At the recently completed Exercise Rim of the Pacific in Hawaii, the world’s largest recurring naval exercise, Latin American sailors and marines played a prominent role in the training.
For the first time a Chilean navy officer — Commodore Alberto Guerrero — served as deputy commander of the international RIMPAC Task Force. Chile first participated in RIMPAC in 1996 and has continued to play a prominent role in the exercise. Personnel from Mexico, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and — for the first time — Brazil also participated this year.
“For Chile, RIMPAC is an investment,” Guerrero said Thursday at the Indo-Pacific Maritime Security Exchange, an annual event hosted by the Navy League of Honolulu, as RIMPAC was wrapping up. “The Indo-Pacific matters for the entire world. … There’s not a single nation that is able on its own to ensure safety for everyone. It has to be a common effort.”
Chile has the longest coastline of any country in South America, bordered on one side by ocean and on the other by tall mountains. Lt. j.g. Enrique Niemann, a young officer assigned to the Chilean navy frigate the CNS Almirante Condell, said that means the ocean plays a central role in the lives of Chilean people.
“Forty-three hundred kilometers of coastline and that’s all our country is (besides) a couple of islands, some presence in the Antarctica, and that’s our country,” said Niemann. “If you live in Chile, you live close to the ocean, and it’s something that you always see.”
Niemann comes from a family with a history of naval service. His voyage to participate in RIMPAC was his first overseas adventure in uniform, sailing first to San Diego and then joining ships from across the world as they sailed together to Hawaii.
“I really like how dynamic this work is. It’s not related at all to a desk job, and it’s always something new and always a new challenge,” Niemann said. From his perspective his country’s participation in RIMPAC is vital because “it is important for us to participate and to maintain bonds within the U.S. Navy and the other navies that, of course, are part of the rim of the Pacific, which is the only place that our country has land on.”
For many American policymakers and leaders in Washington, D.C., and Hawaii, conversations about the Pacific tend to focus on the Western Pacific as the United States and China compete for influence and power along key trade routes. But for those that actually work out in the Pacific Ocean itself, the picture is more complicated.
Vice Adm. John Wade — best known in Hawaii as leader of the task force that removed fuel from the Navy’s underground Red Hill facility — recently returned to San Diego as commander of the Navy’s 3rd Fleet, where he has command of vessels and aircraft based in California, Washington state and Hawaii and has an area of responsibility that includes portions of both the Eastern and Northern Pacific.
“We have so many South American, Latin American participants here, who want to participate, show their shared interests and the importance of a free and open Pacific that helps them achieve their main goal of economic prosperity for their citizens,” said Wade. “While we do focus on the Western Pacific, and you see in the news some of the challenges with respect to sovereignty recently in the South China Sea and other items, (Latin American countries) have concerns, too. There’s illegal fishing, there’s environmental concerns.”
In the summer of 2020, a massive fleet of more than 300 Chinese-flagged fishing vessels was spotted illegally fishing in Ecuador’s Galapagos Marine Reserve, leading to a standoff between Ecuadorian security services and the Chinese fleet. The boats within the fleet made numerous transfers to massive industrial freezer vessels known as reefers that can haul seafood in bulk back to ports in Asia.
After taking what it wanted from the Galapagos, the fishing boats continued heavy fishing — as well as dumping plastic and other waste from their vessels — up and down South America’s Pacific coastline. Ecuadorian, Chilean, Peruvian and Colombian ships monitored and even occasionally fired warning shots at the Chinese vessels. The four countries have since increased cooperation at sea.
In 2022 Ecuador participated for the first time in RIMPAC, marking the first year every country along South America’s Pacific Coast participated in the exercise, and in September the U.S. and Ecuador signed an agreement to strengthen cooperation on fighting illegal fishing and drug smuggling at sea.
This year as RIMPAC was kicking off in Hawaii, six Ecuadorian ships were also taking part in separate training exercises near the Galapagos dubbed GALAPEX, which lasted from June 23 to July 9.
They were joined by vessels from the Colombian, Peruvian and U.S. navies and personnel from Canada, South Korea, Italy and Spain in drills that simulated operations to intercept and board boats engaged in illegal fishing.
“The problem is that the number of foreign fishing vessels reaches a point where they begin to plunder ecosystems,” Ecuadorian navy Capt. Guillermo Miranda told Reuters. “When they fish they affect really migratory species, which in many cases are part of the Galapagos marine ecosystem. It’s a pretty serious problem, not just for Ecuador.”
Niemann, who is at the beginning of his military career, said he hoped his experience at RIMPAC will help him later in international missions, saying, “When you’re not junior grade anymore and you become captain or admiral in the future, with bonds already made. So that makes things a lot easier.”
While South America’s Pacific countries have stepped up efforts to curb illegal fishing by vessels from Asia, they continue to welcome merchant vessels from Asia to trade. Trade with Asia, and particularly China, continues to be seen as vital to their economies.
But tensions have lately ratcheted up in the South China Sea, a critical waterway where one-third of all international trade moves through. Territorial and navigational disputes have led to increasing militarization of the sea.
China claims nearly the entire sea as its own sovereign territory, against the objections of many of its neighbors. The Chinese military has built bases on disputed islands and reefs to assert its territorial claims and occasionally has harassed fishermen and commercial vessels from neighboring countries.
World leaders worry that the outbreak of conflict or establishment of military blockades in the region could upend the global economy.
As RIMPAC began this year, tensions between China and the Philippines seemed to be boiling over. The exercise began just after members of the Chinese coast guard rammed and boarded Philippine navy boats that were resupplying an outpost on a disputed shoal.
The Chinese coast guard members were armed with machetes, axes and clubs, and a Philippine navy sailor was badly wounded in the incident. But as RIMPAC neared its conclusion, Manila and Beijing reached a preliminary agreement to reduce tensions — but already disagree on what they pledged.
“Quite honestly, it’s in (Latin American countries’) interest for a stable and safe Indo-Pacific that allows the free flow of trade, because if there’s any potential crisis or conflict with their biggest trading partner, which happens to be China, that’s not good for them,” said Wade. “So everyone has an interest here. It’s for stability and peace and allowing diplomacy to help and to resolve issues.”
