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Hawaii’s World
A Peace Center Museum overlooking Pearl Harbor and the battleship aboard which World War II ended was a dream I wrote a column about after the Missouri arrived here. Security study center
is Hawaii assetThe site seems a dramatic fit with our wish to be a Geneva of the Pacific. It someday could offer a wonderful museum on the horrors of war -- as dramatically structured as the Getty Art Center overlooking Los Angeles.
That will have to wait, but we are gaining in Hawaii some major institutions to advance the cause of peace in practical ways.
We have had the East-West Center for 40 years. Its many programs involve civilian leaders, scholars and journalists from throughout the Asia-Pacific region. They discuss and study problems of common interest.
Now the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies (APCSS) is front and center in the military area. Both are U.S.-funded -- $11 million a year to APCSS through the Defense Department, $12.5 million to EWC through the State Department.
APCSS was founded here in 1995. This summer it finally relocated to spiffy and bigger permanent headquarters at Fort DeRussy in Waikiki. These will allow it to expand its 12-week conferencing among the Asia-Pacific area's mid-level military officers who seem headed for the top and shorter sessions of a week or less for top leaders.
THE new headquarters called for a special celebration. At the building dedication a comparison was made with the George Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany. It is a Defense Department-funded focus for European security studies of a similar nature.
Former Defense Secretary William Perry praised both U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Ted Stevens of Alaska for highlighting the need for an Asia-Pacific center after they saw the Marshall Center, which was started in 1993.
The U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs underlined this as a special example of State Department-Defense Department cooperation. Stanley O. Roth said his boss, Madeleine Albright, keeps contrasting charts showing multiple international interconnection lines in Europe and the Pacific -- far, far fewer in this half of the world.
The Marshall and Hawaii centers bring together potential military antagonists. They work on projects of mutual interest, get to know each other and develop the contacts that could enable them to pick up phones and talk things out when problems develop between their nations. This is not fail-safe, but probably a major minimizer of impulses to rush to the use of force.
THERE are 44 nations in the region for which the U.S. Pacific Command based at Camp Smith has responsibility. We have no diplomatic relations with two of them -- North Korea and Myanmar (Burma).
All the rest have been invited to togetherness sessions here. At the dedication it was notable to see officers from arch-rivals India and Pakistan in animated conversation.
China has agreed to send representatives to a 12-week session starting Monday. In the new headquarters, the invitees will number about 240 per year for 12-week sessions, versus 150 at the old temporary site in the Waikiki Trade Center.
The president of the center is a retired Marine Pacific commander, Lt. Gen. Henry C. Stackpole. He is widely traveled, a superb public speaker and totally dedicated to using diplomacy to promote peace over war.
His staff includes former U.S. diplomats. The Maluhia Road street address for the center, by happy coincidence, invokes the Hawaiian word for peace, quiet and serenity.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.