Plugin org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-compiler-plugin or one of its dependencies could not be resolved

Have you tried to remove the proxy username and password? A similar poster encountered that issue:

Could not calculate build plan: Plugin org.apache.maven.plugins:maven-jar-plugin:2.3.2 or one of its dependencies could not be resolved

Failing that I found the following worked:

1. Delete project in Eclipse (but do not delete the contents on disk)
2. Delete all files in your Maven repository
3. Re-download all Maven dependencies:

mvn dependency:resolve

4. Start up Eclipse
5. Ensure that Eclipse is configured to use your external Maven installation (Window->Preferences->Maven->Installations)
6. Re-import the existing project(s) into Eclipse
7. Ensure that there are no Maven Eclipse plugin errors on the final screen of the project import

You only need to delete one folder it is throwing error for. Just go to your M2 repo and org/apache/maven/plugins/maven-compiler-plugins and delete the folder 2.3.2

I was getting this problem when using IBM RSA 9.6.1 when building a brand new development machine. The problem for me ended up being because of HTTPS on the Global Maven repository. My solution was to create a Maven settings.xml that forced it to use HTTP.

The key to me was that the central repository was empty when I exploded it under Maven Repositories -- > Global Repositories

Using the following settings file worked for me:

<settings>
  <activeProfiles>
    <!--make the profile active all the time -->
    <activeProfile>insecurecentral</activeProfile>
  </activeProfiles>
  <profiles>
    <profile>
      <id>insecurecentral</id>
      <!--Override the repository (and pluginRepository) "central" from the Maven Super POM -->
      <repositories>
        <repository>
          <id>central</id>
          <url>http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
          <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
          </releases>
        </repository>
      </repositories>
      <pluginRepositories>
        <pluginRepository>
          <id>central</id>
          <url>http://repo.maven.apache.org/maven2</url>
          <releases>
            <enabled>true</enabled>
          </releases>
        </pluginRepository>
      </pluginRepositories>
    </profile>
  </profiles>
</settings>

I got the idea from this stackoverflow question.