Democracy Dies in Darkness

Hawaii isn’t protected by NATO. Some senators are trying to change that.

The archipelago became a state 10 years after NATO was born, but remains outside of the treaty’s geographic scope.

July 12, 2024 at 5:00 a.m. EDT

A Coast Guard vessel moves toward the Hawaiian island of Kauai in 2019. A bipartisan group of senators is pushing to secure NATO protections for the Pacific state. (Lt. J.G. Daniel Winter/AP)

5 min

As world leaders gathered this week in Washington to celebrate 75 years of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, President Biden praised the protection offered by the alliance. “For 75 years, our nations have grown and prospered behind the NATO shield,” he said Wednesday.

However, not all of the United States is protected by that shield. The state of Hawaii, home to more than 1.4 million people and various U.S. military bases, is excluded from NATO provisions. With the military alliance finding itself increasingly entwined in security threats from China and other Asian nations, some lawmakers are now calling for that exclusion to be reevaluated.

By Bryan Pietsch

Bryan Pietsch is a reporter on the International desk covering foreign affairs. He was previously based in Seoul, where he was the inaugural reporter in The Post's news hub there.Twitter

Kick off the savings. Switch on.