How ambiguity serves American military and intelligence desires in the Marianas

Residents of the Mariana Islands continue to be recipients of military information overload. If defense contractor prepared documents released to the public do not relate to live-bombing training desires on Pagan or artillery training wishes on Tinian or hand-grenade training efforts in Yigo, materials may be tied to Air Force live bombing runs on FDM or undersea explosions or active sonar training conducted by the Navy throughout our region.

The results of ongoing military-initiated information overload efforts targeted at Marianas islanders serve many purposes. One purpose is that it generates anxiousness amongst villagers because the majority of our people do not understand technical military and scientific/environmental/statutory-speak nor should it be assumed that they do. Military produced information overload also results in establishing impressions with islanders who respond to these informational “shock and awe” events by feeling powerless, numb, angry, fearful, or helpless. Some may choose to not even think about what the military wants to do because it is too painful or because war profiteering is to be had or both.

All this, I would argue, is done to sustain the conditions that effectively and continually confuse, dissuade, deter, and divide an otherwise relatively peaceful population, which for the most part simply wants to have the ability to control and shape their own collective destiny, on their own terms, on a tiny non-contiguous landmass of islands named after a European aristocrat. In other words what we are talking about is sustaining an environment throughout our island chain that is ambiguous, and thus advantageous to the military.

The American intelligence community is also deeply involved in the Marianas because it intersects with the military by providing an operationally robust surveillance state throughout the island chain through providing superior information support campaigning vis-a-vis mass media delivery channels that provide cover for ongoing clandestine operations carried out for the purpose of creating an environment that sustains total informational superiority in order to accurately assess real-time environmental conditions and political situational awareness developments in the Marianas.

Sustaining ambiguity to maximize the likelihood that the military attains its desired goals in the Marianas over time is the farthest thing from what this nation is supposed to stand for—that of liberty and justice for all that it is founded and derived from the consent and will of the people. In the case of the Mariana Islands, the military and intelligence communities will continue to utilize techniques, tactics, and methods intended to cast the widest net to influence, control, and shape villager hearts and minds in order to realize desired strategic outcomes—that of fully militarizing our island chain home for the purpose of providing convenient training grounds to sustain and amplify tactical and strategic readiness should hot spots develop throughout the U.S. Pacific Command’s area of responsibility. For Chamorros and Carolinians alike, this proposition is unreasonable, un-American and tyrannical by description because there are other options and areas throughout the Asia Pacific region for the military to train besides our island chain that have not been adequately explored because of perceived inconveniences or perceived cost factors or both.

Rick Perez
Hanover, NH