HE recent article in the which revealed the secret agreements between US President Nixon and UK Prime Minister Edward Heath that determined Bermuda's role in America's Cold War nuclear strategy made for very interesting reading.

The whole question of whether the US bases in Bermuda would use nuclear weapons against Soviet submarines patrolling the seas near Bermuda in the event of a shooting war erupting between the US and the Soviet Union should have been a matter of great concern for Bermudians in the 1970s and '80s.

Obviously details of the classified pact between the US and the UK would never have been made public at that time but common sense should surely have suggested that the Americans would deploy submarine-killing nuclear depth bombs here in the event of the Cold War suddenly turning hot.

But in typical Bermudian fashion, we just tip-toed around the open secret that America probably did have plans to store nuclear weapons on its bases here, most likely the East End Naval Air Station. In fact, most Bermudians ? and most of their political leaders ? simply anaesthetised themselves to the likely consequences of hosting a major American military presence here if war broke out between the superpowers.

Bermudians simply pushed the possibility of a Soviet submarine taking out the American bases here (and, by extension, the entire island) with its own nuclear arsenal to the backs of their minds.

When the subject did come up in the aftermath of the 1985 leaking of the US Nuclear Weapons Deployment Plan (which indicated Bermuda had been earmarked to receive nuclear depth bombs in times of "advanced readiness"), it was generally raised in Parliament by the then-Progressive Labour Party Opposition.

The PLP was invariably shouted down by the former United Bermuda Party Government, which accused the PLP of ingratitude towards the Americans for having built an airfield which gave Bermuda air links with the rest of the world.

Of course, the real story of how Bermuda got its American-built airport was always based on strategic rather than altruistic motives. American national defence considerations led to Britain agreeing to lease them Bermudian territory during World War Two.

The airport, which allowed Bermuda to expand its tourism industry during the post-World War Two era, was simply an unintended ? but admittedly beneficial ? consequence of the American military build-up here between 1941 and 1945. But as has been demonstrated by the release of the Top Secret Cold War memoranda between Nixon and Heath, Bermuda was seen by both the Americans and the British as a forward operating base for squadrons of submarine-hunting P-3 Orion aircraft ? not a little country with interests of its own.

Although the British insisted on what they called "consultations" with the Americans on the US when it came to the deployment and possible use of American nuclear weapons in both the United Kingdom and its Overseas Territories like Bermuda, this was more of a formality than any real attempt to draw some type of diplomatic line between London and what it was prepared to accept from its closest ally, Washington.

Just look at what almost happened to Bermuda during World War Two when London lazily agreed to the Americans splitting the island down the middle so they could build their fortifications here in Warwick and Southampton.

would have been cleaved in half if this original plan for the US bases here had been acted upon. The area the Americans wanted included much of the South Shore ? including Horseshoe Bay, then, as now, one of the jewels in the island's tourism crown.

The 1940/41 talks between the British and Americans over which areas of Bermudian land were to be ceded for the planned American military installations were largely a bilateral, UK/US affair. The Bermuda political leadership at the time had little or no input as to what was going to result from the final agreement just, as in later decades, they were never informed that Britain had secretly signed off on, allowing America to deploy nuclear weapons on Bermudian soil during the Cold War.

Needless to say, when news of the plan to cut Bermuda in two was made public the reaction of Bermudians and their political leaders was one of shock and disbelief. The coming of the Americans, at first considered to be an economic benefit for the island at a time when the tourism industry had effectively closed down for the duration of World War Two, came to be seen as a potential disaster ? one that would result in the island being mutilated.

Maybe provisions would have been made to cut a road which would have allowed Bermudians to travel back and forth to the West End of the island by road but, even so, we would have been talking about a vastly different Bermuda from the one we know today.

The island's political elite was well aware of the ramifications of a Warwick/Southampton American base on the island's post-World War Two future. It was almost impossible to imagine the tourism industry rebounding without the Shore Shore beaches and with the presence of a huge American base in the centre of the island.

In the event, some behind-the-scenes negotiations involving a delegation of Bermudian politicians who flew to London at the 11th hour resulted in the Americans changing their initial plans and opting to build their major base at the East End, primarily in St. David's and on reclaimed land in Castle Harbour.

It is interesting to speculate on whether the British and Americans would have agreed to such a last-minute compromise if the Bermudian population had been all black. Bermuda had a significant white minority even during those times. The political leadership in 1940s Bermuda was, in fact, a white political leadership, with Bermuda's black majority having little political representation.

The reason I can speculate as to the racial context surrounding the creation of an American base in Bermuda and the British role in bringing that about is because the British have made other agreements with the Americans involving their Overseas Territories where the outcomes have not been as favourable in terms of the impacts on the people living there ? people who, in most cases, have been non-white.

I am thinking specifically about the sad fate of the people who used to live on the Indian Ocean Chagos Archipelago, which is today is known as Diego Garcia.

This was British-ruled territory along with Mauritius and the Seychelles. But when the other two territories got their Independence, the Chagos Archipelago was excluded ? for the Americans and the British had other plans for the territory which did not include the presence of the Chagos people, a small community of islanders who had lived there before the coming of the British and other European colonisers.

Americans wanted the area for a major military installation but did not want the presence of a native population. The way the British set about depopulating the islands was truly devious and underhanded. The island people used to make trips by ship to neighbouring Mauritius for goods and supplies but when the British put their plan into action, once they left the island on such journeys they were not allowed to return.

Soon the population was reduced to a small number who the British then forced onto ships that took them elsewhere ? whereupon the Americans were able to set up their base on an empty island chain.

The Chagos people have still not received justice from the British for this great crime of taking their homeland from them and they remain true victims of the Cold War.

Bermuda should have learned a lesson from its close Cold War call in nuclear brinkmanship. But we lived right through the Cold War without giving much thought at all to the fact that our country was little more than a trip-wire to alert US forces to the presence of Soviet submarines in the Western Atlantic.

From my point of view, no matter what benefits can be said to have accrued to Bermuda from the presence of American bases here, I do not believe the US has discharged its debt to us in full for involving us in a strategy that could well have resulted in our country being reduced to a simmering pile of irradiated ash.