North Korea has raised alarms by hinting it would target U. S. territory of Guam with ballistic missiles
After President Trump threatened nuclear-armed North Korea with “fire and fury” — and after Kim Jong Un ’s hermit kingdom replied with a bombastic warning aimed at a speck of U. S. territory in the vast western Pacific — many Americans got busy Googling “Guam.”
To the outside world, the tropical island is perhaps best known as a bloody battleground in World War II.
In subsequent decades, Guam, the largest island in the Mariana chain, became an outsized bastion of U. S. military might in a remote but strategic region — a role that probably placed it in the gun sights of an erratic and often paranoid leadership in Pyongyang.
And at a distance of about 2,100 miles, Guam lies closer to North Korea than any other U. S. territory.
For the island’s 160,000-plus inhabitants — who awoke Wednesday to news of the North Korean military’s announcement that it was weighing operational plans for a ballistic-missile strike on Guam — it was a jolting switch from concerns like the local scuba-diving conditions, a bird population beset by invasive tree snakes and warnings of the ills of chewing betel nuts.
Native-born Guamanians are U. S. citizens by birth, and the island’s governor, Eddie Baza Calvo, took to YouTube early Wednesday to inform constituents that he had been assured by the White House that Guam would be defended as if it were the U. S. mainland should North Korea try to strike.
North Korea has made a nuclear weapon small enough to fit on a missile. How worried should the world be? »
“This is not the time to panic, ” he told reporters. “There have been many statements out there that have been made by a very bellicose leader, but at this point there’s been no change in the security situation here on Guam.”
More reassurance came from Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who arrived on a previously scheduled refueling hours after the latest North Korean threat while en route home from diplomatic stops in Southeast Asia.
Declining to echo Trump’s belligerent tone, he played down the prospect of any immediate concerns that Kim would lash out at the island and said Americans “should sleep well at night.
