About Us

Who We Are Key Concerns What We Do

The Pacific Center for Island Security (PCIS) is an action-oriented research institute that aims to anchor this island and islander perspective. Based in Guam, PCIS aims to ensure that islands and islanders themselves have a voice amongst the cacophony that is geopolitical posturing. Further, we aim to be a home of critical conversation and action on island security.

While defense and a more traditional definition of security are important, security for the islands encompasses so much more. We value cooperation over threat assessment; we promote collaboration over competition; and we promote island concerns over island utility. Guam and Micronesia are at the center of U.S. strategy and positioning in the “Indo- Pacific.” Admiral Phil Davidson, former head of the Indo-Pacific Command, exclaims, “Guam is absolutely critical in maintaining deterrence and stability in the region. It’s our most critical operating location west of the International Date Line.” Guam has more ongoing, per square mile, than any other place in the U.S. military network. PCIS is uniquely situated “on the ground” to observe regional strategy, readiness, support, logistics, and munitions.

From our proximity and perspective, we can see substantial issues when it comes to strategic competition and geopolitical posturing. We believe that understanding what occurs in Guam can inform the larger view of the strategic environment. Thus, PCIS will provide independent analysis of the foreign policy and military-strategic activities and interplay between and amongst the actors in the strategic competition in the Asia Pacific.


We see several concerns in the current framing of strategic competition. There is a clear information gap with an accompanying disinformation surplus. Projections by the key protagonists of great power politics are becoming increasingly overhyped and polarized, with relative strengths and weaknesses being exaggerated or underplayed. This is accentuated by increasingly nationalist sentiments and groupthink. This extends to what appears to be an arms race. This bend towards miscalculation can trigger unnecessary conflagration in the region, an event our islands will not be shielded from.

A more unsettling problem is the blanket assumption of conflict. The public discourse in both the United States and the People’s Republic of China have steadily assumed that conflict may occur in the next decade. For those of us on the ground, it seems like we are being told to prepare for a conflict in which we are not protagonists.

The driving force of our analysis and concern is different from think tanks around the world. We do not view what happens in Guam and Micronesia as a piece of a puzzle or an exercise in strategic thought. For us, the stakes of the geopolitical gambit and the environmental issues in our region are cut from a different cloth. For some, competition and potential conflict in

Micronesia is collateral for national defense. For us, competition and conflict directly affect our lives, our homes, our families, our societies, our cultures, and our futures.

Thus, our perspective is fundamentally aligned to avoiding conflict in this region.  Regional conflict between great powers is an existential threat to our way of life, if not our existence. Miscalculation may be a temporary roadblock in the strategic minds of some. For us, miscalculation could be terminal.

To these ends, PCIS aims to close the information gap that may lead to destructive miscalculation. Being on the front lines of potential conflict, we aim to also be on the front lines of knowledge. Regarding miscalculation, the higher the quality of information, the closer to the truth. In closing this gap, we aim to elevate the understanding of the costs of conflict in the region. Our goal is to analyze all these moving geopolitical tectonic plates with the aim of promoting Pacific Island security.

Our island perspective emerges from understanding the geopolitical realities of the region. The economic and diplomatic competition between the protagonists and their fluid alliances are understood through our historical experience with hegemons. We understand that the interests of powers rise and fall in line with their own competition, not island-specific concerns. That is our reality. Thus, our interests extend to the machinations of both powers and small island states and entities in the Pacific.

We understand the need to critically examine the military capabilities of potential combatants. Our future is inexorably tied to avoiding conflict. From this vantage we view military capacity together with the fidelity of deployable systems and strategies as key indicators of both the integrity of deterrence and the potential for conflict. We are at the “tip of the spear” for more than just power projection and targeting. Our island perspective assesses evolving capabilities of protagonists (e.g. projection from the 2 nd island chain, IRBM response, SCS maritime activities, missile-defense) and the accelerating arms race in the region. Flashpoints of potential regional conflict are also important to our assessments, since the use of our homelands for offensive power projection and/or targeting are assumptions that are baked into current protagonist stratagem.

Our island perspective is not small or insular. We are connected to the greater war ecology in myriad ways. While most of the world looks at us as remote, tiny lands through the lens of a telescope, we view the world on our shores with a microscope.

Protecting Pacific Islander futures requires regional perspectives, planning, and cooperation. To this end, PCIS aims to serve as a nexus for regional collaboration. We recognize that security issues ranging from strategic competition to economic issues to climate change affects us all. We realize that the trajectories of our future are not stories already written. As those who are living in the islands, PCIS serves to inform the future of the Pacific Islands through independent analysis, island perspective, and being a regional hub of communication.