invasion of Taiwan two years ago, the simulated Chinese side attacked the island’s Andersen Air Force Base “in every iteration.” The war game planners knew what they were doing. Five years ago, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force put out a video showing one of its bombers carrying out a simulated attack on Guam. The message is clear.
Geography, politics, and strategy conspire to make Guam a tempting target. As the American territory nearest to China, the island is a vital strategic strongpoint. U.S. forces in Japan, South Korea, or the Philippines might be closer to Taiwan in the event of war, but Guam has one big advantage over them: Washington wouldn’t have to ask for another country’s permission if it wanted to send its forces there into a conflict—something that becomes especially important in a fight over Taiwan, in which every second counts. Security experts in Washington are fretting over the possibility that a war with China could come as soon as 2027; at least one Navy admiral has raised the possibility that it could happen earlier. Is the American military prepared to defend Guam and its 170,000 residents, 20,000 of whom are members of the U.S. armed forces and their dependents? And if it can’t defend Guam, can it come to the aid of Taiwan if the island nation is attacked by China? There are reasons to doubt it.
“Without holding Guam, defending Taiwan would be difficult,” Brent Eastwood recently wrote in The National Interest. Over the past few years that realization seems to have percolated through to the U.S. defense establishment, which has been trying to fortify the island accordingly. There are now some 9,700 uniformed personnel on Guam, up from 2,500 around the turn of the century. The U.S. Navy currently homeports five Los Angeles–class submarines there, and has the capacity to host a number of additional vessels, up to and including aircraft carriers, as circumstances demand. Andersen Air Force Base, on the north end of the island, is the only place in the Western Pacific that can service strategic bombers; up to 150 aircraft can park at the site, which has the largest fuel storage capacity (66 million gallons) of any base in the Air Force. The Air Force doesn’t station any airplanes there permanently, though, as things stand now.
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