It’s the long twilight shadow of Spanish American War colonialism, refracted through two generations of U.S. Navy hegemony and a half-century of intermittent (and very partial) democratization. There’s an indigenous (though heavily Americanized) Chamorro community, a large and constantly changing “off-Island” and largely American professional/business class, and vast amounts of 1980s/1990s pre-bubble Japanese capital investment. A mainland U.S. politician who got involved there (Guam) would basically have to be crazy. The CNMI has perhaps a somewhat more wholesome profile for having made better bets on the consequences of obtaining Commonwealth status than those of the “Unincorporated U.S. Territory” status that Guam still has. But I’d be scared to touch it, basically.

“Unincorporated,” by the way, means of the U.S. but not technically wholly covered by the Constitution compact. Constitution-level questions arising in Guam law are based on the federal “Organic Act” of 1950, repeatedly amended, which Congress can change or even retract whenever it chooses. Appellate decisions there (including those that rise into U.S. federal appellate courts) are based on considerations of “organicity,” not “constitutionality.” American colonial history and Colonial American history are two quite distinct–though interestingly intersected–fields of inquiry and analysis.