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Published on July 11, 2024
U.S. Senators Rally for NATO's Protective Mantle to Extend Over Hawaii Amidst Rising Indo-Pacific ThreatsSource: Unsplash/ Karsten Winegeart

In a concerted effort to extend NATO's umbrella to cover Hawaii, U.S. senators have put forward a request to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, aiming to amend the North Atlantic Treaty to include the islands within its scope of protection, as reported by KHON2. The bipartisan initiative, led by Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz and joined by Sen. Mazie Hirono among others, has cited increasing military threats in the Indo-Pacific region as grounds for the sought-after inclusion under NATO's Article 6, which states that an armed attack against one or more members is considered as an attack against all member states.

Amidst the 75th-anniversary summit of NATO in Washington, the urgency of this matter takes center stage with a plea to recognize Hawaii's strategic position and its undeniable importance to U.S. national security interests; in a letter to Blinken, made public by West Hawaii Today, a group of twelve senators accentuated the historical context that, in 1949, the treaty did not cover overseas territories, a category under which Hawaii fell at the time as a U.S. territory not yet accorded full statehood which came a decade later in 1959.

With the shift in geopolitical landscapes and the rise of China as a competitor, the senators' letter positioned this strategic move as essential to reaffirm the U.S.'s commitment to peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific region. In their communication, they mentioned on West Hawaii Today, "The importance of clarifying that members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would consider an armed attack against the State of Hawaii to be an attack against all NATO countries." Furthermore, the appeal to rewrite the North Atlantic Treaty to explicitly include Hawaii alludes to bridging the past and current military dispositions and recognizing the evolving confrontations that riddle our present geopolitical arena.

While Sen. Schatz was not available to provide further insights through an interview, the collective voice of the senators echoes through the halls of power, aiming at driving preemptive and protective measures to encompass all states of the union within NATO's shield, "Silence on whether NATO allies would come to the defense of Hawaii undermines our strategy of deterring conflict in the Indo-Pacific," the letter stated on West Hawaii Today, stressing that the memory of Pearl Harbor remains not just a scar from the past but a living reminder of Hawaii's significance to national security and consequently to the international order structured around alliances such as NATO.