China Eyes New Provocations As Super Typhoon Mawar Targets Guam bases

As China tensions simmer across the Pacific, America’s Western Pacific redoubt of Guam is girding for a knockout hit by Super Typhoon Mawar. Guam—as well as the neighboring islands of Rota, Saipan, and Tinian—expects destructive winds of at least 150 mph, a massive storm surge, and flooding.

Conditions are expected to be so tough that President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration hours before the Typhoon is expected to hit America’s endangered Pacific Territory.

Guam hasn’t taken a really direct hit from a “super typhoon” since 1962, when winds of nearly 200 miles per hour from Super Typhoon Karen “destroyed 95 percent of the homes on Guam”, inflicting damage “much more serious than that of 1944” when Japan and the United States fought over the island. It seems likely that much of the island will be “off-line” for days or weeks to come.

Cyclones, of course, are a way of life from Guam, but as the 210 square-mile island—only about three times the size of Washington DC—takes on and ever-more-important role in securing the Pacific, the national security risk from these weather-related disruptions increases as well.

Right now, Guam is an armed camp, host to several critical military facilities, and home to about 150,000 people. It is a critical mission enabler for the U.S. military.

The island’s military importance is set to grow. In January, as part of a shift from Japan, the U.S. Marine Corps opened Camp Blaz, a 4,000-acre facility, and their first new base in 70 years. Four nuclear submarines and two old submarine tenders, share the port of Apra with four Coast Guard cutters and some Military Sealift Command assets. More maritime force and support facilities are expected. On the north side of the island, the sprawling Anderson Air Force Base is often home to strategic bombers. The operational tempo is only increasing.

When weather looms, everything changes for this isolated U.S. bastion. Ships sortie, dispatched to safer harbors in Yap and elsewhere. Aircraft fly out to other, less prepared bases. And, as everyone else hunkers down in reinforced concrete shelters, waiting for electricity, communications, and key sensors to fail, Guam’s ability to contribute to security in the Pacific is abruptly limited.

Given Guam’s military importance, everyone from China to the Pentagon will be interested in seeing just how the island weathers the latest storm, learning how quickly host units return to operational status, and how adroitly the U.S. manages the recovery process.

But America’s rivals may take advantage of Guam’s discomfit, interpreting the disabled base as an opportunity to cause trouble elsewhere in the region.

Fighting Where Typhoons Are A Way Of Life:

Guam has been through this before. In 2002, part of Super Typhoon Pongsona passed over the island, hitting Guam with 173 mph wind gusts. At Anderson Air Force Base, the winds were strong enough to disable sensors, leading observers to estimate the airbase weathered 180 mph gusts in the storm, damaging flightline hangars and the base’s water supply.

Back then, the cyclone inflicted over $1.18 billion in damage, igniting a fire in Guam’s gasoline storage area, and leaving the entire island without easily accessible fuel. Several walls of the Guam Memorial Hospital collapsed, damaging the critical medical facility. Communications broke down and when the storm ended, some sixty five percent of the island’s fresh water wells were either damaged or contaminated, over 3,000 homes were severely damaged or destroyed, and over $88 million dollars in electrical equipment had to be replaced.

Guam was still repairing Super Typhoon Pongsona damage in 2006.

America’s security cannot afford a repeat of the halting and tawdry post-Cyclone Pongsona recovery effort.

Going Forward, Guam Must Shrug Off Cyclones:

The weather threat to Guam is well known. The island traditionally takes a hit from a Category 4 or 5 storm every five to seven years. In recognition of the threat, the Navy, in 2019, listed both Anderson Air Force Base and Naval Base Guam as two of 16 military installations most vulnerable to climate related events.

The pattern is regular enough that a prepared adversary can exploit Guam’s disruption, and cause trouble elsewhere in the Pacific.

Given that risk, coupled with the growing missile and strike threat from China, Russia and North Korea, Congress should demand that future government facilities on Guam are comprised of nothing but hardened infrastructure, able to resist and recover from strong winds and storm surge.

In addition, Congress should be quick to fund hardened submarine pens, along with hardened harbor, sensor, strike, and air defense infrastructure. Among Guam’s vulnerable military infrastructure, the Navy’s two 45-year-old steam-powered submarine tenders based at Guam are a particular risk, unreliable enough that these critical floating facilities may have trouble getting underway in time to reach a safe haven port.

It’s a real risk. In 2011, the post-hurricane loss of “Big Blue”, Guam’s last-remaining big dry dock, should be a warning that forward maintenance facilities, if damaged, will be slow to return to Guam.

Getting resources to enhance Guam’s military and civil infrastructure is tough. Not considered a state, and lacking real representation in Congress, nobody is rushing to support the critical American territory. While strategically critical, America loves to devalue remote island holdings.

Instead of waiting for Congress, America’s law enforcement and national security partners should start tracking Chinese, Russian and North Korean activities, and see if activity patterns change when weather threatens. China could very well use Guam’s discomfort as cover to remove navigational buoys the Philippines placed in the South China Sea last week. Observers, noting that a Chinese law enforcement buoy tender, Hai Xun 173, is closing in on the newly-placed buoys, expect China to make a move soon.

If post-disaster recovery drags on—as it often does in other hurricane-hit U.S. territories—the U.S. should make a real effort to track how China, Russia, and others may try to exploit the disruption through the encouragement of anti-American or anti-military sentiment.

If America’s rivals are taking advantage of Guam’s troubles to cause trouble of their own, then it might be easier to make the case for more money from America’s divided Congress. But, if nobody is watching and making connections, then nobody will know, and Guam will be left to recover pretty much on it’s own.