ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the concept of the 'failed state' and explains the interventionist policies adopted by the regional powers. It explores that external factors are as important as internal ones in the history of state formation and state failure in Oceania. Pacific states now face a radically different international environment than that which facilitated their emergence to independent statehood. The idea of the 'failed state' is relatively new. It first emerged to describe the major human rights and humanitarian disasters of the 1990s in places like Somalia, Haiti, Cambodia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. The notion of the 'failed state' is hardly a neutral one, and comes to the Pacific attached to specific ideas about causes, consequences, and possible remedies. The idea of the state is relatively new to the Pacific. The most important variables in the success or otherwise of state-building activities in the Pacific are historical and cultural, rather than technical or economic.