On September 29 this year, President Joe Biden made some commotion over the way the United States was, after years of neglect, returning to the business of helping ‘improve the lives of Pacific Islanders…’
He was light on detail; more than US$810 million was to go into the improving lives business. It soon became apparent that $600 million of it was a Biden wishlist. Congress needed to approve the money someday, and much of it would be linked to the US-Pacific Tuna Treaty. That left a balance of $200 million on a grab-bag of assorted aid, including dealing with climate change.
In Washington talanoa; historic or tautalatala? I wrote that the $810 million was ‘equivalent to around 32 hours of US defence spending’. I was being too generous.
In Ti Belau, the Palau newspaper, top of the front page is a story saying that the Angaur State Government had closed the dock ‘for the unloading of equipment and materials related to the construction of the military radar project known as TACMOR.’ There are no radar details in the story, perhaps because the 18,000 people of Palau, and the 119 people of Angaur, are already familiar with TACMOR, or ‘Tactical Mobile Over the Horizon Radar’. TACMOR is about containing China.
Although Angaur is 2500 kilometres from the Chinese coast (and 3600 km from Pongyang, North Korea), Palau is becoming integrated with Fortress Guam, 1,300 km to its north east. It is the new frontline.
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