ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the involvement in the islands of the greater Pacific rim powers, including Australia and New Zealand, and reactions by Pacific Islands states. The US use of the Pacific for nuclear ships and weapons engendered diplomatic tension with other Pacific islands in the 1980s, especially Palau. Elsewhere in the Pacific the US was opposing a push by island states for a nuclear free Pacific. Even the wealthiest Pacific state, Nauru, was feeling the effects of declining phosphate production, which was due to die out in 1995. The greater violence in the Pacific Islands in the 1980s was the result principally of the continuation and the legacy of Euro-American imperialism in the Pacific. The US demand for free passage of nuclear ships caused diplomatic conflict with New Zealand, where there was also an outbreak of violence caused by the presence there of a ship representing wider world opposition to French nuclear testing.
