As geopolitical tensions boil, countries across the globe are shifting their attention and resources as the administration of President Donald Trump upends decades of traditional thinking on alliances, international law and how and where U.S. military force is used both at home and abroad.
This week, the Trump administration is ramping up calls for the U.S. to take possession of Greenland, while troops from the Alaska-based 11th Airborne Division have received orders to be ready to deploy to Minnesota, where federal authorities have been engaged in a massive immigration crackdown and faced down crowds of angry Twin Cities residents after an ICE agent fatally shot Minneapolis resident Renee Good.
But last week in Waikiki, senior military leaders, diplomats and defense contractors from around the world met in Waikiki for the now annual Honolulu Defense
Forum to talk about how they can cooperate in the Pacific as many of them see increasing challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.
Among them was Maj. Gen. Wolfgang Ohl, the German military’s Deputy Director General for Military Strategy and Operations. This wasn’t Ohl’s first time in Hawaii. He is an alumnus of the Daniel K. Inouye Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Waikiki, where he joined national security leaders from 30 other countries during a fellowship learning about challenges in the region.
“There (were) a number of participants from small
island countries like Palau, Marshall Islands and so on, so that was very interesting because we got to know their view into the region — starting with China and how they are being bullied and on to climate change — and what it means for them,” Ohl said of his time at APCSS. “It’s an amazing region, it’s very important for us as well. And to see their point of the world, that’s very helpful.”
The Pacific region is home to many of the world’s largest economies, and countries far beyond the region have deep trade ties and
interests as goods move back and forth over the sea across busy trade routes. Ohl said that these “things are connected together, you can’t separate them like, ‘okay, you do this business and we do that business.’ It’s all entwined.”
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During Ohl’s most recent visit to Hawaii, he and a delegation of German officers were meeting with top American military commanders and those from other countries in the region. In HDF’s opening keynote address, the top commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific Adm. Samuel Paparo told attendees that “alliances and partnerships are our strategic center of gravity.”
“China, as the rising power, as the ones who have great ambitions in order to become, well, the leading power in the world, we simply can’t ignore that,” said Ohl. “We know that China always tells everybody, ‘if only the Americans disappeared, it would be all nice and peaceful in the region,’ which, of course, is baloney.”
But the meetings between officials on Oahu took place in the shadow of seismic shifts in American policy around the world. Last year the White House released its new national security strategy, which calls for the U.S. to shift focus and resources to fight against drug cartels and crack down on immigrants, and to reconsider key alliances in both Europe and Asia.
HDF began just after Trump shocked the world with a military incursion into Venezuela that captured President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, which itself was preceded by an escalating campaign that included controversial lethal strikes on alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific and massive buildup of American forces in the region.
After the raid, senior White House staffer Stephen Miller told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the U.S. would no longer be constrained by international law and that “we live in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world since the beginning of time.”
To many many analysts, the administration’s approach to national security seems to break from years of largely bipartisan efforts for a “Pacific Pivot” that would shift American attention from the Middle East to Asia’s booming economies and critical trade routes and emphasizing relationships in an effort to counter China’s growing power and influence.
A particular focus for U.S. forces and their allies in the Pacific has been Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that Beijing regards as a rouge province. It’s a key manufacturer of semi-conductors that most electronic devices require to function.
An invasion or blockade of the island could upend global supply chains. In November, Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae told a parliamentary session in Tokyo that Chinese military force against Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation,” drawing rebukes from China.
Tensions have also been high in the South China Sea, a busy water way that more than a third of all global trade moves through. Beijing regards the entire waterway as its exclusive territory over the objections of neighboring countries and in defiance of a 2016 international court ruling.
American commanders in the Pacific have been working to shore up alliances. During a speech at HDF, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said “right now, we can see tensions that are on the brink of war across the globe.”
Before arriving in
Honolulu, Koizumi watched an international training exercise back in Japan that brought paratroopers from 14 countries, including the United States, Belgium, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and the United Kingdom. He argued that the challenges of “the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic are inseparable and indivisible.”
European countries have lately been sending small military deployments into the region, including sending specialists to countries around the region for joint training and exchanges. Several, including Germany and the Netherlands participated in the biennial Rim of the Pacific exercise in Hawaii for the first time in 2024.
Both Germany and Denmark recently dispatched military officers to Hawaii to serve as liaison officers to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command at Camp Smith. European countries have closely watched Russia and China’s deepening military ties, particularly as both look to move on new trade routes and resource deposits in the Arctic as the ice melts, and as Actic and Pacific interests converge.
China recently declared itself a “Near Arctic Nation” and has sought greater involvement. U.S. military commanders in Hawaii have also been looking north.
The U.S. Army recently reorganized most of its forces in Alaska — which fall under the command of U.S. Army Pacific at Fort Shafter — into the 11th Airborne Division. The division has trained to deploy rapidly to both tropical Pacific islands and to the frigid Arctic tundras.
To do so, soldiers from the division have trained extensively with allied troops in both Asia and Scandinavia, including the multinational exercise in Japan Koizumi touted at HDF. But over the weekend, news broke that the Army has given 1,500 troops from the division orders to potentially deploy instead to Minnesota to aid the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant crackdown as unrest grows in the Twin Cities.
Meanwhile Trump has renewed efforts to take control of Greenland, which is currently a territory of Denmark. The U.S. military already has access to the island and has maintained bases for decades, but the Trump administration has argued that if the U.S. doesn’t take full control of it to assert its arctic interests, China or Russia will.
Residents of the large island have sought independence from Denmark and elected pro-independence leaders, but polls indicate residents prefer Danish rule over being absorbed by the United States. Danish troops are currently conducting drills on the large island alongside several other NATO countries in solidarity. Trump has responded by slapping them with tariffs.
On Sunday Trump sent a text to Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, telling him “Considering your Country decided not to give me the Nobel Peace Prize for having stopped 8 Wars PLUS, I no longer feel an obligation to think purely of Peace, although it will always be predominant, but can now think about what is good and proper for the United States of America.” He concluded the text declaring “The World is not secure unless we have Complete and Total Control of Greenland.”
Ohl said that while he was in Honolulu, conversations with his military counterparts in the Pacific focused on standing by international law as tensions grip the region and Chinese forces clash with neighboring countries along critical trade routes. But he told the Star-Advertiser that “at the end of the day, we are convinced that the rules-based international order, international law, has to apply (everywhere). Otherwise, all of us are going to be, sooner or later, in deep trouble.”