U.S. Military Buildup in Palau Revives WWII Fears Among Island Nation

On a small archipelago in the western Pacific, where the ruins of a Japanese wartime wharf still line the harbor, the United States is preparing to invest $500 million in a naval expansion that will make Palau the site of its largest overseas military construction project. The announcement arrives not as a neutral act of infrastructure but as a geopolitical declaration — one that repositions a nation of thousands between the ambitions of superpowers. Palauans, who have already lived through the violence of being strategically located, are asking the oldest question small nations ask of powerfu