The failure to cancel RIMPAC or the slowness in doing so – whichever turns out to be the case – demands a reordering of our priorities to place healthcare before warfare. A call from the Australian government to our troops to “#StayAtHome” is long overdue.
At the time of writing, the US has not declared whether, amid coronavirus concerns, the RIMPAC military exercises will proceed in Hawaii in June and July as scheduled. Nor has Australian Defence Minister Linda Reynolds announced whether, if they do, Australia will take part. As whole countries virtually shut down, there has been a troubling slowness in grasping what was obvious weeks ago – that a gathering of tens of thousands of troops in the close confines in which Navy personnel sleep, eat and work would add further disaster to the current crisis.
RIMPAC (Rim of the Pacific) is the world’s largest international maritime warfare exercise and is held every two years in Hawaii, hosted primarily by the United States Navy‘s Indo-Pacific Command. In 2018, RIMPAC involved troops from 25 nations both near and distant, including, of course, Australia.
The people of Hawaii are rightly dismayed at the risk they would face from such a scenario. Governor of Hawaii David Ige has asked for RIMPAC to be postponed, and other people in Hawaii and elsewhere have called for the exercises to be cancelled. It is not just Navy personnel who are at risk but also the civilians who inevitably come into contact with them.
The recent experiences of other Pacific Islanders suggest that the health of local communities is not a US military priority. In March there was an outbreak of COVID on the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, with over 150 sailors diagnosed. Thousands of US sailors were moved into local hotels on the Pacific island of Guam rather than into the island’s US military bases. Journalist Nic Maclellan writes that the move angered many residents including indigenous Chamoru people, because local hotel staff are vulnerable to the infection. The island has only two civilian hospitals and very few ICU beds. Maclellan reports that the government of Guam had turned away the cruise ship MV Westerman in February, fearful of a spread of COVID from infected passengers, but Guam has no authority to block a US warship from its harbours.
It has been revealed also that in March and early April, 72 US troops were positive for coronavirus in testing done for US Forces Korea by a research institute in South Korea, with only numbers rather than names attached to the samples tested. The U.S. military eventually said on 6 April that the troops were not stationed on the Korean peninsula, but did not disclose where they actually were.
Pentagon orders prohibit US military bases and commanders from releasing numbers of personnel tested or quarantined for COVID, citing the standard smokescreen of “operational security” beloved of leaders there and elsewhere. Such stonewalling means that, if RIMPAC proceeds, local communities in Hawaii would not know which bases or units are hard-hit with the virus.
All this comes in the context of the UN Secretary-General’s call for a global ceasefire to enable responses to COVID. Quite apart from the public health imperative, the cancellation of military exercises could be a powerful step towards the de-escalation of tensions that is needed to address not only COVID but a host of other global problems. Perhaps it is that power of a good example of de-escalation that has troubled US military leaders and delayed any announcement about RIMPAC.
Even before COVID, community leaders in Hawaii have opposed RIMPAC, because of the bombardment of their land, the live-fire training, the unexploded ordnance that dots the landscape, the sinking of decommissioned ships that release toxic chemicals just offshore, the corroding fuel tanks that threaten aquifers, the destruction of cultural sites, and the suppression of Hawaiian sovereignty. Militarism leaves a heavy environmental and cultural footprint.
While reports emerging that RIMPAC might be postponed are extremely welcome, it is of concern that Australia has not taken an independent stand and declared our non-participation weeks ago when the scale of the medical risk, to the people of Hawaii and to our own troops, was known.
The failure to cancel RIMPAC or the slowness in doing so – whichever turns out to be the case – indicates a mindset that places our preparations for yet another war above virtually everything else, including healthcare. Despite regular military exercises, Australia has not had a large-scale national pandemic exercise since 2008.
A re-ordering of our priorities is needed. Health threats demand far more of our attention, and destructive military exercises should receive much less. A call from the Australian government to our troops to “#StayAtHome” is long overdue.
Dr Sue Wareham OAM is President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia) and a board member in Australia of ICAN, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She is a former Canberra GP.
Dr Sue Wareham OAM has spoken and written widely on peace and disarmament issues, and is President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (Australia). She is a former Canberra GP. FB: @MAPWAustralia, T: @MAPW_Australia
Comments
7 responses to “SUE WAREHAM. Cancel RIMPAC and reorder our priorities”
Yes we should now recall all ADF deployments and preparation for RIMPAC that put us in harms way of COVID 19. Yes we take the medical advice. Yes we know when troops come home to families here after the exercises with a virus it spreads. If there is an “independent” enquiry into the global pandemic will we learn about US experience of cases in the US and elsewhere including the world military games in Wuhan ? Also we could review the existing facilities to wage biological warfare and who has ratified treaty bans on biological warfare. A start would be for Australia to support the WHO.
So many good reasons to cancel RIMPAC -thanks Sue for elucidating them so clearly.
Added to non-participation in RIMPAC, all ADF personnel should be brought home immediately from both Middle East and Afghanistan war zones, where Australia has blindly followed the United States military into battle. The United Nations Secretary- General has called for an immediate international ceasefire, but we have heard no response from the Australian Government.
And our Government should cancel the twelve submarines on order (which will be obsolete before they hit the water), and the 75 F35 jet-fighters, which we do not need for our defence. They are total lemons! As with so much military hardware, Australian purchases are designed for inter-operability with U.S. forces.
Re-deploying the hefty price tags attached to those two items would go a long way towards paying for the necessary COVID 19 measures which our Government has undertaken. Maybe a silver lining from this pandemic will be that the global community demands expenditure on health and welfare, rather than on weapons and warfare.
The human security of Hawaiians is sufficient reason in itself to cancel RIMPAC, as this excellent article demonstrates. It is unconscionable to put civilians at risk at this time.
Australia’s participation in future RIMPACs should be abandoned for sound reasons of national strategic policy.
Australian governments cannot discharge their obligations to protect the welfare and security of Australians by integrating the ADF so tightly with US forces, by making the key operational characteristic interoperability with US forces, without giving up the strategic independence to decide freely when and if a conflict is in Australia’s interests.
Australian lives and way of life should not be in the hands of a foreign government.
Excellent article on an area that the popular media are very reluctant to cover.
Great article from Sue.
Modern Australia should aim at becoming an independent peace maker in Asia Pacific region. That role is long overdue. We have skill and talent people in our political leadership.
We should stop blindly following USA to any war in future and keep our military at home for defence only.
Peace is best achieved without being involved in wars.
So much money can be saved for healthcare and education etc.
So many excellent reasons to cancel yet another US organised war exercise such as RIMPAC. For normal countries, any one of those many reasons stated will probably suffice for their cancellation. Rightly so.
But this is Australia, the US lapdog. You can be assured that if it is cancelled as it should be, we’ll be the very last to pull the plug, always keen to continue to carry the US bags into battles, real or simulated, while at the same time making China aware of our close ties with the world’s #1 hegemonic criminal.
With our ridiculous $70 billion submarines due in 12 years time, China is probably already scared to death.
So let us have a serious international pandemic exercise instead, choosing an overall Commander from any country but the USA, now showing the world in full colour every day what a country should not do to prepare for such an event.
Healthcare before mindless warfare.
Many major changes caused by Covid-19 will become permanent practices or policies and hopefully a realignment of our allegiance from a megalomaniac in the US to an independent stance will be one of those changes. It is obvious our ‘defence’ spending is really ‘attack’ spending based on US strategic goals and we need it reshaped to concentrate on situations such as we are now in and firmly focussed on the Western Pacific/South East Asia. Meanwhile our strategic fuel supplies are at a dangerously low level (three weeks is all we have if refined imports are cut off) and Energy Minister Taylor is still negotiating with the US to apportion a segment of American fuel supplies which will sit in Texas. Oil is now $0.00 per barrel – great time to buy a big reserve but where will we store it – in Texas? Ya gotta be kidding Angus.