When Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee on June 4 that Greenland is part of Denmark “for now,” the remark landed hard in Europe. But it carried a different kind of weight for Guam, an island at the other end of Washington’s strategic calculus, increasingly central to U.S. power projection in the Indo-Pacific yet still fighting for a basic passport office and bracing for threats it has no civilian plan to survive.
Rubio made the Greenland comment during a hearing that also drew sharp questioning from Guam Delegate James Moylan, who pressed the secretary on Pacific security, counter-narcotics cooperation and federal services for island residents. The pairing, unintentional as it was, put two strategic territories – one Danish and one American – in the same frame: both seen in Washington as strategic assets and both raising harder questions about what that designation actually means for the people living there.
On Greenland, Rubio said the United States is “actually involved in conversations with Greenland and Denmark on the use of Greenland for collective defense” and that those talks are “in a good place.” He agreed with President Donald Trump that owning territory makes defense arrangements easier than negotiating basing agreements and said he expected to have “pretty good news” on the matter at some point. The phrasing alarmed some European allies, who read it as the Trump administration treating Greenland’s Danish sovereignty as provisional.
In the same hearing, Rubio acknowledged Moylan’s long-running push to establish a passport issuance office on Guam, where residents currently rely on Honolulu for those services – a significant obstacle during emergencies or urgent travel situations.
“We are working on trying to do it. We’d like to do it,” Rubio said. “I think we may have news for you on that in a couple weeks if you could bear with us.”
For Moylan, the passport issue was one piece of a broader point about what Guam’s strategic importance should actually require of Washington.
“Guam sits at the forefront of America’s presence in the Indo-Pacific,” Moylan said in a June 5 press release following the hearing. “As strategic competition in our region continues to intensify, it is critical that Guam remains an active partner in strengthening security, supporting our allies, and protecting the values and interests that keep the Pacific free, open, and secure.”
Moylan also used the hearing to highlight narcotics trafficking across the Pacific and his bipartisan CLEAN Pacific Act, introduced with Rep. Ed Case, D-Hawaii; Rep. Aumua Amata Radewagen, R-American Samoa; and Rep. Kimberlyn King-Hinds, R-NMI. The legislation would create a Pacific Islands Counternarcotics Initiative to strengthen regional cooperation and target transnational criminal organizations.
The hearing came as Guam is absorbing the implications of a separate but related shift in Pacific defense. The U.S. Air Force is permanently moving three RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drones and roughly 150 personnel from Andersen Air Force Base to Yokota Air Base in western Tokyo, a transition confirmed by both the 374th Airlift Wing and Japan’s defense and foreign ministries.
The aircraft, assigned to the 4th Reconnaissance Squadron, have been deployed seasonally from Guam to Japan for more than a decade. The new arrangement makes that presence permanent at Yokota. The Air Force described the move as essential to ensure the drones can provide persistent intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities in support of the U.S.-Japan alliance and a free and open Indo-Pacific.
The timing sharpens an already pointed debate about Guam’s role and readiness. In a column published Tuesday in The Guam Daily Post, the Pacific Center for Island Security painted a stark picture of Chinese naval activity in the region, documenting five unprecedented People’s Liberation Army Navy forays beyond the First Island Chain since June 2025. Those included a 14-ship, carrier-led task force that conducted live-fire drills east of Luzon in April and a carrier strike group maneuvering between the Philippines and Guam earlier this year.
“The past year is just the early part of the first inning of the PLAN’s evolution to blue water operations,” the Guam-based think tank wrote.
PCIS called this a deliberate, long-term shift from a defensive posture to an offensive one, intended to normalize Chinese operations in waters where American and allied forces have long dominated. It also issued a blunt warning about Guam’s readiness for what that shift could eventually mean.
“If U.S.-China relations broke down into a conflict, Guam is completely unprepared,” PCIS wrote. “There are no plans for civilian protection and life support in the event of hostilities between the U.S. and China.”
PCIS also noted that the planned Enhanced Integrated Air and Missile Defense System is not built for sustained combat engagement with a capable adversary and that Chinese air and sea attack options in a conflict scenario would rapidly outpace current defenses on the island.
Against that backdrop, a June opinion piece in Breaking Defense added another layer to the conversation. Kyle Balzer, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and Robert Peters, senior research fellow for strategic deterrence at the Heritage Foundation, argued that Washington should redeploy U.S. theater nuclear forces to the Western Pacific, beginning with South Korea and moving gradually to Japan.
Guam figures prominently in their proposal. The authors suggest the U.S. would first station B61 nuclear gravity bombs on Guam and then gradually have Japanese crews operate dual-capable aircraft from Andersen Air Force Base, with nuclear-capable, long-range hypersonic weapons eventually operating from the island as well.
The authors argue the absence of forward-deployed, lower-yield nuclear options could give China confidence that it can press conventional advantages without triggering a U.S. nuclear response. This, they contend, raises the risk of conflict rather than reduces it.
The proposal remains outside official policy. No U.S. government announcement of nuclear deployments to Guam, Japan or South Korea has been made. In a joint statement from the June 8-9 Japan-U.S. Extended Deterrence Dialogue in Tokyo, the United States reaffirmed its commitment to defend Japan using the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, including nuclear capabilities, without confirming any new forward-basing arrangements.
Still, the convergence of a Rubio hearing in which Guam’s strategic importance was raised by its delegate, Global Hawk surveillance drones departing Andersen for Japan, Chinese carriers operating closer to the island and Washington think-tank analysts openly sketching nuclear basing scenarios that run through Guam makes the island’s strategic position clear.
“The establishment of a passport issuance office on Guam would be a major step forward in improving federal services for our island and the broader region,” Moylan said, keeping his focus on the practical alongside the strategic.
Whether Washington’s attention follows is the harder question. Guam has long been critical to American interests in discussions ranging from the Arctic to the Philippine Sea. The island, and its 160,000 residents, are still waiting for federal services and civilian protection plans that would support that strategic role.