The delegation, from the chamber’s Armed Forces Committee, was headed by former Guam Visitors Bureau General Manager Gerry Perez, and included businessmen Carl Peterson, Lee Webber, James Adkins and Joe Arnett.
Perez began the meeting by announcing the appointment of Peterson, a committee member and longtime Guam businessman, as the civilian advisor to the secretary of the Army. He also said the Guam buildup “roadmap” is still intact.
“There is a general sentiment,” Perez stated, “that the Guam expansion and buildup is very, very central — extremely central — to the U.S. realignment strategy in Asia.”
The delegation presented the Guam chamber’s “White Paper” on the buildup and said they found no opposition to it in the nation’s capital.
‘Soft power’
Meeting with members of Congress, the Departments of Defense, Interio, and Navy officials, the delegates said they emphasized to everyone that China is a growing presence in the Pacific, working very hard to ingratiate itself with the small island states in Micronesia and Melanesia. The delegation also said the so-called “soft power” movements being made by the Chinese in the Pacific, both north and south of the equator, bear watching.
“There is a tremendous price the United States paid in World War II to be involved in Micronesia and the Pacific,” said delegation member Lee Webber, “and we tried to drive that home. We also drove home the fact that if any branch of the Armed Services understands the islands, it’s the Marine Corps.”
“We know the Chinese, in the last 15 to 20 years, have been very aggressively moving into the Pacific islands,” Webber said. “And they’ve done so insidiously, because it’s all soft power. They’ve gone in and built buildings, roads.. and when I say China I mean both Chinas, Taiwan and the PRC…because one day there will be one China.”
Webber said they emphasized to the officials with whom they met that if the United States is to remain a Pacific power, the military development of Guam and the CNMI is crucial.
“This is really important,” Webber continued, “because the Chinese government has enormous resources, and this is what we were trying to drive home.”
He said most of the economies of the Pacific islands are very small. “It doesn’t take a lot of money to ‘own’ political soft power and economic soft power. You can, for relatively small amounts of money, buy major influence,” he stated.
Webber said there is a tremendous issue at stake here. “We paid a tremendous price to free up these islands for democracy. If we don’t spend what it costs to keep them today, the cost of re-acquiring them will be just phenomenal.”
