By Howard Hills
Visit of War Secretary, Joint Chiefs Head as U.S. troops and combat forces return opens new era for Puerto Rico federal relations
The scene is breathtaking to imagine: young marines meeting their top commanders in Puerto Rico when it became a forward position in war on narco terror. Speaking historically, in the blink of an eye the 2004 closure of a major military base in Puerto Rico was eclipsed by a new strategic reality. The local economy still suffers from the loss of U.S. Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, including 6,000 skilled high paying jobs and a $300 million a year hole in the territory’s finances. But that was then and this is now.
And the beat goes on in the long history of Puerto Rico in the life of our nation, traced back to the voyages of Christopher Columbus and Ponce DeLeon, when Puerto Rico was Spain’s capital in the “new world.” Now the unique role of Puerto Rico in American history resumes amid new calls for culmination of a shared non-colonial manifest destiny. It is not too late or too early for the Alaska model of strategic territorial integration in 1867 to be duplicated for Puerto Rico.
Just as Congress did for Alaska and later Hawaii in 1900, the U.S. granted U.S. citizenship for Puerto Rico in 1917. That was just in time for 18,000 new Americans in the territory to be drafted into the military in WWI.
During WWII and every war since, including the War on Terror, U.S. citizen soldiers and sailors from Puerto Rico have served with unsurpassed valor and patriotic pride alongside U.S. military forces from every state and territory. Not only in WWII but during the Cold War, the strategically indispensable Naval Station Roosevelt Roads in Puerto Rico, including its submarine base, became a bulwark of the American national security success story in the 20th Century.
That legacy of enduring loyalty and love of country proved by the valor of Puerto Rican Americans in the great battles for freedom is best illustrated by the faded war-time photographs and combat medals awarded to our Puerto Rican soldiers and sailors from 1917 to 2025. Those poignant artifacts and emblems are displayed in Puerto Rico, as in homes across our nation, by families honoring the service and sacrifice of our patriots.
That includes the homes of 3.2 million Americans living in Puerto Rico today whose heroes never returned alive, or came home bearing the scars of war. That legacy includes medal of honor winners and thousands of combat ribbons for valor in every war and combat operation in every corner of the world.
Now Puerto Rico’s Air National Guard facilities again accommodate 6-10 U.S. jet fighter aircraft expected to deployed to Puerto Rico as part of the Department of War larger scale engagement with the criminal narco terrorist regimes. That will enable open war on criminal cartel syndicates that imprison and enslave the vulnerable and exploited in the Caribbean and Atlantic coasts of North and South America. As needed, more military reconnaissance and combat military aircraft and even combat troops can be deployed to Puerto Rico.
That contingency may or may not ever be needed, but the Governor of Puerto Rico, Jenniffer Gonzalez-Colon, has made it clear Puerto Rico is all in as a front line bastion of the American homeland in the war against cartels and outlaw regimes. In addition, as Peru, Panama, and Cuba become in varying degree client states of China, our homeland must manage and prevail in the face of challenges from the east as from the west. Puerto Rico will become as important in the Atlantic and Caribbean as Hawaii and Guam in the Pacific.
Puerto Rico is the defense guardian at the gates for thousands of miles of coastline between America’s southeastern borders, keeping peace, repelling enemies, making our Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf coastline secure. The U.S. is fully recognizing that Puerto Rico is on the front line in defense of America from attack by narco terror cartels, and from China’s growing influence in the region.
As in WWI and WWII, the 3 million patriotic Americans of Puerto Rico are joining the fight to save America and freedom, which can exist only with rule of law. Because it is a territory not a state PR has been a special target for trafficking in human beings and drugs to the mainland USA. But Puerto Rico and federal law enforcement have stood up against crime and foreign subversion for decades. Now the U.S. has begun to restore a regional national security strategy that includes Puerto Rico as a frontline forward position in the war against drugs, human trafficking, enemy infiltration and other hostile and criminal acts of war against our nation.
As with Hawaii, Alaska, Texas and Florida, unless the pattern of precedence is broken it is inevitable Puerto Rico will become a state. Not only because it is even more American than many of the early states before admission to the union. But to make Puerto Rico an even more hardened target and platform for power projection in the region, the best way to prevent the next war is to be prepared to fight and win it. While we tend to see threats from the Pacific clearly because of the WWII legacy, we need to remember we have been attacked in the Caribbean and Atlantic more than the Pacific, including WWII and the War on Terror.
The Caribbean remains a focus of China, Russia and broader threats of terrorism. The U.S. gave independence to the U.S. territory of the Philippine Islands in 1946, and gave statehood to Hawaii and Alaska in 1959. Now, our fellow Americans in Puerto Rico already have the same duty of allegiance, loyalty and patriotism as citizens of a state. What they are denied as territory are the equal rights and opportunity to prosper through free enterprise that come only through statehood.
As with Hawaii and Alaska, the expressed will of the U.S. citizens in the territory seeking permanent more perfect union through statehood makes it inevitable that Congress will recognize one historical reality. It is that transition to statehood also best serves the national interest.
For only statehood can project the power of America’s sovereign rights and moral purposes in Puerto Rico as part of our own homeland. Congress must commit to statehood for Puerto Rico to restore the promise of the 1789 Northwest Ordinance, the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and the 1899 Treaty of Paris.
That promise to all U.S. citizens in the American homeland is sacred because its redemption alone can and must preserve America as one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
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