Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy 1977-1980
Staff, Office of Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of (2019). Joint Chiefs of Staff and National Policy 1977-1980. Independently Published. ISBN 978-1-0755-2091-4.
- Has attachment: File:UHTC4KCX.pdf
Abstract: See "Safeguarding US Interests in Micronesia," pages 166 - 170
"...Concurrently with sorting out the future status of US bases in the Philippines, the Joint Chiefs found themselves facing a similar situation with respect to Micronesia, avast expanse in the Central Pacific encompassing some 2,100 islands, which the United States had administered as a "strategic trusteeship" of the United Nations in 1947. Since then these islands, known collectively as the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands (TTPI), had provided facilities for nuclear weapons testing (Bikini and Eniwetok), ballistic missile testing (Kwajalein), intermittent military training, and monitoring and surveillance functions. Following the reversion of Okinawa to Japan and the US withdrawal from Vietnam, the Joint Chiefs eyed bases in Micronesia for possible fallback positions, but largely gave up the idea owing to lack of interest on the part of the Services, limited funding for development, and emerging autonomy movements among the native islanders. Under growing pressure to find an alternative to the trusteeship arrangement, the United States had pursued negotiations with local representatives off and on since the late 1960s, but without significant success until the conclusion in 1975 of a "covenant" establishing a Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, making them administratively separate from the rest of the TTPI and giving the United States long-term air and naval leases to facilities on Tinian and Saipan.
At the outset of the Carter administration, the future of the rest of Micronesia was still in doubt. In handing on the problem, the outgoing Ford administration urged the early resumption of negotiations and advised that a mutually satisfactory solution would likely hinge on two major issues: overcoming separatist tendencies in the Marshall and Palau Islands, based largely on fears that their current and prospective economic advantages would be diluted in a permanent union with the less advantaged Carolinas; and Micronesian demands for control over marine resources in an extensive economic zone extending 200 miles off their coasts, including the right to conclude bilateral and multilateral treaties for the exploitation of these resources—a significant exception to previous US demands that the United States retain control over Micronesia's foreign and defense affairs."" Eager to dispose of the problem. President Carter set a tentative date of 1981 for terminating the trusteeship, and in mid-February 1977 he turned the matter over to the Policy Review Committee for further study (PRM19), asking it, among other things, to pay special attention to analyzing "US security requirements in Micronesia, including their relation to US interests in the East Asia and Pacific region."...
Extra details:
DOI: 10.21236/ada614272 MAG: 233045191 OpenAlex: W233045191 CorpusID: 150794239
