Naval war games hurt our oceans

Canada shouldn’t play along, says Tamara Lorincz.

Two Canadian warships, the HMCS Regina and the HMCS Winnipeg, departed at the beginning of this month for the Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC). It is the largest naval war game in the world and takes place around the Hawaiian Islands.

RIMPAC is a biennial, international maritime exercise led by the United States navy.

The navies of 25 nations participate and deploy approximately 50 surface ships, 200 aircraft, five submarines and 25,000 personnel. The U.S. is trying to enhance the war-fighting readiness and interoperability of its allies.

Canada has participated in this military exercise since its inception in 1971. This year, the Royal Canadian Navy has sent two frigates with 500 sailors and Cyclone helicopters from the Esquimalt dockyard in B.C. to Hawaii.

During RIMPAC, the navies jointly conduct at-sea live-fire testing, ship-sinking, submarine warfare and amphibious assault. The exercise also includes air force training, precision bombing and urban warfare practice. It is a massive show of force by Western navies in the Pacific Region.

The multinational exercise is typically held for six weeks from June to August. However, due to the pandemic this year, RIMPAC is scaled down to a two-week period from Aug. 17 to 31 and will be modified to at-sea training only, though support staff will be stationed at the Pearl Harbor naval base.

With our oceans in peril and the pandemic raging, RIMPAC should be permanently cancelled. For five decades, Hawaiians have protested this large naval exercise, citing adverse environmental and social impacts.

During the exercise, the intense underwater noise from the naval sonar, sonic booms and explosive torpedoes severely harm aquatic mammals. The U.S. Navy’s own research shows that high-intensity, mid-frequency active sonar causes hearing loss and hemorrhaging in dolphins and whales.

American and British research finds that naval activity is a probable cause of many mass stranding events where whales beach themselves and die. During the 2004 RIMPAC exercise, about 150 deepwater, melon-headed whales crowded into the shallow Hanalei Bay to escape the naval activity.

Many Hawaiians are also rightly concerned about the influx of foreign soldiers during a global pandemic. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, the navy has the highest rate of COVID-19 infections among all military branches. At least 26 U.S. navy ships have had coronavirus outbreaks.

Moreover, RIMPAC is a male-dominated exercise that has had terrible impacts on women and girls. The Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women found a dramatic increase in prostitution and sex-trafficking to meet the demand for sex from military during the exercise.

In 2014, the Canadian navy had to recall the HMCS Whitehorse for sexual misconduct and drunkenness during RIMPAC. In her book Refuge on the Black Deck, Nicola Peffers, who served as an ordinary seaman on board the HMCS Winnipeg, described the constant sexual harassment she and others suffered in the navy.

To sustain naval warfare readiness, Ottawa is spending $70 billion on 15 fossil-fuel-powered surface combatants to be built at the Irving Shipyard in Halifax. It’s the most expensive procurement in Canadian history, but the marine and climate impacts are overlooked.

War games such as RIMPAC add to the cumulative stress in the marine environment. Our oceans are warming, acidifying and losing oxygen because of human-induced climate change. There are now more than 500 dead zones and a mass extinction of marine life across oceans.

The Hawaii-based Cancel RIMPAC Coalition argues that the exercise is a serious threat to the marine environment and to peace in the Pacific. The coalition, which includes the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace, is calling for RIMPAC’s cancellation and the demilitarization of the ocean.

Canada and 167 countries have ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea that provides a mechanism for resolving any maritime dispute peacefully without the need for frigates and armed force.

The Canadian government should withdraw its participation in RIMPAC and its planned investment in new warships. Canada should instead work with other countries on a blue recovery to protect our ailing oceans, because they are critical to our continued survival. Tamara Lorincz is a PhD candidate, Balsillie School of International Affairs, Wilfrid Laurier University, and a member of the Canadian Voice of Women for Peace. She is based in Waterloo.