But what if the United States simply left? What if American military contractors, scientists and soldiers packed their bags never to return, abandoning their swimming pools and social clubs and neat rows of houses to the Marshallese? It is tempting to envision a fairytale decolonization. With the anxieties of the Cold War a distant memory, there is no pressing national security pretext for continued American military presence. Moreover, Kwajalein’s physical distance from the United States and its absence from public consciousness makes releasing the island to the vast, anonymous waters of the Pacific seem simple. If the United States chose to withdraw, within months Kwajalein could be liberated from American colonialism and Native futurity secured.

This vision of decolonization is attractive because it feels comfortable. It wipes clean past guilt and absolves future responsibility. But it is a fantasy. Abandoning Kwajalein to its fate recalls the imperial construct of the Pacific as an empty space for expansion and domination. Once Kwajalein loses its immediate value, it can be discarded and ignored until needed again. In other words, decolonization by itself is not a futurity. It can be a settler move to innocence that centers the absence of colonial power rather than the lived realities of the Marshallese.

In their essay “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang conclude by proposing an “ethic of incommensurability.”[1] They argue that material decolonization may not be reconcilable with social justice projects and concepts of human and civil rights because it fundamentally rejects the existing world order. Decolonization is not a clean break between a colonial power and colonized people. In this section I examine some of the entanglements and challenges that complicate a material decolonization on Kwajalein even if the United States decided to return full sovereignty to the Marshallese. An “ethic of incommensurability,” however, proposes that decolonization can exist as a framework outside of its physical manifestation. Decolonization does not have to be commensurable to the problems of reality. In conclusion I examine how denaturalizing American colonialism on Kwajalein promotes Native futurity even without material decolonization.

[1] Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society 1, no. 1 (2012).