Guam Guard to launch partnership in the Marshall Islands
The Guam National Guard will enter a State Partnership Program with the Marshall Islands, according to a Nov. 19 release, CHamoru Standard Time.
The State Partnership Program is a joint program of the United States Department of Defense, now the Department of War, and the states, territories, and the District of Columbia. The program and the concept originated in 1993 as a form of the previously established Joint Contact Team Program.
For Guam, the relationship is a progression from the inclusion of the Marshall Islands in direct relationships through the U.S. military’s Joint Task Force-Micronesia, with the U.S. Coast Guard Forces Micronesia Sector Guam’s partnership and dovetails with U.S. geopolitical aims in the region.
Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen announced Nov. 17 that the Nebraska National Guard, alongside the Guam National Guard, has been selected to partner with the Republic of the Marshall Islands through the Department of War National Guard Bureau’s State Partnership Program.
The signing ceremony is tentatively scheduled for the week of April 20 next year in Guam, in conjunction with JTF-Micronesia’s biannual Joint Committee Meeting with the Marshall Islands, according to the SPP.
Members of the SPP meet regularly and did so in August. “In a mostly virtual gathering, National Guard members and security cooperation leaders convened earlier this month for a Defense Department National Guard Bureau State Partnership Program conference to discuss the program's enduring importance in today's complex environment, the DoW said in August.
Christopher Mamaux, deputy assistant defense secretary for global partnerships, emphasized the SPP's role in developing partnerships critical to U.S. national security, in an August release. The SPP, he said, is uniquely positioned to help partners "shoulder the burden of collective defense."
Outside of funding through the Compact of Free Association with the Marshalls, the U.S. maintains a steady but not exclusive relationship of fiscal support with the country. See Marshall islands construction boom several new projects .
The National Guard of Nebraska is also paired with the Marshall Islands as part of this SPP, according to the release. Nebraska has a small population of resident Marshallese citizens in the state in Wayne and Omaha, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey data. Expatriate Marshallese also live in Hawaii, Arkansas — drawn by work opportunities there — and Oklahoma. mbj
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