The South Pacific Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone

Abstract

T HE WORLD NOW HAS a second treaty requiring military denuclearization of an inhabited area in perpetuity, the Treaty of Rarotonga.' The pact was signed on August 6, 1985, the fortieth anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing, by eight of the fourteen members of the South Pacific Forum at a conference held in the capital of the Cook Islands. The new treaty partially reflects, but also in some respect differs from, the Treaty of Tlatelolco providing for a nuclear-weapon-free zone (NWFZ) for Latin America and the Caribbean. For the independent South Pacific nations, which were already free of nuclear weapons before the treaty emerged, the Rarotonga pact is a step onto the global anti-nuclear stage. The peace movement has welcomed the agreement as a conservative precursor of a further spread of nuclear pacifism. The South Pacific NWFZ will be incomplete unless and until the nuclear-weapon states (NWS) accept the Rarotonga Protocols. Since the 1970s, the NWS have shown varying degrees of interest in a South Pacific NWFZ. South Pacific Forum delegations visited the capitals of the NWS in early 1986 to explain the Rarotonga Treaty and invite comments on its protocols. Ratified protocols would assure that China, France, the U.S.S.R. and the United States would abstain from any action violating treaty norms, and that the NWS would not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against Rarotonga parties. What are the leading provisions of the new pact and how do they compare to the Latin American model? How did regional actors, especially Australia and New Zealand, bring about the Rarotonga Treaty? Do the South Pacific states, large and small, agree among