Photo courtesy of Samahang Pilipino
Content warning: military brutality, colonialism, genocide, sexual violence
The Rim of the Pacific exercise (RIMPAC) is the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise, hosted by the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet Command in conjunction with 28 partner nations and the U.S. Marine Corps, Air Force, Army, and Coast Guard. The 2024 exercise marked the 29th year since 1971 that the event, held biennially because of its large scale, took place in American-occupied Hawaiʻi.
As a multinational joint exercise, the event serves a purpose beyond training. Forty surface ships, three submarines, 14 national land forces, 150 aircraft, and 25,000 personnel from 29 countries participated in the most recent RIMPAC from June 27 to Aug. 1. Despite this year’s allegedly nonviolent theme of “Partners: Integrated and Prepared,” a large assembly of soldiers, combat vehicles, and weapons creates a competition of ego, supremacy, and shows of force against rival militaries.
Units tested deadly technology off the coast of Hawaiʻi during the American-led exercise, echoing the islands’ long history of military occupation. Little has improved since American commercial interests and the military deposed Queen Liliʻuokalani in 1893 and colonized the Hawaiian Kingdom.
During World War II, the U.S. military used the Hawaiian island of Kahoʻolawe as a bombing target despite its cultural and spiritual significance. Named after the Hawaiian deity Kanaloa, it was a sacred site for religious rites and training in celestial navigation. The island’s desecration continued in the late 1960s when 500 tons of TNT were detonated to simulate an atomic blast, exposing and destroying much of its underground freshwater supply.
RIMPAC bombed and shelled Kahoʻolawe until it could no longer ignore pushback from Hawaiian and international communities in the 1980s. In its cleanup effort, though, the Navy only removed 75% of the abandoned bombs, missiles, and grenades on the island, and ignored its surrounding waters altogether. On some occasions unexploded munitions resurfaced along its shores, including a device with highly corrosive white phosphorus. Erosion from wind and water continue to expose yet more ordnance, making Kahoʻolawe life-threatening to visit. Military exercises like RIMPAC inflict irreversible damage to air, sea, land, and life.
During this past RIMPAC, participants sunk two decommissioned battleships with live fire 50 miles off the coast of Kauaʻi. The Commander of the U.S. 3rd Fleet states that the training is “in strict compliance with regulations prescribed and enforced by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under a general permit the Navy holds pursuant to the Marine Protection, Research, and Sanctuaries Act.”
The Navy stripped the sunk vessels of toxic PCBs, petroleum, waste, mercury, and fluorocarbons. Personnel also monitored sink sites for people, aquatic animals, and marine vessels before exercises. The ships themselves, however, are an ecological threat. Iron leaching from sunken ships triggers algal blooms, subsequently reducing the oxygen in the ocean, stunting coral reefs, and damaging marine biodiversity.
RIMPAC has victimized not just the ecology of the Hawaiian islands, but also its people. For decades, Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) women and children have been targeted for sexual violence by participating militaries as rates of sex trafficking climb during the biennial joint exercises. While active-duty military personnel account for under 4% of the population, they comprised almost 40% of sex offenders arrested during a 2022 state-wide operation against child predators.
Partners: Invasive and Persistent
The colonial apartheid state of Israel joined RIMPAC in 2018, becoming one of its 29 participant countries. RIMPAC demonstrates the United States’ active role in the Israeli military and its genocide of the Palestinian people. In addition to joint military exercises, the U.S. exchanges large amounts of military research and collaborates in weapons development with Israel.
Each year the U.S. sends Israel $3.8 billion in Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and additional missile program funding. The current Biden-Harris Administration Student Debt Relief Plan includes loan forgiveness of up to $20,000 per borrower. The Israeli military is backed with enough money to help 190,000 post-grad borrowers with financial insecurity — enough to support every graduate student at UCLA 14 times over.
In encouraging military competition on the world stage, RIMPAC inflates militarism and aggression in the Global South.
The Israel Occupation Forces (IOF) independently conducted counterterrorism training with the Philippine National Police, intending to address terror attacks by ISIS-Philippines. Concurrently, the Philippines purchased Israeli-manufactured rifles, handguns, and various anti-tank weapons valued at a total of $21 million in one year.
Police and militias directed Israeli arms and strategies at impoverished neighborhoods, brutalizing the country’s most vulnerable during former President Rodrigo Duterte’s murderous drug war. According to the Human Rights Watch, at least 12,000 Pilipinos — children among them — were executed without trial during his presidency.
Making nearly half of all purchases, the Asia-Pacific region was the largest buyer of Israeli weapons and warfare technology in 2023, according to Israel’s Defense Ministry. Between 2000 and 2010, Israel exported $10 billion worth of military hardware to India, including surveillance and combat drones, fighter jet upgrades, and missiles. Israel transferred an additional $2.9 billion in equipment in the last decade.
Relations between India and China are tense due to disputes about the Himalayan border. By facilitating India’s increased militarization, Israel destabilizes border diplomacy and may provoke Indian action against China. The outcome could prove disastrous: India and China are not only major trading partners but nuclear powers.
The U.S. made a free trade agreement with Israel in 1985 and is now its largest trading partner. Israel’s sphere of influence extends to the islands of Occupied Hawaiʻi. In 2022, their ties deepened with a “strategic partnership” agreement between their governments to “foster economic cooperation, facilitate joint industrial research and development, and enhance business relationships, research, and educational opportunities.”
Trade between Hawaiʻi and Israel totaled over $10 million in 2020, although Hawaiian exports to Israel decreased by 92% in the last year. The joint declaration nonetheless reflects Hawaiʻi’s dependence on global markets and limits of self-sufficiency. International trade represents 22% of jobs in Hawaiʻi, which proves an alarming figure on top of the almost 20% of jobs in its tourist industry — at least 40% of workers in Hawaiʻi rely on outside capital.
This comes as no surprise considering Hawaiʻi’s history of exploitative industrial plantations, created by an oligarchy of American businessmen who enforced abusive and stratifying labor practices to mass-cultivate sugarcane and fruit products.
Resistance to U.S. militarization and aggression
Close to a third of the U.S. Pacific Fleet embarked to Hawaiʻi from San Diego to participate in RIMPAC on June 29 and 30. At UCSD, the International Cancel RIMPAC Campaign hosted a summit and mobilization to demand an end to RIMPAC. Together with the Resist NATO campaign, protestors rallied under the banner of peace, solidarity, self-determination, and resistance to U.S. military aggression.
Resist US-Led War, BAYAN-USA, and the International Women’s Alliance (IWA) allied to assemble the campaign. Its coalition expanded to 70 organizations and over 8,000 individuals. Students, activists, and organizers from around the globe gathered during the weekend of resistance, including contingents from Filipinos for Palestine at UCLA and UCLA Divest. Anakbayan UCLA supported outreach efforts on campus by providing digestible information and calls to action.
Among the students who participated were Mikha (she/her), the External Vice President of Samahang Pilipino, and Miko Dinulos (he/him), the Kabalikat Kore Coordinator. Samahang Pilipino is one of nine UCLA Mother Organizations dedicated to uplifting Pilipinx student retention; Kabalikat Kore is the gender and sexuality component of Samahang Pilipino.
“A significant aspect of my identity that aligns with this campaign is my sexuality. I believe that being queer is inherently political, as our societal systems were not designed to accommodate the LGBTQ+ community,” said Dinulos. “It would be irresponsible to observe others suffering under the same government that persecutes these intersectional communities. This conviction drove me to join the mobilization efforts.”
Mikha drew from her heritage and lived experience when supporting Cancel RIMPAC: “Being a Pilipinx-American and knowing that U.S. imperialism has deeply affected my own family and continues to affect the Philippines till this day […] I recognize the impacts of occupation, militarism, colonialism, [and] imperialism, and because of it, I want to actively fight against these systems and major world powers that dominate.”
During 48 years of U.S. colonization, Pilipinos were mandated to enroll in ROTC programs at large colleges and universities; they were only made voluntary in 2002. Militarism is detrimentally entrenched in Filipino culture. As the U.S. expands to new military bases in the Philippines, decades since independence in 1946, militarism and imperialism further intertwine.
In a shared post, Cancel RIMPAC and Anakbayan at UCI discussed how President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. “would rather prioritize receiving military aid [from the U.S.] through the PERA Act to fund human rights violations” than “focus on the livelihoods of Filipino workers and peasants.”
The protest summit on June 29 featured speeches and workshops led by community leaders from the U.S., the Philippines, Pakistan, Canada, and Palestine. Musical performances by Uncle Liko and Aunty Laulani from the Ho’opae Pono Peace Project also raised awareness of injustice under RIMPAC and the U.S. Occupation of Hawaiʻi.
Dinulos highlighted the knowledge he gained from community presenters. “The Anakbayan workshop, for instance, shed light on the allocation of tax funds towards military expansion rather than towards essential social services such as infrastructure and housing for the un-housed.”
In the day following, more than 600 people marched to the San Diego Association of Governments office, Tuna Harbor Park, and the USS Missouri Memorial — all sites symbolic of unjust military authority and the normalization of it in civilian culture. Marchers carried colorful flags and banners that echoed sentiments of anti-U.S. militarism. Hundreds donned keffiyehs in solidarity with Palestine, many of whose home countries or families’ home countries are similarly oppressed by the U.S. war machine.
The organizers of Cancel RIMPAC continued to rally their coalition to protest RIMPAC in Oahu and Maui through July. They have also encouraged those who participated in Cancel RIMPAC 2024 to support mutual aid initiatives and help families seeking to flee Gaza.
“One of the biggest takeaways from the weekend was that the people united will never be defeated and that all of our struggles are interconnected,” said Mikha.
“This fight to get the U.S. out of different regions and countries will not be one that happens overnight. We, as the people affected by it, have to come together because we are stronger that way. There is a reason why institutions like UCLA pit different communities against each other — the power of the people is greater than that of the oppressors!”
Credits:
Author: Ariana Castro (She/Her)
Photographer: Samahang Pilipino
Copy Editor: JQ Shearin (They/Them)