Remarks at the (lively) protest against Aotearoa’s participation RIMPAC, the Pacific Rim war games – the world’s largest naval war games, absurdly including Israel.
We’re not playing games with Donald Trump and the IDF – especially not war games.
War games are more than the kinetic games of soldiers. They are an exercise in
inevitability. They ensure that our weapons systems and our assumptions are
interoperable with America’s. Think of RIMPAC as a trade show for American imperialism.
Well, we don’t buy in. We do not share the assumptions of empire. We will not budget for the next illegal war of aggression. The slaughter of civilians with American weapons that poison the earth is a crime, not a game. And we refuse to play nicely with the genocidaires of the Israeli military.
War games don’t just train soldiers; they train us. They condition us to believe that we must make our way through this world with guns drawn. They regard the military as our first resort. They foreclose on all the other collective responses to our world, even as they snatch away the budget to do things differently.
RIMPAC assumes military threat – but who poses the real threat in our world? This year, Canada war-gamed an American invasion. The Canadian defence forces concluded that Canada should not respond militarily, given its population and geography. They concluded that Canada would fall back on the same kind of citizen resistance as the Taliban or Hamas.
It is past time to ask whether an American-style military makes sense for Aotearoa. To spend as we spend on a conventional fighting force is a choice, not an inevitability. It’s a choice of method, rather than drawing on other values to shape our place in the world. And we make that choice at the expense of urgent needs like decent housing, nutritious food for every school lunch, real social services. When we follow the old colonial club, we shunt life and planet and justice aside.
The officers in that building (Defence House) will tell you this is naive. Do they think that America’s military doctrine is profound: bomb and lose, bomb and lose. And when that fails, as it is failing against Iran right now? Trump’s offsider lectured us a couple of weeks ago: even as American empire falters, we’re told to buy more of it. Do the people in that building really believe that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth are making the world a safer place?
We will not be trained to fishtail after Trump’s aging needs for muscular validation. We will not play at business as usual with Netanyahu’s endless war. They are selling death and subjugation and poison. Why would we hitch our beautiful Pacific waka to such deadwood? Surely, surely the time has come to mark out our own path, to heal this life and the planet on which our survival depends.
Step 1 – NZ out of RIMPAC! Step 2 – vote this government out of office!
We will not be followers into war; let us be leaders into peace.
June 23, 2026, on the lawn between parliament and Defence House.
Sh'ma Koleinu - Alternative Jewish Voices (NZ) 