The Commonwealth of Northern Mariana Islands’ (CNMI) economic struggles are not just a local issue, but a matter of strategic importance to American operations in the Indo-Pacific, say senior US military leaders.

In a letter, dated 25 February 2026, Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of United States Indo-Pacific Command, said he shared concerns raised by CNMI leaders about worsening economic conditions and their broader implications.

“The security and stability of the CNMI are of vital strategic importance,” Paparo wrote, warning that the islands’ civilian infrastructure and community wellbeing were “inextricably linked” to the US military’s ability to operate in the region.

He said he had directed staff to analyse proposals put forward by CNMI officials, but noted the requested federal actions fall outside his authority.

Paparo said he would elevate the issues to agencies including State, Commerce, Transportation and Homeland Security.

Paparo also backed calls for direct engagement with the White House, saying he supported “an executive-level dialogue with the Administration” and was prepared to take part.

“We are committed to the security and prosperity of the CNMI,” he said.

Expanding US presence
At the same time, military officials say an expanding US presence across the Marianas could provide longer-term economic opportunities — though not an immediate fix.

Speaking at a Saipan Chamber of Commerce forum on March 11, Rear-Admiral Brett Meitus of Joint Region Marianas said more than US$500 million in projects were underway, with additional development planned, particularly on Tinian.

“It’s going to happen over the course of several years . . .  we just don’t have the capacity to do it all at once,” he said.

Meitus said the military was trying to move beyond a short-term construction surge toward a longer cycle of “build, sustain, and operate,” aimed at creating ongoing economic activity.

“Just as important is how we sustain it . . .  making sure that what we build looks like it should a year, two years, five years, ten years from now,” he said.

He said future operations-including exercises and deployments-are expected to bring spending into the local economy as visiting personnel stay in hotels and patronise businesses.

“When forces come in . . .  they can spend money on the local economy,” he said.

Potential benefits
Meitus also pointed to potential benefits including expanded land leases, increased exercises, more port visits and service member tourism, while acknowledging that coordination across different military branches is still evolving.

“We’re working hard to get our arms around exactly how we want to do it,” he said.

He added that the goal is to move from a project-driven boost to more sustained participation by local businesses, though he acknowledged it would not fully address the CNMI’s economic challenges.

Both leaders emphasised the need for continued engagement with federal partners, framing the CNMI’s economic outlook as closely tied to US strategic interests in the Indo-Pacific.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

Two New Zealand companies were condemned at a pro-Palestinian rally in Auckland today  for their alleged complicity in Israel-US military industrial complex roles linked to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The rally in Auckland’s Te Komititanga Square was themed “NZ has blood on its hands” and speakers heavily criticised the conduct of Rocket Lab and Rakon with their alleged “opaque” link to IDF targeting during the more than two-year war on the besieged enclave.

Although a ceasefire was declared last October 10, critics have condemned Israel for repeatedly violating the truce, killing at least a further 463 Palestinians out of the total of more than 71,000, mainly women and children.

The rally was organised by the Palestine Solidarity Network of Aotearoa (PSNA) in the 120th week of demonstrations and focused discussion on New Zealand’s complicity.

“I don’t want to ruin your day,” began PSNA organising committee member Brendan Corbett, “but as we gather here there is another group of people in a quiet Mt Wellington street staring at computer screens in the mission control office of a US Department of War contractor, Rocket Lab.”

He said they were launching spy satellites for Blacksky that ultimately fed data to Palantir, the notorious company that supplies AI-powered data, then to the IDF for the “targeted killing of Palestinians”.

“The US Department of War loves Rocket Lab so much they they have given them a US$2.4 billion contract shared with another American company to convert the rocket that they build at Warkworth into a hypersonic, 700 kg payload, missile.

“Rocket Lab have got the gall to call their rocket the ‘Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbited Test Electron’.

A first launch this year of the Electron due on Thursday was delayed by high winds.

“How the hell have we got to this stage that the US Department of War is active at this level in our community?” Corbett asked.

From ‘link to chain’
He said Rocket Lab had gone from being a “link in the Gaza kill chain” to now “being the chain”.

Corbett told the crowd to “go back a bit” — to 2006 — for background.

Rocket Lab was the product of some “clever New Zealand rocket tech enthusiasts” who had an idea for a cheap, small rocket delivery service taking satellites into orbit.

The company was “commercialised” and then sold to American interests.

“By reassuring sceptical iwi that Rocket Lab would never carry military payloads they got approval for a launch facility in Māhia, near Gisborne, and a tracking facility on Rēkohu, Chatham Island.

“Fast forward 20 years to April 2025, Peter Beck, the founder and major shareholder in Rocket Lab announced: ‘It’s an honour to be selected by the American Space Systems Command to partner in delivering the Victus Haze mission and demonstrate the kind of advanced technically responsive capabilities critical to evolving national security needs.’”

Victus Haze is an American military research programme experimenting with hypersonic space vehicles.

War in space?
The United States has been assessing New Zealand capability to help with rapid rocket and satellite launches if “war breaks out in space”.

After outlining Rocket Lab’s activities, including its production plant in Warkworth, Corbett said: “You get the picture. Rocket Lab has fully embedded itself in the US Department of War . . . and their share price is rocketing up.”

“War is still one hell of a racket.”

Corbett concluded by saying: “This open disregard that Rocket Lab has for the people of New Zealand, dragging us into complicity with genocide must be challenged and confronted.”

in a speech by Christchurch peace activist Will Alexander, read out by PSNA’s Leeann Wahanui-Peters, another company, world-leading technology outfit Rakon, and its “unsettling path its products may be taking” was criticised.

Rakon manufactures crystal oscillators as dual-use components — “the same technology that guides a civilian drone to capture a beautiful landscape can guide an Israeli drone to a journalist’s tent.”

Alexander referred to a statement from Rakon in May 2024: “Rakon does not design or manufacture weapons. We do not supply products to Israel for weapons, and we are not aware of our products being incorporated into weapons which are provided to Israel.”

He responded: “I am not alleging that Rakon ships directly to the Israeli military.”

Compelling scenario
However, his speech spelt out a compelling scenario of how a supply chain was “more opaque, and that is by design.”

His argument was that in Auckland “we have a company producing a critical component” that was likely to “enable airstrikes that have killed tens of thousands of Palestinians including journalists, destroyed hospitals, universities, and homes, and caused famine”.

Alexander said that while Rakon operated within the law, the situation posed a “profound ethical question”.

“As New Zealanders, we have a proud history of standing for peace, for nuclear-free principles, and for international law. We rightly feel horror when we see the mass killing in Gaza.

“But are we comfortable knowing that a critical piece of that war machine, however small and unseen, might have a ‘Made in New Zealand’ signature etched into its circuitry?”

Israel is on trial with the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “plausible genocide” on a case brought by South Africa and supported by more than 30 countries and international organisations.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant are wanted on International Criminal Court (ICC) warrants for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz

ANALYSIS: By Robert Inlakesh

Passing with 13 votes in favour and none in defiance, the new UN Security Council (UNSC) resolution has given the United States a mandate to create what it calls an “International Stabilisation Force” (ISF) and “Board of Peace” committee to seize power in Gaza.

US President Donald Trump has hailed the resolution as historic, as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government has stood in opposition to an element of the resolution that mentions “Palestinian Statehood”.

In order to understand what has just occurred, it requires a breakdown of the resolution itself and the broader context surrounding the ceasefire deal.

When these elements are combined, it becomes clear that this resolution is perhaps one of the most shameful to have passed in the history of the United Nations, casting shame on it and undermining the very basis on which it was formed to begin with.

An illegal regime change resolution
In September 2025, a United Nations commission of inquiry found Israel to have committed the crime of genocide in the Gaza Strip.

For further context, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the most powerful international legal entity and organ of the UN, ruled that Israel is plausibly committing genocide and thus issued orders for Tel Aviv to end specific violations of international law in Gaza, which were subsequently ignored.

Taking this into consideration, the UN itself cannot claim ignorance of the conditions suffered by the people of Gaza, nor could it credibly posit that the United States is a neutral actor capable of enforcing a balanced resolution of what its own experts have found to be a genocide.

This resolution itself is not a peace plan and robs Palestinians of their autonomy entirely; thus, it is anti-democratic in its nature.

It was also passed due in large part to threats from the United States against both Russia and China, that if they vetoed it, the ceasefire would end and the genocide would resume. Therefore, both Beijing and Moscow abstained from the vote, despite the Russian counterproposal and initial opposition to the resolution.

It also gives a green light to what the US calls a “Board of Peace”, which will work to preside over governing Gaza during the ceasefire period. The head of this board is none other than US President Trump himself, who says he will be joined by other world leaders.

Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who launched the illegal invasion of Iraq, has been floated as a potential “Board of Peace” leader also.

Vowed a ‘Gaza Riviera’
On February 4 of this year, President Trump vowed to “take over” and “own” the Gaza Strip. The American President later sought to impose a plan for a new Gaza, which he even called the “Gaza Riviera”, which was drawn up by Zionist economist Joseph Pelzman.

Part of Pelzman’s recommendations to Trump was that “you have to destroy the whole place, restart from scratch”.

As it became clear that the US alone could not justify an invasion force and simply take over Gaza by force, on behalf of Israel, in order to build “Trump Gaza”, a casino beach land for fellow Jeffrey Epstein-connected billionaires, a new answer was desperately sought.

Then came a range of meetings between Trump administration officials and regional leaderships, aimed at working out a strategy to achieve their desired goals in Gaza.

After the ceasefire was violated in March by the Israelis, leading to the mass murder of around 17,000 more Palestinians, a number of schemes were being hatched and proposals set forth.

The US backed and helped to create the now-defunct so-called “Gaza Humanitarian Foundation” (GHF) programme, which was used to privatise the distribution of aid in the territory amidst a total blockade of all food for three months.

Starving Palestinians, who were rapidly falling into famine, flocked to these GHF sites, where they were fired upon by US private military contractors and Israeli occupation forces, murdering more than 1000 civilians.

The ‘New York Declaration’
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and France were busy putting together what would become the “New York Declaration” proposal for ending the war and bringing Western nations to recognise the State of Palestine at the UN.

Suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere, here came Trump’s so-called “peace plan” that was announced at the White House in October. This plan appeared at first to be calling for a total end to the war, a mutual prisoner exchange and the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza in a phased approach.

From the outset, Trump’s “20-point plan” was vague and impractical. Israel immediately violated the ceasefire from the very first day and has murdered nearly 300 Palestinians since then. The first phase of the ceasefire deal was supposed to end quickly, ideally within five days, but the deal has stalled for over a month.

Throughout this time, it has become increasingly clear that the Israelis are not going to respect the “Yellow Line” separation zone and have violated the agreement through operating deeper into Gaza than they had originally agreed to.

The Israeli-occupied zone was supposed to be 53 percent of Gaza; it has turned out to be closer to 58 percent. Aid is also not entering at a sufficient rate, despite US and Israeli denials; this has been confirmed by leading rights groups and humanitarian organisations.

In the background, the US team dealing with the ceasefire deal that is headed by Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff has been juggling countless insidious proposals for the future of Gaza.

Even publicly stating that reconstruction will only take place in the Israeli-controlled portion of the territory, also floating the idea that aid points will be set up there in order to force the population out of the territory under de facto Hamas control. This has often been referred to as the “new Gaza plan”.

The disastrous GHF
As this has all been in the works, including discussions about bringing back the disastrous GHF, the Israelis have been working alongside four ISIS-linked collaborator death squads that it controls and who operate behind the Yellow Line in Gaza.

No mechanisms have been put in place to punish the Israelis for their daily violations of the ceasefire, including the continuation of demolition operations against Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. This appears to be directly in line with Joseph Pelzman’s plan earlier this year to “destroy the whole place”.

The UNSC resolution not only makes Donald Trump the effective leader of the new administrative force that will be imposed upon the Gaza Strip, but also greenlights what it calls its International Stabilisation Force. This ISF is explicitly stated to be a multinational military force that will be tasked with disarming Hamas and all Palestinian armed groups in the Gaza Strip.

The US claims it will not be directly involved in the fighting with “boots on the ground”; it has already deployed hundreds of soldiers and has been reportedly building a military facility, which they deny is a base, but for all intents and purposes will be one.

Although it may not be American soldiers killing and dying while battling Palestinian resistance groups, they will be in charge of this force.

This is not a “UN peacekeeping force” and is not an equivalent to UNIFIL in southern Lebanon; it is there to carry out the task of completing Israel’s war goal of defeating the Palestinian resistance through force.

In other words, foreign soldiers will be sent from around the world to die for Israel and taxpayers from those nations will be footing the bill.

‘Self-determination’ reservation
The only reason why Israel has reservations about this plan is because it included a statement claiming that if the Palestinian Authority (PA) — that does not control Gaza and is opposed by the majority of the Palestinian people — undergoes reforms that the West and Israel demand, then conditions “may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”.

A keyword here is “may”, in other words, it is not binding and was simply added in to give corrupted Arab leaderships the excuse to vote yes.

Hamas and every other Palestinian political party, with the exception of the mainstream branch of Fatah that answers to Israel and the US, have opposed this UNSC resolution.

Hamas even called upon Algeria to vote against it; instead, the Algerian leadership praised Donald Trump and voted in favour. Typical of Arab and Muslim-majority regimes that don’t represent the will of their people, they all fell in line and bent over backwards to please Washington.

It won’t likely work
As has been the story with every conspiracy hatched against the people of Gaza, this is again destined to fail. Not only will it fail, but it will likely backfire enormously and lead to desperate moves.

To begin with, the invasion force, or ISF, will be a military endeavour that will have to bring together tens of thousands of soldiers who speak different languages and have nothing in common, in order to somehow achieve victory where Israel failed.

It is a logistical nightmare to even think about.

How long would it take to deploy these soldiers? At the very least, it’s going to take months. Then, how long would this process take? Nobody has any clear answers here.

Also, what happens if Israel begins bombing again at any point, for example, if there is a clash that kills Israeli soldiers? What would these nations do if Israeli airstrikes killed their soldiers or put them in harm’s way?

Also, tens of thousands of soldiers may not cut it; if the goal is to destroy all the territory’s military infrastructure, they may need hundreds of thousands. Or if that isn’t an option, will they work alongside the Israeli military?

It is additionally clear that nobody knows where all the tunnels and fighters are; if Israel couldn’t find them, then how can anyone else?

After all, the US, UK, and various others have helped the Israelis with intelligence sharing and reconnaissance for more than two years to get these answers.

How do regimes justify this?
Finally, when Arab, European, or Southeast Asian soldiers return to their nations in body bags, how do their regimes justify this? Will the president or prime minister of these nations have to stand up and tell their people . . .  “sorry guys, your sons and daughters are now in coffins because Israel needed a military force capable of doing what they failed to do, so we had to help them complete their genocidal project”.

Also, how many Palestinian civilians are going to be slaughtered by these foreign invaders?

As for the plan to overthrow Hamas rule in Gaza, the people of the territory will not accept foreign invaders as their occupiers any more than they will accept Israelis. They are not going to accept ISIS-linked collaborators as any kind of security force either.

Already, the situation is chaotic inside Gaza, and that is while its own people, who are experienced and understand their conditions, are in control of managing security and some administrative issues; this includes both Hamas and others who are operating independently of it, but inside the territory under its de facto control.

Just as the Israeli military claimed it was going to occupy Gaza City, laying out countless plans to do this, to ethnically cleanse the territory and “crush Hamas”, the US has been coordinating alongside it throughout the entirety of the last two years. Every scheme has collapsed and ended in failure.

It has been nearly a month and a half, yet there are still no clear answers as to how this Trump “peace plan” is supposed to work and it is clear that the Israelis are coming up with new proposals on a daily basis.

There is no permanent mechanism for aid transfers, which the Israelis are blocking. There is no clear vision for governance.

‘Two Gazas’ plan incoherent
The “two Gazas” plan is not even part of the ceasefire or Trump plan, yet it is being pursued in an incoherent way. The ISF makes no sense and appears as poorly planned as the GHF.

Hamas and the other Palestinian factions will not give up their weapons. There is no real plan for reconstruction. The Israelis are adamant that there will be no Palestinian State and won’t allow any independent Palestinian rule of Gaza, and the list of problems goes on and on.

What it really looks like here is that this entire ceasefire scheme is a stab in the dark attempt to achieve Israel’s goals while also giving its forces a break and redirecting their focus on other fronts, understanding that there is no clear solution to the Gaza question for now.

The United Nations has shown itself over the past two years to be nothing more than a platform for political theatre. It is incapable of punishing, preventing, or even stopping the crime of all crimes.

Now that international law has suffocated to death under the rubble of Gaza, next to the thousands of children who still lie underneath it, the future of this conflict will transform.

This UNSC vote demonstrates that there is no international law, no international community, and that the UN is simply a bunch of fancy offices, which are only allowed to work under the confines of gangster rule.

If the Palestinian resistance groups feel as if their backs are against the wall and an opportunity, such as another Israeli war on Lebanon, presents them the opportunity, then there is a high likelihood that a major military decision will be made.

In the event that this occurs, it will be this UNSC resolution that is in large part responsible.

When the suffering in Gaza finally ends, whether that is because Israel obliterates all of its regional opposition and exterminates countless other civilians in its way, or Israel is militarily shattered, the UN should be disbanded as was the League of Nations. It is a failed project just as that which preceded it.

Something new must take over from it.

Article by AsiaPacificReport.nz