Massive US-led naval exercises in Hawai'i and Pacific islands reflect over a century of colonial exploitation of the region

Since the last week in June, navies and naval assets from 29 countries have been taking part the world’s largest naval exercises. The US-led Rimpac 2024 (Exercise Rim of the Pacific), the 29th such exercise to be held since 1971, claims to promote “a free and open Indo-Pacific”. But many of the Indigenous peoples of this region, which covers more than 50% of the Earth’s surface, don’t see it that way at all.

In June, Protecting Oceania, a group of Indigenous Pacific, environmental, and social justice organisations, released a statement, saying:

We stand together, in order to fulfil our sacred duty to be good ancestors, and firmly oppose the militarization of our islands and oceans… These exercises threaten our sovereignties and our communities, human and other-than-human alike, here in Hawaiʻi, across Moananuiākea, and throughout the world.

Meanwhile, the Hawai‘i-based and international Cancel Rimpac campaign argues that the exercise does not provide the security it claims. Rather, it contributes to colonialism as well as environmental damage and gendered violence in the region.

The Royal Navy has been part of the exercises since their inception more than 50 years ago. Yet there is very little discussion of Rimpac in the UK. This is despite the extensive and long British colonial history in the Pacific and a renewed and increasing Indo-Pacific emphasis in UK foreign policy.

A sea of islands

In 1994, Tongan-Fijian writer Epeli Hau‘ofa described Oceania as “a sea of islands” connected by many generations of oceanic navigation, inter-island relationships and careful observation of environmental cycles. This challenged colonial perspectives of the Pacific as isolated “islands in a far sea” able to be exploited by foreign powers.

Although the US is now the dominant territorial and military presence in the Pacific, Britain, France and Germany have longer colonial histories in this ocean. Following Captain James Cook’s voyages in the late 18th century, the expansion of British imperialism into the Pacific extracted vast amounts of wealth from Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Fiji, Kiribati, Tuvalu, the Solomon Islands, Tonga and Vanuatu.

British imperialism also dispossessed Indigenous peoples and attempted to impose European culture. In Aotearoa New Zealand, the imposition of British colonial education fragmented Māori language and knowledge systems, something Māori movements have since worked hard to revitalise. In Banaba (an island in Kiribati) phosphate mining destroyed island ecosystems and displaced Indigenous Banabans.

Military testing ground

The US tested nuclear weapons in the Marshall Islands between 1946 and 1958. The British military tested hydrogen bombs in Australia, and on Malden Island and Kiritimati. These tests caused serious health issues among islanders, including birth defects and cancers, and long-term ecological harm.

Indigenous Pacific-led movements have long resisted military and nuclear imperialism in Moananuiākea (the vast ocean). After years of pressure by the Nuclear Free and Independent Pacific movement, the 1986 Treaty of Rarotonga established a South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone. This process raised important conversations about Indigenous self-determination in the Pacific.

Recently, the Indo-Pacific has become a focus yet again for western powers. In the UK, the 2023 Integrated Review Refresh sets out the objective of establishing “a permanent European maritime presence in the Indo-Pacific” in response to the “epoch-defining challenge” of China.

This followed the launch of Aukus by the UK, the US and Australia in 2021. This partnership aimed to “deepen diplomatic, security, and defense cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region”. This will involve arming Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, to be built by British companies BAE Systems and Rolls-Royce.

It is yet to be seen how the new Labour government will approach the Pacific. But in the UK and US’s shared rhetoric of a “free and open Indo-Pacific”, the concerns of Indigenous Pacific islanders are often downplayed. “Global security” and trade take precedence, it seems.

Little has changed since 1893, when a group of American businessmen backed by the US military overthrew the independent Hawaiian Kingdom. In 1941, the US military began to use the Hawaiian island of Kaho‘olawe as a bombing range after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, despite the fact that the island is of enormous cultural, spiritual and ecological significance to Native Hawaiians (Kānaka Maoli).

Pushing against Rimpac

By the mid 1970s, the growing Hawaiian sovereignty movement began to put pressure on the US to stop using Kaho‘olawe for military training exercises – including Rimpac.

The pressure finally bore fruit when, before Rimpac 1982, Australia and New Zealand agreed not to shell Kaho‘olawe. Japan followed suit in 1984. In 1986, UK MPs Jeremy Corbyn and Tam Dalyell brought the issue of the Royal Navy shelling Kaho‘olawe to parliament. In 1990 all bombing of Kaho‘olawe finally stopped. But it will be hard to repair the environmental damage done by the bombing.

This year, a coalition of Hawai‘i-based and international groups are resisting Rimpac again.

Community organisers Kawena‘ulaokalā Kapahua and Joy Lehuanani Enomoto argue that Rimpac contributes to ongoing Indigenous dispossession through military occupation of the islands and ecological harm to lands and waters. It’s also associated with increased sex trafficking and gendered violence that predominantly affect Kānaka Maoli women, girls, and gender nonconforming people.

This year, groups in Hawai‘i, the US, Aotearoa New Zealand, and Malaysia have condemned their nations’ participation in Rimpac alongside Israel at a time of intense violence against Palestinians in Gaza.

Framing Rimpac as an “exercise” – in other words, a simulation – the campaign argues, obscures its harmful material effects on communities and ecosystems in Hawaii and beyond.

Cancel Rimpac coalition members told us, they seek to build on the “legacy of past generations of Kanaka Maoli and Indigenous Pacific-led struggles for demilitarization and decolonization” and “thousands of years of Indigenous stewardship and cultural tradition throughout Pasifika”. In this “multi-generational, multi-racial” movement, they add, international solidarity is crucial. In this context, questions need to be asked about the UK’s ongoing participation in these naval exercises.

Kate Lewis Hood receives funding from the UKRI Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).