The Pacific Basin Since 1945: A History of the Foreign Relations of the Asian, Australasian, and American Rim States and the Pacific Islands

This ambitious study is the first to link together in a single integrated account the postwar interrelationships of all the rim nations of the Pacific Basin - in East and Southeast Asia, Australia, North and South America and the Pacific Islands. Pioneering and timely, it appears at a time when the focus of American foreign policy is increasingly turning westward, and Eastern Asia and the Pacific are becoming the centre of world attention politically and economically.
It weaves together many themes of more than regional significance. These include the creation of Japan's new economic order in the Pacific Basin; the United States' crusades against communism, real and imagined, in Asia and Latin America; nationalist struggles for independence from colonial rule; the shifting patterns of conflict and cooperation between the rim states themselves; and historical developments in the Pacific islands, a subject too often neglected by international political commentators.
The book is a synthesis of a wide range of books and articles (particularly the most recent research); of published and unpublished primary sources; and of the first-hand experiences of participants, including those of the author, in Pacific Basin affairs.