US is using Rimpac to woo Asean and counter its move towards China, but will it work?
Mark J. Valencia says the Rim of the Pacific Exercise from which China was excluded this year is no floating cocktail party but a display of US soft power
The Rim of the Pacific Exercise (Rimpac) is the world’s largest multilateral military maritime exercise. It is held every two years and is hosted and administered by the US Navy’s Pacific Fleet.
According to the US Indo-Pacific Command, Rimpac “seeks to enhance interoperability between Pacific Rim armed forces, ostensibly as a means of promoting stability in the region to the benefit of all participating nations”.
This sounds rather innocuous. But the reality is that Rimpac is a significant soft power tool in the US military arsenal and is viewed as such by potential adversaries.
Rimpac was created in, and is a creature of, the cold war. The first exercises, in 1971, involved forces from US allies Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK – and they implicitly targeted the Soviet Union.