LAUSR

In 2011, the Obama administration signalled a pivot towards Asia-Pacific, with economic, trade, and military foci trained on the Pacific region, in response to the growth of Chinese power and a perceived need to reinforce the U.S.’s commitment to the region. Whilst some viewed this as a refocusing from a stagnant European arena, to find new markets and new spaces in which to project power, Sasha Davis cogently illustrates the extent to which this pivot was simply the latest development in a lengthy imperial engagement between the U.S. and the oceanic region off its western seaboard. In his fascinating book, Davis provides a detailed and empirically rich critique of U.S. military and geostrategic influence across the Pacific, and its impact on islands and their communities dotted through this vast oceanic region. Davis shines a much needed light on the implications of what has seemingly become a normalised dominance—reminding us that the U.S. has been the dominant military power across the island Pacific region since 1898—and uncovers how this military omnipotence has affected the lives of those on islands deemed to be strategically useful by, and to, the U.S. military, and on these islands’ environments. In a relatively short but very detailed account, Davis deftly weaves complex geopolitical arguments through thick empirical research to unpack, unpick, and problematize the relationship of the U.S. military to these peoples and places, and the resistances that have grown up to it’s presence. Dispensing with an introduction, Davis launches immediately into the first and longest chapter, which sets out both the geographical and conceptual remit of the book. Extending his scope to encompass U.S. territory—including states, dependencies, sovereign base areas, and a range of spaces and places that have more blurry sovereignty statuses— across the Hawai’ian, Mariana, Marshall, and Caroline island groups, as well as bases in Japan and the Philippines, Davis seeks to cover a vast range of island locations. He offers an overview of these locations and specifically how, where, and why they fall within the remit of U.S. geopolitical and geostrategic interest, unsurprisingly positioning them as sites upon and from which the U.S. can project its power across the wider Pacific region. The most significant aspect of the first chapter is the conceptual framework. Drawing on a decade’s worth of published scholarship, Davis sets out quite a complex set of intersecting ideas for the empirical analysis that follows. Davis