The idea is to use pinpoint ground attack and anti-ship missiles, a growing fleet of modern submarines and cyber and anti-satellite weapons to destroy or disable another nation's military assets from afar.In the western Pacific, that would mean targeting or putting in jeopardy America's aircraft-carrier groups and its air-force bases in Okinawa, South Korea and even Guam.
Hawaii, its own species already hard-hit by alien ones, is watching Guam nervously.
Guam soon will be (see chart 1).China's submarines, missiles and anti-ship cruise missiles threaten America's aircraft-carrier strike groups within 1,000 to 1,600 nautical miles of the Chinese coast.
That was followed by histrionic threats to attack Guam, Okinawa, Hawaii and the American mainland itself.
The Ninth is by far America's largest federal circuit, encompassing California (America's most populous state), Alaska (the biggest, geographically) and seven other western states, as well as Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.The Ninth has the most work of any circuit in the country, and a big backlog.
To do their bit, students and housewives thronged the streets this week to burn effigies of unpatriotic spendthrifts who buy Gucci handbags and take their holidays in Guam.
Some 8,000 marines and their families will be moved to Guam, where the Japanese government will foot two-thirds of the bill for housing them.Ever since 1995, when a 12-year-old schoolgirl was abducted and brutally raped by three American servicemen, the Futenma base has been a flashpoint for opposition to America's military presence.
In opposition the DPJ repeatedly objected to an agreement to move part of the air station, including landing strips, to a pristine bay in north-eastern Okinawa, in exchange for the withdrawal of 8,000 marines and their families to American territory in Guam.
So subsidies for individuals to buy insurance will have to be phased in more slowly.News that the president would stay in Washington this weekend, postponing a trip to Guam, Indonesia, his boyhood home, and Australia is being read in two ways.
Experts dismiss its ostensible worries about its purpose: the intrusiveness of the radar, and the "interoperability" of the system ie, the fear that it might be linked up with those already deployed in Japan and Guam, and that it might eventually even be rolled out in India, encircling China.
A dozen South Africans were said to have been killed.Playing a dangerous gameNorth Korea told its rocket and artillery units to adopt a "combat posture" against United States bases on the American mainland, Guam and Hawaii.
