Anti-colonial call to cancel US RIMPAC naval exercises

Since the last week in June, navies and naval assets from 29 countries have been taking part in 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 organizations, released a statement, saying:

Meanwhile, the Hawaii-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