Contents         Previous Chapter         Next Chapter

 

 

French South Pacific Policy 1981-1996

 

 

by Dr W. S. McCallum © 1996

 

 

Part 2

French Foreign Policy in the South Pacific since 1981

 

 

5. France and the South Pacific

 

 

The French Government intends to pursue a patient and perseverant policy of dialogue with all the States of the Pacific which should enable France's position to be made known without any ambiguity. It shall undertake to dissipate the misunderstandings and the incomprehension which certain aspects of our policy might give rise to. Here I am thinking in particular of our nuclear tests and our presence in the Overseas Territories. Indeed, in an environment which has not always been favourable to us, we hope to develop close relations with all the States of the region and at the same time to reaffirm, in a clear manner, our unflagging position France is present in the Pacific by the freely expressed wish of the populations of its territories and refuses any interference in its internal affairs.

Claude Cheysson, French Foreign Minister, November 1981.[i]

 

 

In Pursuit of Dialogue

 

Although the words above were taken from a statement elucidating the policy of the Mauroy Government on relations with Vanuatu, they nevertheless offer a lucid, concise summary of French foreign policy goals and motives in the South Pacific since 1981. Cheysson's words were a model of restraint, a quality which was not always apparent in those French ministerial comments on the region reported by the French and South Pacific media. Journalistic coverage preferred to highlight certain immoderate comments which were made at this level when tempers were aroused by criticisms from regional governments over questions such as New Caledonian independence, nuclear testing at Moruroa, or the Rainbow Warrior bombing. The remark made by Chirac on 29 August 1986 during a visit to New Caledonia, that Bob Hawke, the Australian Prime Minister, was "very stupid" in his analysis of the territory's situation was one of the more memorable examples.[ii] The importance of such comments should not be overemphasised. As will be demonstrated in this and the following three chapters, successive French Governments since 1981 persevered in developing closer links with South Pacific states while reaffirming their right to exercise unhindered various domestic political prerogatives in the Pacific TOM. Attention in the media devoted to periodic contretemps between Paris and regional governments has tended to obscure generally improving multilateral relations in the period under discussion.

 

The wider motives for the maintenance of the Fifth Republic's presence in the South Pacific pose the first concern of this chapter. Examination is made of the explanations proffered as to why France wished to retain its South Pacific possessions into the 1980s and beyond. Cheysson's argument for patient and persevering dialogue to explain France's position and to reaffirm its preparedness to stay on in the Pacific serves as a point of departure for examination of why the Fifth Republic wanted to retain its regional presence. Analysis of the various factors involved endeavours to sort realistic reasons from the affective, erroneous theorising that drove much discourse on this topic. It will be demonstrated that the Pacific TOM held a certain geostrategic interest for Paris, although some estimations of their value by certain figures in the RPR, in the French military, and by private think-tanks, were both overstated and unrealistic.

 

It should be borne in mind throughout this chapter that while these groups exercised a degree of influence on regional policy from 1981 to 1996, the dominant strand in this period consisted of government attempts at dialogue and reconciliation of the sort advocated by Cheysson. While from 1986 to 1988 and from 1995 to early 1996 the Chirac Government  and the Juppé Government respectively differed from their predecessors over the means deployed to pursue dialogue in the South Pacific, and their Ministers spelled out in no uncertain terms their objections to what they perceived as interference by regional neighbours in the domestic affairs of the Pacific TOM, these two liberal-conservative administration likewise made efforts to improve French relations, to greater or lesser effect. During cohabitation Chirac evinced an approval of better French relations and cooperation with the South Pacific that transcended the occasionally testy remarks he made about regional leaders like Hawke. For Chirac, the grandeur of France was intertwined with its global presence, and the South Pacific should not be neglected. While still out of government, on 25 September 1985 he had announced to a public rally in Nouméa

 

It is our duty to be present and active in the world, and in this region more than anywhere else. As regards our South Pacific neighbours, France's only desire is to develop good relations and cooperation. Moreover it is the nature of these links which unites us with a number of States in this zone. And how can we forget the sacrifices that France consented to, along with Australia and New Zealand especially, not so long ago in the struggle for democracy and today in the defence of the free world? But let it be quite clear that the legitimacy of the presence of France - equal to any other - should neither be contested in this part of the world nor reduced to an incident in history condemned by who knows what turn of events. It is only on this basis that the relations which we must maintain with our neighbours may be developed.[iii]

 

This outlook was consistent with the French regional policy priorities which had been articulated by Cheysson in November 1981. A prominent sign of Chirac's willingness to promote the French presence in the South Pacific came with the appointment in March 1986 of Flosse as Secretary of State to the South Pacific. He was to act as a roving ambassador to countries in the zone, explaining French policy and developing bilateral aid links. As Secretary of State, Flosse would have been hard put to disagree with the position expounded by Cheysson in November 1981. Flosse's mission, as outlined by Chirac in April 1986, (Appendix 8) lay comfortably within the context of French regional policy described by Cheysson over five years before.

 

The part Flosse played in representing Paris from 1986 to 1988 forms a significant element of the second concern of this chapter: the manner in which France articulated its South Pacific policy. A chronologically-ordered narrative outlines the expansion and revision of French diplomatic structures dealing with the zone since the beginning of the 1980s. To what extent the party policies of the French Left and Right affected governmental management of these structures is ascertained. In spite of structural changes, a degree of continuity in French regional foreign policy conduct, as defined by Cheysson, will be demonstrated.

 

This background analysis precedes more detailed assessment in chapters 6, 7, and 8, of French policy conduct as it touched on nuclear issues, the question of decolonisation, as well as regional aid and cooperation. France's resistance to South Pacific anti-nuclear sentiment, its refusal to follow what the region presumed to be the precedent offered by British South Pacific decolonisation, and its efforts to increase aid and cooperation will be discussed with reference to the wider foreign policy considerations of dialogue and reconciliation outlined in this chapter. In all three areas, considerable evidence of generally improving French relations with South Pacific states is presented. These improvements are at odds with the adversarial image of French contacts with the region presented by the media in periods of political tension.

 

The Geostrategic Context

 

Although at times characterised by French commentators as an aberrant legacy from the days of empire-building,[iv] there has been general agreement among French Governments that the DOM-TOM represent a significant part of the Fifth Republic. Unlike London, which decolonised the bulk of its remaining overseas possessions from the late 1960s, Paris has displayed every intention of retaining sovereignty over its citizens in French terres de souveraineté scattered around the world, for as long as those inhabitants might wish to remain French. In the epigraph to this chapter, reference was made by Cheysson to the continued exercise of French sovereignty over the Pacific TOM as constituting a response to "the freely expressed wish of the populations of its territories". According to such thinking, the Pacific TOM, as well as the rest of France's overseas possessions, were primarily French because the majority of their inhabitants desired to stay French. Such a democratic principle also coincided with some of the interests of the State. French Governments of the Fifth Republic, whether Gaullist, Giscardian, or Socialist, have all acted on the assumption that the DOM-TOM presented certain advantages to France. Only the extent to which French Governments may or may not have worked to extend these assumed advantages was an issue of extended debate, as remarks made in the National Assembly debate on the DOM-TOM in June 1980 indicated.

 

Declarations of the importance of ties between metropolitan France and its DOM-TOM were expressed in the 1980s in vigorous terms by UDF, PS, and RPR leaders alike. Various pronouncements mentioned in preceding chapters constitute examples of the expression of a national concern which has transcended party boundaries. Giscard d'Estaing's New Year's message for 1981 to the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM assured them of the Republic's ongoing solidarity with its overseas territories, and stressed the importance they assumed in assuring the French global presence.[v] As Minister to the DOM-TOM, in July 1986 Pons proclaimed the significance of overseas France, and announced the strengthening of links with metropolitan France after five years of supposed Socialist Government neglect.[vi] Jacques Toubon, as Secretary-General of the RPR, echoed these sentiments in December 1987. He declared that from 1981 to 1986 the DOM-TOM had been let down by government inertia, uncertainty and disorder. With the advent of Chirac, all would be set right.[vii]

 

This interpretation was open to contradiction. Whether reforms in the DOM-TOM endured, as was the case with the Internal Autonomy Statute for French Polynesia, or whether they proved short-lived, as was the case with the Lemoine Statute in New Caledonia, this legislation suggested that France's overseas possessions were a policy priority for the Socialists in government. Since the beginning of Mitterrand's second term of office, the Socialists have not been heedless of the DOM-TOM either, as their reforms in New Caledonia and French Polynesia suggested. Mitterrand clearly affirmed his high regard for the DOM-TOM during a broadcast on RFO on 26 February 1993:

 

They represent the modification of France from within by the presence of hundreds of thousands of overseas inhabitants who offer it something extra. Thus France, without that, without the DOM-TOM, is less than France. [...] I believe that the DOM-TOM need France; I believe that France has just as much need of the DOM-TOM. What unites us is strong. [...] We are one community.[viii]

 

The comments made by Giscard d'Estaing, Pons, Toubon and Mitterrand involved official declarations of a banal, predictable nature rather than concise arguments for French sovereignty over the DOM-TOM. These statements serve nevertheless to display the unanimity of PS, RPR and UDF leaders in agreeing on the importance of links between the DOM-TOM and France. Of the major French political parties in the 1980s the PC alone was at variance with this joint stance because of its traditional ideological and moral objections to colonialism. Near the other end of the French political spectrum, the FN has differed from the UDF, PS and RPR by advocating a tightening of the ties between overseas and metropolitan France, to the extent of proposing the departmentalisation of the Pacific TOM and urging a policy of increased French settlement there.[ix]

 

Other statements by political representatives were more significant in that they indicated the direct benefits the State enjoyed through retained sovereignty over the DOM-TOM. Joseph Franceschi, speaking in June 1980 on behalf of the PS in the DOM-TOM debate at the National Assembly, pointed out that these possessions permitted France to have the third largest maritime zone in the world, and contended that no one contested their political and strategic importance to the Republic.[x] For French Governments a major advantage of the DOM-TOM was that they furnished the Fifth Republic with the means by which it could enjoy a physical presence around the world. This physical presence reinforced French aspirations to continue playing a global role in international relations, in spite of the decolonisation of African and South-East Asian territories since the days of the Fourth Republic.[xi] Through its remaining possessions France was not limited to being a European power it could hold a presence in the Caribbean, the Antarctic, the Pacific, the North Atlantic and in the Indian Ocean. The DOM-TOM were highly regarded by French Governments for the prospects they offered to enhance French relations with nations in these zones. In 1981, the information service of Prime Minister Raymond Barre portrayed the DOM-TOM as global stepping stones for French culture and technological influence.[xii] This portrayal was as applicable to the Pacific TOM as it was to the rest of the DOM-TOM. From the Pacific TOM, France projected its technological capacity through scientific research and development organisations such as ORSTOM and IFREMER, based in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. France was a major participant in the South Pacific Commission, which had kept its headquarters in Nouméa since 1947.[xiii] And since 1987 the French University of the South Pacific, with its centres at Nouméa and Papeete, has attempted to offer a French-speaking counterpart to the University of the South Pacific, based in Suva.

 

The part that the Pacific TOM play in promoting French regional cooperation is examined in greater detail in chapter 8, but the assumption that the presence of the TOM might be a necessary instrument for such cooperation deserves more immediate consideration. The emphasis on the need for little extensions of France in regions outside Europe to secure national influence there reflected a peculiar outlook with roots in French colonial history. In the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, such enclaves were necessary to European nations which aspired to great power standing, both to assure their own presence and to counter that of their rivals. Not only was the annexation of overseas possessions considered a source of prestige, it served to strengthen national interests. France was prominent in this respect in establishing a collection of dominions scattered around the world which comprised a total population and surface area second only to the British Empire. In the late twentieth century such notions appear dated.

 

France is the last European nation with significant possessions in the South Pacific. These territories have played a role in French regional cooperation, but possessing these regional bases was not necessarily indispensable. While the French Pacific territories served as centres for French influence in the region, other major powers have managed to promote their presence without such support bases. To the extent that Britain has wished to retain its regional influence, its lack of such territories has not hindered that country's relations with countries in the zone since the late 1970s. In the 1980s and early 1990s British technology, culture and influence were maintained in the region through various diplomatic posts, participation in the South Pacific Commission,[xiv] and through Commonwealth links. Japan, the sole Asian power to have occupied parts of the South Pacific, if only from 1941 to 1945, has overcome resentment caused by its imperialism in World War II and during the 1980s established an important and growing technological, commercial and cultural presence in the South Pacific without the benefit of Japanese enclaves there.[xv]

 

As outposts for cooperative efforts with the region, New Caledonia and French Polynesia have moreover not been without their drawbacks. Le Pensec pointed out in 1990 that anti-nuclear and anti-colonial sentiment existing in island states in response to French policy in New Caledonia and French Polynesia had acted as a barrier to regional cooperation:

 

The fact that the maintenance of French sovereignty over a certain Department, Territory, or Territorial Collectivity may be considered locally as a major subject for political debates represents, as experience shows, a serious handicap for the strengthening of actions for regional cooperation. The case of New Caledonia these last few years and, to a lesser extent, [...] that of French Polynesia, show that in such a context, the nature of local political debate, relations established between local political representatives and national leaders, as well as the manner in which the development of the situation is followed abroad, are incompatible with coordinated external action.[xvi]

 

 

The extent to which this has actually been the case since 1981 will be examined closely in the next three chapters. As will be demonstrated, the point made by Le Pensec is valid only to a degree, as regional anti-nuclear and anti-colonial policies have not posed insurmountable barriers to French cooperation in the South Pacific. Nonetheless, this aspect of French relations should not be overlooked. France's need to pursue "a patient and perseverant policy of dialogue", as it was described by Cheysson in November 1981,[xvii] was a necessity not faced by Britain, as its South Pacific nuclear and colonial policies had become matters of largely historical debate by the 1980s and 1990s.[xviii] Japan, on the other hand, has faced some criticism from island states over its nuclear policies, notably its dumping of nuclear waste in the Pacific. Such protests have not been as sustained as regional opposition to French nuclear testing.

 

Another stake offered by the DOM-TOM, as mentioned by Franceschi, was the fact that they gave France the third largest EEZ in the world. In 1976, the French Parliament voted for the extension of the French maritime zone to a 200 nautical mile (about 370km) limit.[xix] This increased the EEZ of metropolitan France to 340,290kmADVANCE \u32, that of the DOM to 648,300kmADVANCE \u32, and that of the TOM to 10,153,825kmADVANCE \u32; a total of 11,142,415kmADVANCE \u32.[xx] These limits were recognised under the Law of the Sea convention, which was signed by 119 nations in December 1982.[xxi] This agreement recognised sovereign countries' claims to a monopoly over maritime resources within their 200 mile EEZs.

 

In spite of the massive area France obtained control over under this convention, maritime exploitation was held back as most of the French EEZ in the Pacific encompassed deep waters with no continental shelf.[xxii] The deep water fisheries of the EEZs of the Pacific TOM have yet to be greatly exploited by the local fishing industry, although territorial administrations receive revenue from selling fishing licenses to US, Japanese and Korean trawlers. Seabed minerals, in the form of polymetallic nodules, including manganese, copper, nickel and cobalt, had been found in the maritime zones of the Pacific TOM by the 1980s. Their drawback was that they were located at depths which rendered their extraction commercially unviable with the technology available at that time. By 1985, ORSTOM and IFREMER had not conducted a systematic survey of mineral resources in the French Pacific EEZ, and a spokesman for the Fabius Government stated that insufficient data was available to ascertain where seabed minerals might be concentrated. It was considered unlikely that commercial exploitation would be worth the effort at that stage.[xxiii] Nevertheless, France was then working to claim international exclusive mining rights over a 75,000kmADVANCE \u32 area outside its EEZ, which it was granted by the International Maritime Resource Authority in December 1987.[xxiv] Despite not being commercially viable at that point, France was preparing for a future time when this concession could be exploited.

 

France has made efforts to safeguard its maritime domain, adopting the long-term view that although its South Pacific EEZ might not yet be worth a great deal commercially, in years to come the zone will be economically valuable. Since the establishment of its 200 nautical mile limit in the South Pacific, France has been careful to negotiate territorial delimitation agreements with neighbouring states in order to secure its boundaries. (Table 44) The Law of the Sea convention left unresolved the question of precisely how the boundaries between the EEZs of two countries should be determined.[xxv] Generally, France has negotiated delimitation agreements which place boundaries at an equidistant point between the closest land in the French Pacific TOM and the closest land of its foreign neighbours.[xxvi] An exception to this otherwise harmonious delineation was posed by the New Caledonian boundary with Vanuatu. On 9 and 10 March 1983, an official Vanuatu landing party occupied Hunter Island, a barren rock between the Loyalty Islands and Vanuatu, and hoisted a flag to claim sovereignty over it and neighbouring Matthew Island.[xxvii] A plaque proclaiming French sovereignty, which had been placed on Hunter Island in 1975, was removed before the party left.[xxviii] Cheysson, then Foreign Affairs Minister, stated that the Mauroy Government did not recognise this claim by Vanuatu, as the two islands had been allocated to France in an agreement with the British Government in 1965, during the days of the condominium of the New Hebrides.[xxix] On 11 March 1983, the High Commission in Nouméa issued a proclamation placing Matthew and Hunter islands off limits to all foreign vessels.[xxx] In late March, an unspecified number of French soldiers were transported by helicopter to Matthew Island, the only one of the pair large enough to enable landing troops on, and aerial surveillance was increased.[xxxi] A permanent camp was established on Matthew Island, garrisoned by a platoon. This position was still being manned as late as 1989.[xxxii] Hunter was left unmanned, as it is little more than a rock jutting out of the ocean. In stationing troops on Matthew, France was deploying a force, however small, to protect its maritime zone, as neither Matthew nor Hunter islands had any land resources. They are desolate, uninhabited rocks, incapable of supporting anything more than seabirds. Although the Vanuatu claim to the islands was played down by Cheysson as a minor matter, the effort made to secure these two islands indicated the active seriousness with which France watched over its Pacific EEZ.

 

The DOM-TOM in general are seen by Paris to possess a certain strategic value to the Fifth Republic which justifies their maintenance. Toubon offered a glowing assessment of their worth in December 1987. Like Mitterrand in his RFO broadcast in February 1993,[xxxiii] Toubon indicated that France would be less than whole without the DOM-TOM:

 

The French DOM-TOM do not only consist of economic measures for restoring social security and progress. They also represent, it's true, a reciprocal close relationship. France would not be what it is without the DOM-TOM. She owes them her presence in every part of the world, whether in America, the Pacific, the Indian Ocean, or the lands of the Antarctic. Through them, she has the third greatest maritime empire in the world, covering eleven million square kilometres.

Without the DOM-TOM, we would have no base at Kourou, and no French future in space. That is only one aspect, and not the least important one. But it is not a matter of speculating, of counting what is incommensurable. The global vocation of our Nation is to be found down there. The DOM-TOM represent concrete, living evidence that our heritage may serve as common good for very diverse peoples, who enrich us with their diversity. Our DOM-TOM constitute living proof of France's good fortune on a global scale on the eve of the 21st century.[xxxiv]

 

Here, Toubon mixed an assessment of the strategic worth of the DOM-TOM with a dose of Republican idealism. Through the DOM-TOM, France remained a global power. Though Toubon did not mention it here, they offered the Republic a global network of military bases, as well as points for satellite communication ground stations.[xxxv] The DOM-TOM have been exploited for the use of high technology. The space centre at Kourou in Guyane was conveniently located near the equator, permitting the easier launch of satellites into orbit.[xxxvi] The nuclear testing facilities of the CEP in French Polynesia offered a remote location for the testing of nuclear devices. From its commencement in 1966 until its suspension in April 1992, nuclear testing in French Polynesia rendered the territory an important component of the national defence complex. Eighty-four tests were conducted on Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls from 1981 to 1991 as six succeeding governments under Mitterrand oversaw the modernisation and expansion of French nuclear capabilities.[xxxvii]

 

In spite of this nuclear presence, the French nuclear deterrent played no role in the military balance of power in the Pacific region. While Moruroa and Fangataufa formed the test sites for nuclear devices, no bases for the French nuclear arsenal existed in the Pacific TOM, or for that matter anywhere else in the DOM-TOM.[xxxviii] In an interview in 1986 Vice-Admiral Pierre Thireaut, the Commander-in-Chief of the French Pacific Naval Squadron, denied that nuclear weapons were housed at the Moruroa test site, which he described as "only a physics laboratory".[xxxix] Thireaut indicated that no nuclear weapon had been detonated at Moruroa since 1974, when France had ended its atmospheric testing there. The components for French nuclear arms were manufactured and assembled in metropolitan France. The nuclear devices exploded in French Polynesia were far from constituting complete weapons. The radioactive and non-radioactive pieces of these devices were manufactured in metropolitan France and assembled at the test sites prior to detonation.[xl] Delivery systems for nuclear arms were not housed in French Polynesia.

 

The nuclear strike force was deployed for the defence of metropolitan France from foreign aggression and played no part in the defence of the DOM-TOM.[xli] Until the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the force was potentially most likely to be used to defend France in the event of an invasion of Western Europe by the Warsaw Pact. Consequently, its target was the Soviet Union.[xlii] The French nuclear umbrella did not extend to encompass the Pacific TOM, any more than it did to the rest of the DOM-TOM.[xliii] The most far-ranging component of the French nuclear force, the FOST, consisted in 1993 of three nuclear-powered submarines on patrol at any one time, armed with nuclear missiles.[xliv] Based in Brittany, the FOST conducted extended patrols lasting eight to ten weeks. Although its precise deployment was a closely guarded secret, during the 1980s the FOST most likely patrolled the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, within missile range - 5,000km - of the Soviet Union. Elements could conceivably have been present in the Pacific from time to time, but there is no declassified evidence to confirm such speculation. Visits to the South Pacific by French submarines not belonging to the FOST were generally rare. The well-publicised calls made to New Caledonia in May 1985 and to French Polynesia in July 1985 by the Rubis, a nuclear-powered (and not nuclear-armed) attack submarine, was the only known instance of such a submarine visit to the region in the 1980s.[xlv]

 

The voyage of the Rubis in 1985 was portrayed by the Fabius Government as a sign of French intentions of boosting the French military presence in the South Pacific. In 1985 Fabius[xlvi] shared the position of politicians of the Right and the extreme Right[xlvii] that New Caledonia lay in a strategically important position adjacent to major shipping lines to Australia and New Zealand. Australian and New Zealand leaders were warned that should control of New Caledonia fall into the hands of a hostile nation, the two countries would be economically threatened. Nouméa however was not as well located for cutting off shipping to Australia and New Zealand as might be imagined. In the outlandish circumstance of a hostile power (Indonesia?) taking over the territory and attacking Australian and New Zealand shipping, trade with Asia could be rerouted from the Coral and Tasman Seas. Both Australia and New Zealand have long, open coastlines which are as difficult to blockade as they are to defend. It was by no means coincidental that this fictional scenario was offered in the mid-1980s, when regional support for independence for New Caledonia had both French Socialist Ministers and figures on the Right searching for reasons why New Caledonia's Pacific neighbours ought to oppose this possibility. This scenario hinged more on these political motives than it offered a rational response to regional security issues.

 

That announcements concerning the newly found strategic importance of New Caledonia were more a response to Kanak activism and to the anti-colonialist lobbying of South Pacific nations than to any projected foreign threat was confirmed by government unwillingness to act upon its arguments. In 1985 the assertion that New Caledonia was considered in Paris to be of strategic importance was given some credence when plans were announced for the expansion of military facilities there. After his arrival in New Caledonia aboard the Rubis on 10 May 1985, Charles Hernu, the Defence Minister, announced plans to extend the international airport runway at Tontouta so that French Jaguar fighter aircraft could land there, as well as proposing the construction of port facilities to enable corvettes and a nuclear attack submarine to berth at Pointe Denouel in Nouméa.[xlviii] This latter project was described as constituting the construction of a strategic base, the urgency of which was proclaimed four months later in a government decree signed by Hernu and Fabius.[xlix] Mitterrand expressed his approval of the plans in 1986.[l] For all the proclaimed urgency of these plans, there has been no consequent sign of haste in Paris to fulfil them. The runway extension at Tontouta was constructed, although by 1996 no Jaguar aircraft had taken advantage of its presence. In 1985 New Caledonia was presented by French military officials and by Hernu as a "French aircraft carrier" in the South-West Pacific.[li] If this were the case, the territory has been curiously lacking in combat aircraft. The few Mirage III fighters to use the airstrip at Tontouta in the 1980s were planes from a visiting RAAF squadron, which made a stop in transit from New Zealand in March 1983.[lii] The Fabius Government projected that 400MFF would be spent on naval facilities. This plan failed to be translated into reality.[liii] By March 1987 it was surmised that plans for the strategic base had been abandoned, in spite of Chirac's expression of support for it in 1986.[liv] Although no official announcement was made on the matter, a mixture of budgetary constraints and the realisation that the proposal constituted geostrategic pie in the sky were probably the motives for this inaction. If indeed New Caledonia did have strategic potential, Paris has not availed itself of the opportunity to fulfil it. It is more probable that the proposal formulated by Hernu was a response to Kanak activism than to any imminent or remote foreign threat.[lv]

 

Geostrategic arguments as marginal as those applied to New Caledonia have not been advanced to support the military presence in French Polynesia. The importance of the test programme was in itself adequate to vindicate that presence without recourse to additional justification. The sort of theorising applied to New Caledonia would have been fanciful in any case. Scenarios of projected foreign invasion seemed even less probable when applied to French Polynesia than to New Caledonia. French Polynesia was geographically isolated even by South Pacific standards, positioned far from major shipping routes in the North Pacific. The territory lay too distant from South America to constitute an offshore base of any threat to Latin American security in the event of a French decolonisation. Military bases in French Polynesia, with the exception of the naval and army bases at Papeete which date from the nineteenth century, were constructed to serve the operations of the CEP. Airfields at Papeete, Hao, Fangataufa and Moruroa were used for the transport of staff and material to and from the testing sites, as was the port at Moruroa.[lvi]

 

Maintaining the internal security of the Pacific TOM, rather than defending them against any marginal risk of foreign aggression, formed a major task for French military units stationed in the South Pacific. In Wallis and Futuna, the deployment of gendarmes to Mata Utu during the state of emergency declared in October 1986 and June 1994, and to Futuna in October 1993, were the only incidents in the period under discussion when this consideration had any bearing on the territory. French gendarmes in French Polynesia were at times employed to quell industrial unrest in Papeete. French Navy vessels stationed in the territory were used to patrol the waters around Moruroa, and to track Greenpeace and other anti-nuclear protest vessels, a task that they performed from the first Greenpeace protest there in 1972, until the tests held in 1991.[lvii] In New Caledonia, gendarmes were in the front line of confrontations with the FLNKS during its violent protest actions from 1984 to 1988. Regular army troops were not involved in the troubles during 1984 and 1985, although they were available for the control of any potential insurrection should the need have arisen. Regular army troops played a part in efforts to pacify and monitor rural tribes from 1986 to 1988 in the "nomadisation" programme implemented under the Chirac Government.[lviii] The changing number of troops stationed in New Caledonia during the 1980s reflected the seriousness with which the potential for insurrection was regarded in Paris. The Chirac Government in particular staged a proportionately large build-up of ground forces in the territory. In 1979, the total number of military personnel in New Caledonia, including gendarmes, had been 2,472 men.[lix] During the 1980s, numbers far exceeded this level. In late November 1984, at the time of the FLNKS active boycott, there were 2,826 army personnel present, of whom 1,300 were gendarmes, and the remainder were regular army.[lx] This force was strengthened the following month with eight companies of CRS.[lxi] The military presence in New Caledonia peaked during the time of the FLNKS active boycott from April to June 1988. By 24 April 1988 there was a combined total of 10,990 CRS, gendarmes and regular army personnel deployed in New Caledonia; one for every 14 local inhabitants.[lxii] As a result of the Ouvéa incident, this command was reinforced with 100 further gendarmes, a platoon of GIGN and 150 Marines.[lxiii] This was a sizeable force, and was instrumental in prompting the FLNKS decision to back down from its active boycott. By the end of the following year, after the lessening of tensions under the Matignon Accords, this French force had been considerably reduced.[lxiv]

 

While land forces deployed in New Caledonia were expanded in response to internal unrest, the French military in the South Pacific was too thinly spread to guard against external aggression. The French naval squadron, of which the most powerful components were its three frigates and five patrol boats, was a small unit with which to guard a maritime zone of 6.78MkmADVANCE \u32  composed of three territories separated by thousands of kilometres. Nor were the small forces in the French Pacific TOM evenly spread. While New Caledonia and French Polynesia had army, air force and naval elements in their garrisons, Wallis and Futuna had no permanent French military presence other than half a dozen gendarmes stationed there on police duties. The Pacific squadron was the smallest of the French Navy fleets stationed overseas. Its commander in 1993, Vice-Admiral François Querat, stated that it represented 5% to 6% of the total means of the French Navy.[lxv] The squadron had minimal air cover, with only surveillance aircraft to provide long-range support, the rest of the aircraft present in New Caledonia and in French Polynesia consisting of helicopters and cargo planes.[lxvi]

 

When compared to the French Indian Ocean fleet, the modest nature of the French air and naval commitment to the South Pacific becomes more apparent. At times in the middle of the 1980s, the French Indian Ocean fleet was larger than that of the Soviet Union in the zone. The French fleet usually consisted of a destroyer, five frigates, a submarine, a fast attack craft, an amphibious assault ship, a naval workshop vessel, two supply ships and two oil tankers. Air support was provided by a fighter squadron equipped with seven Mirage IIIs, and two squadrons of helicopters and transport craft.[lxvii] The heavier commitment of French forces in the Indian Ocean than in the South Pacific was a reflection of the former's greater strategic importance to France. French units stationed at Djibouti and Réunion guarded the shipping route leading from the oil fields of the Persian Gulf through the Suez Canal.[lxviii] The Gulf War of 1991 demonstrated the threat that instability in the Middle East posed to this strategically important route. No trade in the South Pacific held the same importance to French economic interests as the protection of the oil trade in the Middle East.[lxix] Neither did French forces in the South Pacific face the immediate threat of foreign aggression disrupting French regional trade.

 

If the French Pacific military was unlikely to face foreign aggression and was not deployed in great enough strength to guard its huge zone from external threat, it might legitimately be asked what in fact its role was. Four official explanations were offered by Vice-Admiral Thireaut in 1988. The conventional military role was given last.[lxx] Internal security duties were not mentioned, to avoid giving the impression that the domestic situation of the Pacific TOM was unstable. The functions described by Thireaut as forming the duties of the French military in the South Pacific appeared instead to be quite banal although useful.

 

He pointed out the diplomatic utility of naval visits. The attendance of French warships at national events such as independence day celebrations in the region was usually the result of invitations by island leaders, and these calls offered good opportunities as flag-waving exercises for the Republic.[lxxi] French warships attended the Australian bicentenary celebrations in February 1988,[lxxii] and were regular attendants at self-government anniversary celebrations in the Cook Islands.[lxxiii] Such ceremonial visits formed part of a wider policy of warship visits to foreign ports in the South Pacific to promote the French regional presence. French vessels stationed at Papeete are regular visitors to the Cook Islands. They have not simply paid courtesy calls, but have been used to transport sick Cook Islanders to hospital in Papeete, and to help with French development efforts to the islands.[lxxiv]

 

Thireaut described the second mission of the French Pacific forces as entailing cyclone relief, both to the French Pacific, and to foreign island states.[lxxv] The French military has lent its support to cyclone recovery efforts in Wallis and Futuna, for which it has assigned army and navy personnel from Nouméa.[lxxvi] French legionaries from Papeete were posted to Rarotonga in January 1987 to help with recovery from cyclone Sally, and French naval vessels were used to ship heavy machinery and supplies from Papeete.[lxxvii] In September 1986 the Jacques Cartier, a transport landing ship, was sent from Nouméa with food and medical supplies after cyclone Namu hit the Solomon Islands.[lxxviii]

 

These efforts represented the limits of French military contacts with nations of the South Pacific until the beginnings of changes from the late 1980s. French military cooperation in the Pacific generally was not well developed before this time.[lxxix] Two decades after de Gaulle had partially withdrawn the Republic from NATO in 1966, and had refused to participate in SEATO,[lxxx] the Fifth Republic under Mitterrand retained a Gaullist stance of avoiding participation in military alliances in which French interests would have been subordinate to those of the USA.[lxxxi] This stance had its implications for the Pacific, as well as for other regions of strategic interest to France. Given the preponderance of US military strength in the Pacific, France could only have been a subordinate partner in any regional military alliance there. France therefore played no part in defence pacts in the South Pacific, of which the most prominent was ANZUS.[lxxxii] French Pacific forces did not regularly exercise with Australian, New Zealand or Pacific island forces.[lxxxiii] France had no programme to compare with the network of military exchange, training and assistance schemes that Australia, New Zealand and the US had implemented in the island Pacific.

 

The patrolling of the French Pacific EEZ was the third role described by Thireaut, a major undertaking given the expanse of this zone.[lxxxiv] As was the case with the RNZN in New Zealand's EEZ, rather than a vigil against foreign invasion, the monitoring of fishing trawlers in territorial waters was the principal concern of this effort. Thireaut listed the protection of the Pacific TOM against invasion as the fourth role of the forces under his command. He pointed out that his forces were intended to hold open access to ports and airports so that reinforcements could be dispatched from metropolitan France.[lxxxv]

 

This point represented a tacit admission that forces already present were inadequate to defend the Pacific TOM in the event of invasion. Whether French forces could be deployed to the Pacific TOM rapidly enough and in adequate numbers to counteract foreign invasion is open to doubt. The Gulf War revealed the logistical difficulty, among other problems, that the French military had in deploying units in the Middle East. French commanders faced problems with insufficient supplies, uniforms and equipment adapted to a hot environment, and a lack of long-range transport aircraft.[lxxxvi] France experienced problems sending fewer than 10,000 ground troops from its 300,000 strong army to the Middle East, problems that called into question its ability to defend its farther-flung DOM-TOM.[lxxxvii] Similar logistical problems to those experienced in the Gulf War, accentuated by the greater distance involved, would be confronted in the event of having to deploy a large force from metropolitan France to defend the Pacific TOM.

 

Admittedly, the chances of such an operation being necessary were extremely low. German surface raiders in World War I and Japanese expansionism in the Pacific in the 1940s represented the only concrete foreign military threats to the French Pacific in the twentieth century. Statements during the 1980s made by French admirals, both in service and retired, affirming that the Pacific was a key strategic zone, threatened by the possibility of Soviet expansionism,[lxxxviii] tended to portray the French Pacific as being more directly concerned than it actually was. They omitted mention of the extreme logistical problems that would have been involved in the organisation of Soviet aggression. Soviet naval bases in the Pacific maritime provinces of the USSR, and at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, were far removed from New Caledonia, the closest Pacific TOM. Vietnam lies over 7,000km from Nouméa, while Vladivostok is situated over 8,000km away. The US Pacific Command had the upper hand strategically in that Soviet bases were restricted by their geographical location. Ship movements were able to be monitored easily as Soviet vessels had to pass through narrow straits linking the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea with the Pacific Ocean. Soviet operational capacities were limited by the cold climate of the Soviet far east. Ports there were ice-bound during winter. The Soviet far east was thus not a well-located area from which to launch military operations in the South Pacific.[lxxxix] Soviet concerns were more immediate the protection of its own borders, and the peaceful development of relations with its Asian neighbours.[xc]

 

It is moreover uncertain what gain the Soviet Union might have made from infiltrating the island South Pacific. The region was not abundant in readily exploitable strategic resources. Its fisheries were an attraction, although Moscow had no need to stage a major regional incursion to pursue this resource. Those mineral resources to be found in the South Pacific, such as New Caledonian nickel, were more easily and cheaply available to the Soviets from deposits in the Soviet Union. The USSR was a long way from exhausting its own resources in the 1980s, and Russian economic exploitation of these remained unfulfilled in the early 1990s.

 

            Superpower rivalry in the 1980s did not directly affect the South Pacific, still less the Pacific TOM. Soviet Navy penetration of the South Pacific in the 1980s was minimal. Incursions by its surface vessels or submarines in French Pacific waters were rare. The last official visit by a Soviet warship to the Pacific TOM was made to Nouméa in 1970.[xci] A Soviet submarine was sighted in French Polynesian waters in November 1982, but this was a rarity.[xcii]

 

Various conservative politicians attempted in the 1980s to inflate the minimal Soviet presence in the South Pacific into a menace in order to call into question the defence conduct of Socialist Governments. For example in November 1982, in response to the sighting of the Soviet submarine, a written question was tabled in the National Assembly by an RPR Deputy, Bruno Bourg-Broc. He postulated "What we are witnessing is the development of the presence of ships from the Soviet fleet in our territorial waters in the Pacific." Then he asked what measures the Mauroy Government intended to take. Two months later Hernu gave an unruffled reply "No warship from the Soviet Navy has been has been located in the proximity of [French] Polynesia and New Caledonia in the last few years and the number of port calls made by commercial vessels - generally  liners - has not varied, remaining at a low level."[xciii] This comment remained valid ten years later. By the 1990s, Japanese and Korean trawlers represented a more important foreign maritime presence in the French Pacific EEZ, whereas the Russian presence was still marginal. The most visible sign of Russian maritime activities in the Pacific TOM were the cruise liners which regularly made calls to Nouméa.

 

Other conservative French politicians, none of whom held prominent positions in the formulation of French foreign policy in the 1980s, showed a predilection for painting dark scenarios of Soviet expansion to counteract the arguments of sceptical governments in the South Pacific that the French military was present in the region merely to shore up what were perceived as French colonial interests. Pierre Lacour, the Senator for Charente, published a book in 1987 in which he asserted that the Soviet Union was conducting a systematic campaign of infiltration in the South Pacific.[xciv] He called for greater unity between the United States, Australia, New Zealand and France, claiming that an erosion of the French presence in the zone would open an avenue for Soviet penetration.[xcv] Flosse, as Secretary of State to the South Pacific, offered the same message in early 1988, and suggested that the United States, Britain, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and France should form a defence pact against this eventuality.[xcvi] He and other commentators pilloried Australia and New Zealand for advocating anti-nuclear and anti-colonial policies in the region during what was portrayed as a time of peril.[xcvii]

 

Nor was the suggested Soviet threat portrayed as purely military by conservative French commentators. In 1984 Jacques Baumel, a former Gaullist Minister and an RPR Deputy, assumed that communist influence was not necessarily just external. He projected one scenario for the future as being the subversion and balkanisation of island states by Marxist agitators,[xcviii] presumably backed by the Soviet Union. Flosse, as Secretary of State to the South Pacific, warned of the need for vigilance against trade unionist Fifth columnists inspired by Moscow. He stressed the need for unity against "the classic Communist offensive in the largely politicised trade union organisations".[xcix]

 

Such analyses were not vindicated in the 1980s. Internal unrest in the South Pacific came from groups which were difficult to portray as communist agitators Fijian nationalists led by Colonel Sitiveni Rabuka, who led two coups in 1987 to assert indigenous dominance over the growing local influence of Indian immigrants; Kanak nationalists in New Caledonia; and tribal landowners on Bougainville Island who from 1989 led a rebellion against the refusal of the PNG Government to give greater compensation for mining rights. South Pacific island states were unpromising ground for the penetration of Marxist-Leninist thinking.[c] Communists played no role in the democratic institutions of South Pacific nations. Unlike France, no South Pacific nation had Communist Party representatives in its parliament. Where Communist parties were present, as was the case in Australia and New Zealand, they were small, fractious groups preoccupied with arguments over which of them was the truest bearer of the Marxist flame. The persistence of traditional hierarchical social structures and values in most island states rendered their leaders unreceptive to Marxist social values which would in any case have been ill-adapted to South Pacific societies. The Marxist theory of class struggle in nineteenth century European industrialised countries was not easily applicable to the predominantly rural, agricultural, subsistence societies to be found in the South Pacific in the late twentieth century.

 

Neither before nor since such conservative French speculation in the 1980s that the Soviet Union was practising a campaign of regional destabilisation has much concrete evidence been presented to back the assumption. From the 1970s the Soviet Union opened diplomatic relations with various newly-independent island states, although these steps did not lead to an entrenched Soviet regional presence. Soviet relations established with Fiji in 1974, Tonga in 1975, and with Papua New Guinea as well as Western Samoa in 1976, did not involve sending resident ambassadors to these countries.[ci] Permanent Soviet diplomatic representation consisted of two Embassies, one in Wellington and one in Canberra. New Zealand and Australia regarded with unease Soviet negotiations for fishing contracts with island states, considering them as the possible beginning of further penetration, even though little came of them.[cii] Soviet fishing deals with island states ended up being less important than those that New Zealand and Australia had themselves concluded with the Soviet Union. Apart from the use of some ports in the region for its fishing trawlers, the Soviet Union had no bases in the South Pacific. Nor was there any great reason for it to want to construct such bases. The USSR had no client states in the South Pacific, and none eventuated.

 

With hindsight, it is easy to ridicule the scenario of a Soviet menace. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in December 1991 and its subsequent balkanisation into a grouping of quarrelsome, economically unstable states, the spectre of Soviet expansion no longer haunts the South Pacific. Faced with more pressing internal social and economic problems, Russia has abandoned its arms race with the United States. As part of its global dismantling of overseas bases, Moscow reducing its naval forces at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam, the closest of its bases to the South Pacific, and planned a total withdrawal by 1995.[ciii]

 

            Talk of Soviet expansion in the South Pacific in the 1980s by figures on the French Right consisted of little more than a series of politically-motivated, unrealistic scenarios. These images cannot be said to have exerted an important influence on the regional defence policy of French Governments since 1981, but merit discussion in depth as they prompted much erroneous theorising. In a search for the motives behind the French military presence in the South Pacific, grandiose strategic reasoning was in many regards a red herring set up by conservative parliamentarians and military leaders to influence government and public opinion. Their images of the French Pacific forces offering a bulwark against the advance of the Soviet Union, and assuring regional security, are, under examination, ultimately less convincing as a raison d'être than the effective roles the military performed. French Pacific forces played their part in the maintenance of the Fifth Republic's global network by maintaining a minimal but effective vigil over the largely unexploited maritime resources of the Pacific TOM, guarding and manning the facilities of the nuclear test programme, and  by keeping law and order during times of domestic unrest. Their role in realising Cheysson's goal of the pursuit of patient dialogue and cooperation with regional neighbours consisted of providing civil emergency and developmental aid, and representing France in the region.

 

A New Centre of the World?

 

Just as the military importance of the French Pacific was exaggerated by figures with vested political or career interests, so too misrepresentation has been evident in official and unofficial French evaluation of the economic significance of the Pacific TOM. In the early 1980s certain figures in Paris shunned Cheysson's simple, ungrandiose, democratic justification for a French Pacific presence, quoted at the beginning of this chapter, in favour of an overstated picture of the commercial value of the region to the Republic. The Parisian Institut du Pacifique, a private body founded by retired military men and civil servants, campaigned for greater recognition of the region in government and business circles. For its members, the consideration that the Fifth Republic was present in the South Pacific because it was the wish of the inhabitants of the Pacific TOM was not adequate reason in itself. The French Pacific was instead considered important because of the opportunities the greater Pacific region offered for French trade and investment. The humble scale of most economic activity in the Pacific TOM, and the troubles state planners were having there trying to encourage the productive diversity upon which export-orientated prosperity might be founded, were cast aside for a macro-economic view engulfing the entire Pacific rim, where the potential for prosperity was presented as enormous.

 

In its influential book published in 1983, Le Pacifique, nouveau centre du monde, the Institut du Pacifique presented its case for the need for greater French participation in the Pacific basin. As well as being portrayed as an area of great power rivalry, the zone was characterised as a centre of enormous resources, rapid economic growth, and as being of great market potential for France. It was contended that the centre of global power was inexorably shifting away from Europe to the Pacific. The former's stake in global affairs was declining while the latter would be the new centre of gravity in the twenty-first century that Europe had been until the middle of the twentieth century.[civ]

 

All was not lost however. It was pointed out that although Paris had traditionally neglected its trade and diplomatic interests in the Pacific in preference to concentrating on areas closer to metropolitan France, the Republic was still "a nation on the edge of the Pacific" thanks to its three TOM there.[cv] France retained the opportunity to become a major player in regional affairs if it made a concerted effort to expand its presence in the Pacific basin. This should be done through greater cooperation with regional organisations such as ASEAN, the South Pacific Forum and the Andes Pact, and through the exploitation of France's privileged position as a major participant in the EEC.[cvi] As well as greater French liaison with the region through multilateral relations, improved bipartite relations should be pursued, including with countries sceptical of France's regional presence, such as the island nations of the South Pacific. Increased trade and cooperation with these states could dissipate misunderstandings.[cvii] The dire alternative to an increased regional presence, it was argued, was that France would become progressively marginalised and excluded from Pacific affairs, which would be a step further along the path of France's declining influence as a global power since the early twentieth century.[cviii]

 

The arguments laid out by the Institut du Pacifique should not be excluded from discussion of French South Pacific policy because of their non-official nature. The views that the organisation offered concerning the Pacific had considerable bearing on the field of French regional policy, and their echoes are to be found in statements by political leaders of the Left, Centre and Right during the 1980s. In 1984 Lemoine offered an optimistic image of a New Caledonian future which resembled an extract from Le Pacifique, nouveau centre du monde:

 

[...] we have here a country to build [New Caledonia] so as to enable it to approach the end of the century with all the chances which will open up in the Pacific, which is going to assume greater and greater importance in global affairs, given the powers which surround it, their immense populations and their riches in human resources and maritime expanses. The Pacific will have a global dimension in the 21st century and great minds already see it, in the time to come, playing the role in the history of humanity which the Mediterranean played for the European countries when they dominated the world. The centre of gravity is shifting and tomorrow the great economic currents, exchanges and markets will perhaps be transferred more and more to the Pacific.[cix]

 

In the introduction to a book published in 1983 which stressed the growing importance of Asia and the Pacific, Raymond Barre too lent his support to the thesis that the Pacific was becoming the predominant zone in the world and that France should play a greater role in this evolution.[cx] Mitterrand[cxi] and the RPR[cxii] were in agreement on this point, and Rocard has recognised its value.[cxiii] Although none of these sources attributed their ideas to the Institut du Pacifique, it is evident that the theme of the Pacific as a new centre of global power formed a concept that was accepted in Paris in high places.

 

The case for the Pacific as a new centre of the world should be examined critically to assess its applicability to, and impact on, the French role in the South Pacific. While the theory offered a clear economic rationale for French regional diplomacy and integration, it also contained numerous analytical flaws which, like its premises overall, were to find echoes in the official articulation of French Pacific policy.

 

The term "Pacifique", as used by the Institut du Pacifique, is open to scrutiny. In Le Pacifique, nouveau centre du monde, the zone was defined as encompassing over 45% of global GNP, and half the population of the world.[cxiv] The Pacific community was defined as all the countries in the Pacific or with coastal borders on the Pacific, and included land-locked countries hundreds of kilometres from the ocean, such as Mongolia and Bolivia, on the grounds that they had dealings with Pacific nations.

 

Yves Lacoste, a French geographer, cast doubt upon the validity of the arguments of the Institut du Pacifique from a geographical perspective. He questioned the inclusion of various peripheral nations in the Pacific region. He also asked whether the United States and the Soviet Union could be considered purely Pacific powers when the bulk of their populations and economic activity were not concentrated there.[cxv] Lacoste considered the organisation's definition of a Pacific community as inflated and described its presentation as the largest economic and population zone in the world as the product of "statistical artifice".[cxvi] At the same time Lacoste admitted that globally important trade had grown between Japan and North America, and pointed out the expanding importance of South-East Asian trade with these two nations and Australia, but questioned whether such developments warranted description as an identifiable Pacific economic community.

 

His arguments were well-founded. The rapid economic growth which took place during the 1980s in Asian nations on the Pacific rim did not have parallels in the Pacific TOM, Australia, New Zealand or South America. During the 1980s, trade from the Pacific TOM was directed more to metropolitan France than to Pacific nations. French incursion into the three largest markets of the South Pacific was low. In 1983, French trade represented 2.7% of the Australian market, 1.5% of the New Zealand market, and 0.5% of the PNG market.[cxvii] By 1995, France remained a second string trading partner with the largest of the South Pacific Forum members, Australia. While French trade was in a buoyant state and expanding in spite of anti-nuclear boycotts, France represented only the eighth largest foreign investor nation in, and the tenth largest exporting nation  to, Australia. Overall, Australian trade represented but 0.4% of total French imports and exports.[cxviii]

 

There was no prospect of French initiatives to increase trade with the island states of the South Pacific reaping the great profits that a stake in Asian economic growth might accrue. The French trade that had developed with these states of the South Pacific by the 1990s was appropriately minor. Setting aside Vanuatu, where French trade was long-established from the colonial period, by 1996 there had not been a remarkable degree of French investment in the island states of the South Pacific. In accordance with their relative importance in regional trade, of the island states Papua New Guinea and Fiji enjoyed the greatest amount of trade with France. By 1993 there were eight French companies which had directly invested in Papua New Guinea, and four in Fiji.[cxix] In 1992 French imports from Papua New Guinea were worth 31.66MFF, while French exports to Papua New Guinea amounted to 22.44MFF.[cxx] French imports from Fiji that year were worth 1.99MFF, while French exports to Fiji were valued at 50.19MFF.[cxxi] In proportion with the small population and resource bases of island states, French trade with them was on a small scale.  For example in 1992, French imports from Tuvalu were valued at 0.18MFF, while French exports to the island amounted to 0.07MFF.[cxxii] In the case of Nauru, both French exports and imports were worth 0.07MFF.[cxxiii] French trade with Kiribati included 0.01MFF worth of imports and 14.63MFF worth of exports, while the respective figures for Tonga were 0.02MFF and 0.16MFF.[cxxiv] In the 1990s the island Pacific remained dependent on high levels of foreign aid and was one of the least economically advanced regions in the world, constituting an unpromising area for major French trade expansion.

 

The geographical reductionism involved in grouping disparate countries under the umbrella of a Pacific super region by French commentators was an action which obscured the physical distances between states with vastly different economies, cultures, and governments.[cxxv] The validity of the concept of the Pacific as a single community was difficult to accept. Culturally as well as economically, the asserted unity of this community was a fiction.[cxxvi] An Aleutian Eskimo, a Chinese peasant, an Australian sheep farmer and an Easter Islander have little in common other than their labelling by the Institut du Pacifique as inhabitants of this supposed Pacific community. In such a large grouping, the island micro-states of the South Pacific tended to be ignored in preference to attention concentrated on social and economic trends in Asia.[cxxvii]

 

In discussion below of French policy on the Pacific, it is important to bear in mind that the South Pacific was in some cases assumed by politicians in Paris to be part of a much larger Pacific entity, even though the globally significant parts of that greater entity may have been distant from the South Seas. This attitude was evident in analyses by Baumel and Flosse mentioned earlier. They on occasion portrayed the French military in the South Pacific as being directly affected by superpower confrontation in the North Pacific, even though several thousand kilometres separated these elements. The references above to Lemoine, Barre, the RPR, Mitterrand and Rocard also showed similar signs of geographic reductionism. As much as anything else these examples illustrate the analytical shorthand that must be adopted, and the misleading impressions to which it can give rise, when referring to large expanses of the world. The same reductionism was evident when French politicians talked of French African policy, assuming that a single policy could be uniformly applied to the varied situations of African countries. The assumption made by the Institut du Pacifique that the Pacific was a homogeneous entity was not adopted as a consistent argument in the foreign policy of French Governments from 1981.

 

Nevertheless, Asia and the South Pacific have been considered by French diplomatic structures to be part of a single entity, if only for administrative purposes. Traditionally, Pacific foreign affairs were handled by the Quai d'Orsay under its Asia and Oceania directorate.[cxxviii] The Asian section of the directorate had greater administrative resources at its disposal due to its coverage of major nations such as Japan, China, Indonesia and India. The Oceania subdirectorate, created in 1978, was among the least well-staffed subdirectorates at the Quai d'Orsay, and consisted of three to five personnel in the 1980s.[cxxix] In the 1980s, there existed a growing awareness in the diplomatic corps that the South Pacific constituted a separate entity, with its own issues. Charles-Henri Montin, then the Political Counsellor at the French Embassy in Wellington, was careful in 1985 to distinguish between France's differing relations with various countries in the Pacific basin, and shied away from going so far as to state that these relations were evidence of an overall Pacific policy

 

In spite of [...] enthusiasm shown in France by our learned analysts of new trends, it is not possible to speak of an overall policy for the Pacific, taken as a whole. France, like other industrialised countries, has strong economic ties with countries of the North Pacific such as the United States, Canada, and Japan, but they do not really stem from their Pacific location but rather from their own intrinsic economic significance.

Also, there does not seem to be the same community of approach to problems in the North Pacific as there is in the South Pacific. [...] Therefore I would hesitate to say that France has an overall Pacific policy, but we are certainly trying to define a policy for the South Pacific.[cxxx]

 

Jean-Pierre Gomane, the cofounder and Vice-President of the Institut du Pacifique, has described France as having an "impressionist" Pacific policy, in the sense of it looking acceptably coherent from a distance, while not standing up to close scrutiny.[cxxxi] In asserting this, he was not necessarily highlighting a deficiency in French foreign policy. Given the scope of the word "Pacifique" as defined by Gomane and his colleagues, it was not surprising that France should not have possessed a unified policy for such an enormous geographic area. It is questionable whether France could define a coherent Pacific policy, any more than it could formulate a coherent Eurasian policy.

 

As the American historian, Robert Aldrich, has pointed out,[cxxxii] the outlook of the Institut du Pacifique was part of an intellectual trend in the 1980s that was not restricted to France. The idea of a forthcoming "Pacific century" had its roots in Japan and California in the 1970s,[cxxxiii] where postwar economic prosperity led to the articulation of the belief that better was yet to come there. Such thinking has tended to ignore the South Pacific.[cxxxiv] The islands of the South Pacific had little importance in global trade, and were of marginal economic interest compared to the commercial activities of North America and Asia.[cxxxv] Californians had become less optimistic by the early 1990s. The Los Angeles riot of April 1992 was a symptom of racial disharmony in the State. A state fiscal crisis, declining employment opportunities in the defence and aerospace industry due to the end of the Cold War, increasing unemployment generally, and a slump in real estate prices, contributed to the depressed socio-economic condition of California by 1993.[cxxxvi] Japan experienced a slowing rate of economic growth in the early 1990s as its rapidly developing Asian neighbours - South Korea, China, and Taiwan - became increasingly competitive exporters on the international market. While neither California nor Japan was in decline, it was by no means manifest that they would enjoy the same economic prosperity in the twenty-first century that they experienced from the 1950s to the 1980s. Nor was the economic growth of various South-East Asian countries without its difficulties. Industrialisation had been accompanied by increased environmental destruction and pollution, the collapse of traditional agriculture, and an increasing gap between rich and poor. Political unrest had not diminished in the region, as evidenced by civil disturbances in China, Thailand and Myanmar since the 1980s.[cxxxvii] A decade after the promotion of the image of a Pacific century, it appears that aspects of that vision as it might apply to North America and parts of Asia may not live up to expectations.

 

Aldrich pointed out that as an intellectual trend, the vision of the Pacific as a new centre of the world was by no means a new one. The theorising of the Institut du Pacifique had its forerunner in the lobbyists of the Colonial Party, who were active in metropolitan French politics in the 1880s. What Aldrich described as "a round of Pacific mania" followed the publication at that time of two books by Paul Deschanel, a French Deputy who became President of the Third Republic in 1920.[cxxxviii] Deschanel's message in the 1880s, like that of the Institut du Pacifique a century later, was that France's destiny as a global power was at stake in the Pacific. Either the Republic could boost its presence in the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, Wallis and Futuna, and French Polynesia in the face of rivalry between the regional powers of the day (Britain, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands), or it could let itself be marginalised and shut out, to the detriment of its future as a global power.[cxxxix] Yet in the century that followed, France neither greatly boosted its South Pacific presence, nor saw itself shut out of the zone. The Pacific Ocean represented a less important part of its global presence than its African and Asian colonies, and it is debatable whether the global grandeur of France suffered as a consequence. This consideration should be borne in mind when contemplating millenarian predictions concerning the French role in the Pacific in the twenty-first century.

 

Taken to the extreme offered by the Institut du Pacifique, arguments for the presence of the Fifth Republic in the South Pacific in the 1980s were vague, theoretically ill-conceived, nostalgic for a level of global grandeur which France no longer enjoyed, and consequently somewhat removed from reality. French diplomats like Montin who worked in the South Pacific had ample reason to be sceptical of such analyses and to sarcastically refer to their proponents as "our learned analysts of new trends".[cxl]

 

For all the unabashed boosterism of the Institut du Pacifique, stripped of extreme attendant assumptions, the basic assessment drawn by the organisation concerning the French stake in the Pacific region was correct. As a result of the presence of the Pacific TOM, France undeniably had and retained a stake, albeit minor, in the zone. Faced with a changing international scene, France found itself in search of a new set of relations in the region, to replace those that it had previously formed with Britain, the last of its European rivals to decolonise.

 

French Regional Diplomacy

 

Discussion in the preceding two sections of the reasoning behind French foreign policy in the South Pacific has drawn on unofficial discourse and theorising to serve as contrast to the positions of French Governments since 1981. Considerable effort has been made to dispel both misleading official and unofficial assessments of the French military and economic role in the zone in order to gain a clear picture of why France was still present there. In the course of this analysis, it has been demonstrated that while some arguments offered by French political leaders and commentators were erroneous, France had certain tangible interests in the South Pacific which it desired to protect. Continued French sovereignty over its possessions there assured satisfaction of the desire of French citizens in the Pacific TOM to stay French, enabled the maintenance of a French nuclear deterrent, the guardianship of whatever resources lay beneath the extensive French Pacific EEZ, and assured the Fifth Republic bases for the regional projection of French political, economic, scientific and cultural influence. As Cheysson indicated in November 1981, the best method to protect such French interests when confronted with criticisms from nations in the South Pacific was to engage in patient dialogue on French policy. This chapter's final section considers the administrative structures which Paris deployed in response to its desire to further dialogue with, and to promote its interests to, the nations of the South Pacific.

 

A common assumption expressed in the 1980s was that Paris was in the process of belatedly rediscovering the South Pacific. The Institut du Pacifique asserted in 1983 that this circumstance was part of a wider rediscovery of Asia and the Pacific by Mitterrand and the Mauroy Government, after years of governmental neglect of those areas under the Fifth Republic.[cxli] Actually, the stirrings of greater official interest in the Pacific date from the 1970s. As was evident in the Eighth Plan for the DOM-TOM, published in 1980, greater regional integration of the Pacific TOM was already deemed a laudable goal in Parisian administrative circles before Mitterrand's presidency. In 1979 the Dijoud Plan for New Caledonia had also advocated regional integration, emphasising the desirability of a reduction in New Caledonian isolation from its Pacific neighbours. Improving communications, increasing commerce, and promoting more scientific, cultural and technical exchanges with the South-West Pacific was stated to be a major priority.[cxlii] A necessary preliminary step to the attainment of this goal, both for New Caledonia and for the other two Pacific TOM, would be the extension and improvement of French diplomatic relations in the South Pacific. Under the presidency of Giscard d'Estaing, certain intitiatives were taken in this domain.

 

A meeting took place late in December 1978 which was a forerunner to the different high-level committees formed in the 1980s to discuss Pacific policy. The meeting combined officials from the Quai d'Orsay and from the rue Oudinot. There had since the 1940s been liaison between the Foreign Ministry and the Ministry of the DOM-TOM where French foreign policy interests coincided with the administration of the Pacific TOM. The main example was provided by French decisions on matters arising from the South Pacific Commission, which included in its domain the French TOM. Officials from both Ministries had represented France in meetings of the Commission since its foundation in 1947, and interministerial discussions had regularly been held in Paris on the French response to matters concerning the Commission.[cxliii] At the meeting on Pacific policy in December 1978, the French High Commissioners of the New Hebrides, New Caledonia, and French Polynesia, as well as the Superior Administrator of Wallis and Futuna, and the Ambassadors to Australia and New Zealand attended alongside various Ministers. The group endorsed the Dijoud Plan and discussed wider French cooperation in the South Pacific.[cxliv] The activities of Dijoud in the South Pacific as Secretary of State to the DOM-TOM were not limited to the internal administration of the Pacific TOM and the implementation of reforms there. During two regional tours in June and September 1979 he visited Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea to discuss French policy with government representatives.[cxlv] Discussions by Dijoud involved fending off criticisms of French nuclear and decolonisation policies as well as offering an update of reforms in the Pacific TOM and in the New Hebrides.

 

This was by no means the first visit by a French Secretary of State to the region to articulate French regional policy. As Secretary of State to the DOM-TOM, Olivier Stirn had visited Australia and New Zealand in March 1975 to defend French nuclear testing and to brief government officials in Canberra and Wellington on his forthcoming administrative reforms.[cxlvi] Papua New Guinea, which had attained independence in 1974, was also the target of French diplomacy. In June 1976, Bernard Destremau, the Secretary of State to Foreign Affairs, had visited Port Moresby to inform the PNG Government of France's wish to develop closer links in the region. He was following up an announcement, made by the French Embassy in Canberra in 1975, that Paris was contemplating establishing diplomatic representation in Port Moresby.[cxlvii] Destremau inquired about the prospect of establishing a diplomatic post in Papua New Guinea.[cxlviii]

 

This visit was an early sign of France's interest in expanding its diplomatic network in the South Pacific, which since the end of World War II had centred on two Embassies, one in Canberra and another in Wellington. As various islands attained sovereignty in the 1960s and 1970s, it became apparent in Paris that a new set of relations would have to be formulated with the emergent states of the South Pacific. At first this was done by accrediting the French Ambassador in Wellington to island states. Formal French relations with Western Samoa, Fiji, and Tonga, were established in 1971 by these means, followed by Papua New Guinea in 1976, then Nauru and Tuvalu in 1979.[cxlix]

 

While accreditation was adequate for the exercise of contacts with the smallest nations in the region, for larger countries it was decided in Paris that permanent representation would be more appropriate. Papua New Guinea, as a mineral-rich country with the largest population in the zone after Australia and New Zealand, appeared a logical site for an embassy. Although a diplomatic post was established in March 1978,[cl] two years passed before a resident ambassador took up duties there. This delay was largely due to the reluctance of the PNG Government to associate too closely with France. PNG Government representatives had attacked French handling of the decolonisation of the New Hebrides in 1979, and were opposed to ongoing French nuclear testing.[cli] These differences did not prove to be insurmountable, and an ambassador was eventually appointed. On 12 November 1980 Antoine Colombani, the first French Ambassador to reside in Port Moresby, had his credentials accepted.[clii]

 

The French Embassy at Port Moresby was one of three French Embassies created in the South Pacific in 1980. The second Embassy was in Port Vila, where Yves Rodriguez took up his posting as the first French Ambassador to Vanuatu on its independence in 1980. In view of the French colonial heritage in the islands, and the French-speaking community in Vanuatu, Port Vila was a natural choice for an ambassadorial posting. In spite of troubled bilateral relations during and in the months immediately following decolonisation, Paris wished to maintain cordial contacts with Port Vila, partly to support the survival of French language and culture in Vanuatu.[cliii]

 

The third ambassadorial posting was to Fiji. In June 1980 Robert Puissant became the first resident French Ambassador in Suva.[cliv] There were varied motives for installing an ambassador there. Fiji's geographical position was one aspect. The islands lie roughly central in the South-West Pacific, at the hub of regional shipping and air routes. After Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, Fiji had the largest population of any South Pacific island state. It was also a major force in island politics. Suva had played a large part in the formation in 1971 of the South Pacific Forum, the first multilateral political grouping established in the zone, and had emerged as a prominent regional participant in the Lomé Convention, a trade and development agreement set up in 1975 between the EEC and African, Caribbean and Pacific nations.

 

The establishment of three new ambassadorial posts in the South Pacific was a major step forward for the exercise and development of French policy there. Though none of them were created by a Socialist Government, the Port Moresby, Port Vila and Suva embassies were to serve as contact points with island states and were instrumental in furthering French regional relations under Mitterrand. In the wider scheme of French global diplomacy, such measures were of a small-scale nature, but along with the cross accreditation of the French Ambassador to New Zealand during the 1970s, these three embassies offered signs of increased French diplomatic activity in the South Pacific which preceded the advent of Mitterrand. The South Pacific had not been a major concern in the workings of Fifth Republican foreign policy because of a combination of historical precedent, and geopolitical concerns which from 1958 kept French attentions and priorities preoccupied elsewhere. The decolonisation of Africa, the Cold War in Europe, relations with NATO since de Gaulle partially withdrew France from it in 1966, and European integration, to name just four broad areas which dominated French foreign policy, required a far greater deployment of state resources than did the South Pacific. Comments to the effect that the South Pacific had been neglected should be viewed in the context of these larger concerns.

 

During the French election campaigns of 1981, the foreign policy issues which were the subject of debate were far removed from the South Pacific. The prominent topics of that period included European integration, relations with the United States and the Soviet Union, and areas of instability such as Nicaragua, Afghanistan, and Poland. Giscardian foreign policy had been dominated by the place of France in Europe.[clv] The PS Créteil manifesto of January 1981 offered noble sentiments advocating the reduction of the arms race between East and West while expressing support for French nuclear deterrence, the promotion of European integration, the maintenance of solidarity with developing nations, particularly in Africa, and the preservation of French cultural and democratic traditions in the world. It had nothing to say on the Pacific.[clvi] Mitterrand's 110 Propositions called for superpower withdrawals from Afghanistan in the case of the Soviet Union, and from Latin American dictatorships in the case of the United States. Support was expressed for the Polish trade union movement, peace in the Middle East and the independence of Chad. These issues constituted the concern of the first five Mitterrandian propositions. Numbers 6 to 13 concerned disarmament, the establishment of a more just global economic order, and France's place in Europe, while points 105 to 112 considered nuclear dissuasion, NATO, relations with the Soviet Union, China, the Mediterranean, Africa and Quebec.[clvii] Again, no specific mention was to be found of the South Pacific. These points accurately reflected major French external interests in the early 1980s. When Mitterrand took over the presidency in 1981, his immediate foreign policy concerns touched on the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia, and did not extend to the South Pacific.[clviii]

 

South Pacific affairs were nonetheless not entirely absent from the attentions of the Socialist Government. From 4 to 8 May 1982, a special conference was held at the Quai d'Orsay on Asia and the Pacific. This meeting followed the lines of that organised under Giscard d'Estaing in late 1978. High officials associated with the Asia-Pacific region gathered to discuss what role France should play there.[clix] The meeting arrived at similar conclusions to that of 1978. The need for greater French participation in the zone was reiterated, particularly if France did not wish to be excluded from the benefits of economic growth there. Cheysson underlined the importance of greater French economic activity in the region. Mitterrand took interest in this conference, and met with the various diplomats involved for two hours on 7 May.[clx]

 

Mitterrand was not to pay a presidential visit to the South Pacific until his brief stop in New Caledonia on 17 January 1985, which was more concerned with domestic TOM policy than with foreign relations. Prior to that though, he did send an envoy to the South Pacific to explain French policy. His choice of spokesman was an interesting one. Régis Debray had established his reputation in the 1960s as a fellow traveller of the Cuban revolution, and was as much admired on the French Left as he was reviled on the Right for the time he had spent in the Bolivian jungle with Ché Guevara. A staunch opponent of what he characterised as Yankee neo-colonialism in Latin America, Debray had written theoretical works on guerilla warfare on the basis of his experience.[clxi] Mitterrand employed him as a presidential adviser on Latin American affairs, an appointment which must have surprised state officials in Washington. From 1983, Debray was assigned the South Pacific as well.

 

In June 1983, Debray toured the region to explain French nuclear policy to regional leaders, and to inform them of developments in government policy in New Caledonia. From 13 to 23 June, he met leaders in Port Vila, Suva, Wellington, Canberra and Port Moresby, including Prime Minister Lini of Vanuatu, Jonati Mavoa, acting Fijian Foreign Minister, Robert Muldoon, the Prime Minister of New Zealand, Prime Minister Hawke, and Mr Nilkare, the acting PNG Foreign Minister.[clxii] Debray proposed that a South Pacific delegation of scientists inspect the test facilities at Moruroa to allay any suspicions about their safety, explaining that Mitterrand had decided to continue testing to strengthen the French nuclear deterrence in the face of persistent superpower rivalry. The offer was accepted by New Zealand, Australia and Papua New Guinea.

 

The irony of a figure who had opposed Yankee neo-colonialism in Latin America since the 1960s, acting in the 1980s as an apologist for what leftists in the South Pacific described as French nuclear colonialism, was not lost on some commentators. It was pointed out that various conservative Australian leaders were to the left of Debray in their desire to end French nuclear testing and to see the decolonisation of New Caledonia.[clxiii] It is fascinating to gauge through Debray the extent to which the cultures of the French Left and that of the South Pacific Left were divergent. Gough Whitlam, the former Australian Prime Minister, highlighted the differences speaking as the ALP delegate to a meeting of the Socialist International in Copenhagen from 24 to 26 April 1984.[clxiv] Whitlam derided the French Socialist Government for its continuation of nuclear testing, and described French sovereignty over its Pacific territories as an "anomaly".[clxv] Whitlam portrayed these aspects of the French Pacific presence as chauvinist, backward, colonialist and conservative. It is a characterisation which was to be reiterated by Labor Ministers, as is discussed further in chapters 6 and 7.

 

Debray on the other hand preferred to view the French South Pacific presence positively, emphasising internationalism and progress. In harmony with political figures of the Centre and Right, he lauded the Pacific TOM for their usefulness as ground stations for satellite communications and summed them up as bases for "significant technological, scientific and cultural potential which we can make available to the region".[clxvi] In the same vein, he characterised resistance to the French regional presence as reactionary:

 

It is true that there exists a massive rejection of the French presence using nuclear matters as a pretext, and which is based on what unifies Oceania a religious mentality and an Anglo-Presbyterian ethic, a synthesis between custom law and the Biblical morality of London missionaries. All of which is relayed by the University of Suva in Fiji, until now the only one in the South Pacific, which has trained the entire political elite of the region for 30 years, for whom things nuclear are simply immoral. The rejection is of a mythical and emotive nature.[clxvii]

 

Debray's analysis contained various simplifications and inaccuracies. While both tribal and church leaders in the South Pacific were opposed to French testing, his attribution of regional anti-nuclear sentiment solely to a combination of Protestantism and tribal law was overly narrow. As will be discussed in depth in the following chapter, regional opposition to French nuclear testing has been based on more than moral objections. There were genuine scientific uncertainties that could be expressed about its safety, independent of any custom or religious ethics. It was likewise inaccurate to describe the USP as having trained all the political elite of Oceania during the preceding 30 years. For example while Prime Minister Walter Lini of Vanuatu, a vocal critic of French testing, had received the mix of Presbyterian and tribal upbringings described by Debray, he had never attended tertiary courses in Suva. Nor was the USP the only university in the region where certain students might assert anti-nuclear sentiment. The University of Papua New Guinea, to name just one other example, was a centre for anti-colonialist and anti-nuclear sentiment as well.[clxviii]

 

Although his understanding of regional anti-nuclear activism contained flaws, Debray reiterated the message that Cheysson had offered in November 1981. Regional fears of, and distrust with, aspects of the French presence in the South Pacific would be overcome by patient dialogue:

 

These States must be treated considerately, with a spirit of openness and dialogue, whereas up till now there has been a tendency to live with a fortress mentality, affronting the Pacific of the '80s with a '60s mentality. [...] But we must neither have any complexes, nor offer any excuses for being there.[clxix]

 

Debray agreed with the geostrategic analysis of the Pacific made by the Institut du Pacifique. He portrayed the Pacific as a single entity, stressing the economic and resource potential of the zone for France. He also shared ground with the French conservative politicians and military officials who hung the spectre of possible Soviet expansionism over the region:

 

The Pacific has no people, but the ocean is full of protein, energy, polymetallic nodules. 23 million inhabitants spread over one third of the globe, with countries here and there of 25 square kilometres seems a bit derisory. But with the extension of 200 nautical miles, France is now the third largest maritime power in the world due to the fact that she is also a Pacific country. And in the 21st century the ocean will constitute a capital resource. The combined services complex being built [sic] in Nouméa is looking toward the future. Strategic analysis is horrified by voids although there may not yet be any external threat to the South Pacific, it would be wrong to think it miraculously protected. The USSR has already signed a fishing agreement with Kiribati, and the United States no longer has a monopoly over naval forces in the North Pacific.[clxx]

 

These were ironic words from a man who in the 1960s had backed Castro's Cuba, a base for Soviet military penetration in the Caribbean. Here Debray could be compared to a Pentagon spokesman warning against the potential for Soviet infiltration in the Americas, although no Soviet client state eventuated in the South Pacific to enable regional Soviet destabilisation of the sort that led to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Debray's discussion of the potential value of French maritime resources in the twenty-first century was a more valid projection, assuming the technology and the need to exploit them would exist. In both respects however, France was portrayed as taking a long-term view of its place in the Pacific.

 

Before 1985, it was difficult to assess what Debray's superior, Mitterrand, thought of France's role in the South Pacific. His attention was preoccupied with other matters for the first three years of his presidency. Presidential statements on the region were limited to reiteration of French resolve to continue nuclear testing, and his attitude to the question of New Caledonian independence on the occasion of visits to the Elysée by regional heads of government. Such was the case in discussions with Prime Minister Muldoon on 17 June 1981 and 9 May 1983, and with Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara, the Prime Minister of Fiji, on 11 March 1982.[clxxi]

 

From 1985, Mitterrand took a more active interest in the region. The catalysts for this greater interest were the political troubles in New Caledonia, and the debacle of the Rainbow Warrior bombing which, along with ongoing nuclear testing, contributed to a nadir in French relations with South Pacific states. Mitterrand's first two presidential visits to the South Pacific,[clxxii] his stop in New Caledonia on 19 January 1985 and his first visit to Moruroa in September 1985, offered visible signs of presidential support for the Fabius Government at a time when the French stance on nuclear and decolonisation issues had rendered it widely unpopular in the zone. The presidential trip to New Caledonia had no direct bearing on French foreign relations, being devoted to internal politics; such was not the case with the second trip.

 

Mitterrand, accompanied by Hernu and Roland Dumas, then Foreign Minister, arrived at Moruroa on 14 September, at the height of controversy over French responsibility for the Rainbow Warrior bombing. It was the first presidential visit to the atoll since de Gaulle had been there in September 1966. In part, the presidential tour highlighted the importance of the DOM-TOM in the development of French high technology, although this technology was not without its hitches. En route to French Polynesia, the party stopped at Kourou in Guyane to attend the abortive launch of an Ariane rocket.[clxxiii] The Moruroa visit involved an inspection of the facilities of the CEP. No nuclear test was conducted in the presence of the President in September 1985. In this respect Mitterrand's itinerary differed from that of de Gaulle nineteen years before.

 

While at Moruroa, Mitterrand presided over the first meeting of the South Pacific Coordination Committee, which had been created on 8 September 1985. The members of the Coordination Committee were similar to those who had participated in the Asia-Pacific policy conference in 1982. In addition to the President, the Defence Minister and the Foreign Minister, in attendance were Pierre Joxe, then Interior Minister, Pisani, and Lemoine. French Ambassadors to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, the United States, Fiji, and Vanuatu attended, plus civil and military government officials working in the region. In spite of the presence of the Ambassador to Japan, the Asian content of the earlier conference had been separated to allow greater concentration on the South Pacific. The choice of Moruroa as a meeting place for such an assembly of high officials was a novel one, although the subject of discussions was similar to the Asia-Pacific conference, and concerned French economic, cultural and diplomatic relations. The general aim of the South Pacific Coordination Committee was to serve as a forum for the ongoing review of French regional policy. The body was intended to meet again in four months.[clxxiv]

 

Michel Vauzelle, the presidential spokesman, gave the impression that the meeting served as an affirmation of France's will to remain in the Pacific, and to pursue such policies as were deemed appropriate, without bending to regional pressure "no doubts can be cast on the sovereignty of France".[clxxv] The projected installation of the strategic base at Nouméa was suggested to be a sign of the French will to preserve its regional interests. Mitterrand's own declaration, delivered on his return from Moruroa, indicated that France would make its own decisions concerning its Pacific presence, in the same manner as the other great powers in the region. He stressed that France would be increasing its role in the zone.[clxxvi]

 

The presidential trip received the approval of UDF and RPR leaders. Giscard d'Estaing described Mitterrand's comments on the French presence in the South Pacific as encouraging after the proposal for independence in association for New Caledonia announced by Pisani on 7 January 1985. Charles Pasqua, then President of the RPR group in the Senate, portrayed the voyage as an affirmation of the French South Pacific presence which formed a justifiable riposte to regional critiques.[clxxvii] Mitterrand's expression of French aims in the Pacific was made in terms  with which the UDF and RPR found it difficult not to agree.

 

The Moruroa meeting of the South Pacific Coordination Committee was to be its first and last. At a Council of Ministers meeting on 23 December 1985 the Committee was replaced by the South Pacific Council. This new body was to have a wider brief than acting as a forum for the consideration of policy. The Council of Ministers announced that the South Pacific Council "shall contribute to the affirmation of the French presence and to ensuring the defence of its interests, in the context of dialogue with its regional partners".[clxxviii] Nevertheless the South Pacific Council had a similar membership to its predecessor. (Appendix 7) The President presided over council meetings, which were to be held either in the Pacific TOM or in Paris. Alongside the various Ministers, Ambassadors and High Commissioners, provision was made for the participation of the French Polynesian Territorial President, and of the New Caledonian Territorial Congress President. The Council was assigned a Secretary-General, chosen by the President. His initial choice turned out to be Debray, who was appointed to the post on 18 January 1986. Debray presided over the first meeting of the South Pacific Council in Paris on 26 February 1986.[clxxix]

 

This first meeting considered a draft decree for the establishment of a French University of the South Pacific, and adopted a programme for the reinforcement of French scientific cooperation.[clxxx] The activities of the South Pacific Council were cut short by the installation of the Chirac Government in March 1986, although council projects were not discarded. The South Pacific Council itself was allowed to gather dust on the sidelines as Chirac and his Ministers would have nothing to do with it.[clxxxi] Any prospect of Chirac and Pons, as well as André Giraud, the new Defence Minister and Jean-Bernard Raimond, the new Foreign Minister, discussing an area as potentially controversial as South Pacific policy, at a meeting presided over by Mitterrand, and accompanied by Debray, was an unpromising one for all concerned. For the Chirac Government, the South Pacific Council did not offer an inspiring forum for the formulation of French policy. Had the Council been used, it is probable that its meetings would have been stultified by the same glacial ambience which hampered sessions of the Council of Ministers from 1986 to 1988.[clxxxii] The Chirac Government did not act to dissolve the South Pacific Council, perhaps because this step would have added another contentious issue to relations that were already tense in the novel setting of cohabitation.

 

The South Pacific Council was effectively replaced by the Chirac Government even though it had not been formally dissolved. Chirac presided over a new body for the consideration of South Pacific policy the Interministerial Committee devoted to the South Pacific. The Committee included Flosse, Raimond, Pons, Giraud, the Minister of Cooperation and the Finance Minister. For the Chirac Government the advantage of this body over the South Pacific Council was that policy could be discussed without the attendance of Mitterrand. The group met at irregular intervals to consider topics such as the establishment of the French University of the South Pacific, aid to Fiji, and the opening of a Consulate in Hawaii.[clxxxiii] A second group which considered Pacific policy under cohabitation was the conference of high officials and French diplomats working in the South Pacific. This body was reminiscent of the South Pacific Coordination Committee, except that again the President was not a participant. These conferences were held in the Pacific TOM. Three were held during cohabitation; the first at Papeete in November 1986, the second at Nouméa in May 1987, and the third in French Polynesia at Huahine in March 1988.[clxxxiv] Discussions concentrated on how to respond to regional discontent with French policy in New Caledonia and over nuclear testing, and provided opportunities to announce various aid initiatives.

 

Under cohabitation the domain of French foreign policy became affected by a power struggle between the head of state and the head of government, just as DOM-TOM policy was. In the case of foreign affairs though, Mitterrand was in a stronger position to influence Chirac. Constitutional practice gave the President supreme control of the armed forces, which meant that Mitterrand could not simply be excluded from the formulation of defence policy, or from international disarmament negotiations. His role as head of state likewise meant he could not be excluded from dealings with bilateral and multilateral organisations, and he continued meeting foreign representatives. This situation led to some unprofessional incidents, such as deciding who should represent France at EC summits, and tiffs over the relation of the Elysée to the Quai d'Orsay,[clxxxv] but French foreign policy was not greatly disrupted by cohabitation. To a great extent, Mitterrand and Chirac agreed on the broad issues of foreign policy.

 

This level of broad agreement can be discerned in the conduct of South Pacific policy from 1986 to 1988. A different style was evident in the handling of this domain by the Chirac Government that has been mistakenly interpreted as indicative of a "new South Pacific policy". Stephen Bates, an Australian academic, wrote that under Chirac France completely reversed standing New Caledonian policy and French relations with independent island states.[clxxxvi] Such an assertion is inaccurate. Pons carried out the self-determination referendum scheduled for New Caledonia by the Pisani/Fabius Interim Statute, and like its Socialist predecessors the Chirac Government was not prepared to hand independence to a Kanak minority. Rather than representing a complete reversal, such policy contained major elements of continuity. With regard to foreign policy too, the installation of a new government in Paris did not alter the interpretation of French regional interests. As had been the case since 1981, during cohabitation the French Government worked to explain French positions on nuclear testing and decolonisation, while increasing cooperation and integration with South Pacific states, in broad continuity with French policy orientations as characterised by Cheysson in November 1981. Aid and development work undertaken from 1986 to 1988, described as signs of new French relations in the South Pacific, was not without precedents, whether Giscardian or Socialist, in spite of wider distribution during this period.

 

Rather than relying on Debray to articulate French policy, on 20 March 1986 Chirac chose to appoint Flosse to a new ministerial-level post: Secretary of State charged with the Problems of the South Pacific. Flosse's title was indicative of how the region was regarded by the Chirac Government as problematic. Following the rise in 1985 of regional lobbying over New Caledonian self-determination, the creation of the Rarotonga Treaty and the advent of the Rainbow Warrior affair, under the Fabius Government the South Pacific had become a touchy area that needed tending. In accordance with the criteria outlined by Cheysson in November 1981, the Chirac Government moved to dissipate regional opposition to the French presence via dialogue and improved cooperation.

 

The decision to appoint Flosse showed a willingness to tackle French "problems" in the South Pacific from a new angle. Previous ministerial representatives active in the region had been metropolitan Frenchmen, with no great prior experience of the zone. Flosse enjoyed the distinction of being both, as he put it, "from the Pacific and French",[clxxxvii] two qualities that he claimed enabled him to represent France better than most metropolitan Frenchmen. He had already established contacts with regional leaders during his time as Territorial President of French Polynesia, when he had cemented closer relations with the Cook Islands, as well as lobbying the South Pacific Forum. His Polynesian ancestry and his ability to speak Tahitian gave him an advantage over his predecessors in dealing with Polynesian countries. This acquaintance with South Pacific leaders and Polynesian culture gave Flosse an entrée into regional affairs that Debray had lacked.

 

According to instructions issued by Chirac, Flosse was to act as a roving ambassador to the South Pacific, explaining French nuclear policy to regional leaders while endeavouring to improve France's standing with them by encouraging greater aid and cooperation. Flosse's new capacity entailed several novel features. Flosse was to be subordinate to Pons. As Secretary of State Flosse was not assigned the task of articulating French policy on the issue of New Caledonian self-determination. Despite the centrality of this "problem" in regional politics at that time, this deliberate omission was made because Flosse's links with the RPCR put him out of contention. Unlike his ministerial colleagues, Flosse operated from Papeete rather than Paris. This was the first time that a French representative at this level had had an office in the South Pacific. As Secretary of State to the South Pacific, Flosse would be working in an area normally the domain of the Quai d'Orsay. Flosse was given authority by Chirac to conduct negotiations with South Pacific states, and to promote French scientific, technological and economic activities, with the full assistance of the Foreign Ministry.[clxxxviii]

 

In his instructions, Chirac showed signs of agreeing with the characterisation of the Pacific as an area destined to become increasingly important in world affairs, describing it as "an ocean destined to play a growing role in the years to come".[clxxxix] Flosse was to improve the reputation of France in this increasingly important zone, as part of what Chirac described as "the significant effort which I intend to make in order to set right France's prestigious image in the South Pacific".[cxc] Some of the more grandiose ideas Flosse advocated did not see the light of day, such as the regional defence pact mentioned earlier in this chapter, or the foundation of a pan-Polynesian economic, cultural and social community.[cxci] Regardless of such unrealised plans, Flosse was a vigorous and enthusiastic representative of France in the South Pacific from March 1986 to May 1988. He travelled extensively in the region, voicing French policy and organising various aid and cooperation initiatives. From 16 April 1986 to 21 November 1987, Flosse made 33 official trips in his capacity as Secretary of State, including 18 to Paris, 15 to South Pacific island states, and six to Pacific rim nations. During this period of 20 months, he spent 247 days travelling.[cxcii]

 

In spite of the new ministerial appointment, the established basic elements of French South Pacific policy had not changed. The description offered by Flosse to the National Assembly on 21 October 1987 of how France should project itself in the South Pacific displayed striking similarities to Cheysson's summary of French regional policy conduct, which had been presented in the same forum in November 1981:

 

We [the French Government] must explain in the context of dialogue that we wish to conduct unconditionally, the presence of France in the Pacific, its usefulness and even the necessity of it. [...] affirmation of the influence of France in the South Pacific responds to a double internal objective [...]. The first is the membership of these territories [the TOM] in the Republic. This is based on the free determination of the peoples concerned. It is advisable that our neighbours understand this. [...] The second is France's defence force and, through it, its contribution to the strategic balance and the maintenance of world peace. These elements depend on the existence of the nuclear testing laboratory which is Moruroa. [...]

But all the new opportunities for benefiting from our presence, which we want the countries of the Pacific to enjoy, will be to no end if we do not come to establish relations based on trust. This is why I have strived unflaggingly to establish personal contacts with the leaders of the Pacific, whom I approach, one by one, in a manner which takes into account their position vis-à-vis our country.[cxciii]

 

Regardless of the departure of the Socialists from government, the concern that Cheysson, and later Debray, had stressed to sustain patient and persevering dialogue, on the double basis of democracy and the defence of French interests, persisted under Chirac.

 

As was the case with Pons and New Caledonian policy, the re-election of Mitterrand in May 1988 and the installation of the Rocard Government cut short activities supervised by Flosse in the South Pacific. The position of Secretary of State to the South Pacific was abandoned. The PS did not have any suitable French Pacific representative in its ranks to fill the post, even had it wished to retain this creation of Chirac. The Quai d'Orsay also influenced the decision. The appropriateness of having an unorthodox figure with an assortment of responsibilities transcending the boundaries of established portfolios had been questioned in some quarters. Resentment existed among career diplomats working in the zone over the arrival of an itinerant political appointee in their sphere.[cxciv] The aid and development initiatives negotiated by Flosse impinged on work already being done by diplomats in the region, who disliked being upstaged.

 

Direct control of overseeing French relations with the South Pacific was transferred by the Rocard Government to a Permanent Secretary to the South Pacific. It was announced in September 1988 that this post, of ambassadorial rank, would be attached to the DOM-TOM Ministry, an indication of the Permanent Secretary's function of coordinating increased links between the Pacific TOM and the region.[cxcv] The first appointee to this post was Philippe Baude, a career diplomat who had been Ambassador to Vanuatu in 1985.[cxcvi] The Permanent Secretary was assigned the task of being French Ambassador to the South Pacific Commission, and became Secretary-General of the South Pacific Council.[cxcvii]

 

The reactivation of the South Pacific Council by the Rocard Government was announced in September 1988, but did not hold its second meeting until May 1990. Before that date however, high-level consideration of regional policy had been far from inactive. The Rocard Government retained the conferences of ambassadors and high officials in the South Pacific that had been set up under Chirac. The fourth of these meetings, presided over by Le Pensec, was held in Nouméa from 10 to 12 February 1989. Apart from Le Pensec, in attendance from Paris were delegates of the Ministers of Defence, Foreign Affairs, Research and Technology, and for Rocard. The state representatives to the Pacific TOM were also present, as well as the First Secretaries of the French Embassies at Washington and Tokyo.[cxcviii] The Nouméa conference reiterated the concerns of past meetings on the position of France in the region. The three key orientations of the meeting consisted of deliberations concerning how to increase regional cooperation with the Pacific TOM, how to associate the TOM more closely with the conduct of French foreign policy, and how to integrate France more fully into the region. To this end twelve aid and cooperation priorities with Pacific nations were listed, covering a range of educational, cultural, technical and scientific concerns.[cxcix] This announcement made by Le Pensec concerning the need to open the Pacific TOM to greater integration into their regional environment harked back to ideas circulating ten years before.

 

Le Pensec tied in the conference with the implementation of the Matignon Accords, highlighting the utility of increased regional cooperation for the development of New Caledonia and the other Pacific territories, and indicating that territorial leaders would be allowed to play a greater role in the expansion of regional cooperation:

 

This regional approach of opening up the Overseas Territories can only succeed if local elected representatives have direct participation. The exercise of their responsibilities in measures for regional cooperation conducted from these Territories in the economic, social and cultural fields will enable them to break out of their relative isolation in the region.[cc]

 

A certain intellectual evolution had taken place here compared with four years before, when Pisani had reacted vigorously against the proposals of the Interterritorial Alliance for giving territorial leaders a greater concern in external negotiations. Both the Matignon Accords the year before the conference, and the amendments to the French Polynesian Autonomy Statute the year after it, allowed territorial representatives a greater say in territorial external relations. Further discussion in chapter 8 analyses tours made, from the time of the Rocard Government, by territorial delegations expanding foreign contacts in numerous fields.

 

At Papeete on 17 May 1990, during his third presidential visit to the South Pacific since 1981, Mitterrand picked up the issue of the participation of territorial leaders in French regional integration and cooperation. In a press conference after the second meeting of the South Pacific Council, Mitterrand pointed to this participation as a major development since the first council meeting in February 1986.[cci]

 

The Papeete meeting of the South Pacific Council declared the need for greater cooperation between the Pacific TOM and their neighbours and announced the extension of courses at the French University of the Pacific as a step towards encouraging links. Inter-university exchanges and greater research would be encouraged through the extension of tertiary facilities. Environmental concerns were also discussed. An observatory for the surveillance of the environment was to be created, and it was announced that France would work to fulfil the protection of the environment under various existing conventions.[ccii] In other words Paris was to keep its promises on existing environmental commitments. These two points and the extension of university courses were significant if conventional declarations. Of greater interest were the final two measures announced in the council communiqué under the rubric "Protection of people and resources". Reserves of materials for disaster relief were to be set up in the Pacific TOM for use either there or in neighbouring states. In addition, it was announced that France was prepared to offer surveillance of foreign EEZs to those states which requested it.[cciii] These were genuinely new intitiatives which were to be of considerable importance in furthering regional relations in the 1990s, as is outlined in greater detail in chapter 8.

 

Overall, the second meeting of the South Pacific Council had the aura of a showpiece. It was organised as part of the presidential tour of French Polynesia during the centenary celebrations of the commune of Papeete. The initiatives it announced could have been made in Paris at less expense and with less flourish, and its introductory proposal to increase the part that territorial representatives were to play in regional policy was recycled from the conference of ambassadors and high officials that had been held in Nouméa the year before. Since its foundation the Council has not been very vigorous. Its inactivity under the Chirac Government was through no fault of its own, but the Papeete meeting was the sole instance of a council gathering during the first five years of Mitterrand's second term of office. The policy role of the South Pacific Council has mainly consisted of rehashing messages on French regional integration which had already been presented elsewhere, and making announcements about the implementation of a small number of projects of modest prestige out of proportion with the rank and number of the members of the Council. The willingness of Mitterrand to increase French participation in regional affairs should not be doubted. The high rank of the Council's members indicated the degree of importance attached by the President to the South Pacific. It is less certain that the regional integration of three territories with fewer than 500,000 French citizens between them merited a superintendent body as elevated as the South Pacific Council.

 

Although not disposed to meet the jetset pace of Flosse during his time as Secretary of State to the South Pacific, representatives of the Socialist Governments from 1988 to 1993 maintained France's profile in the region. Prime Minister Rocard himself played a particularly important role. The pressing demands of the New Caledonian portfolio made him immediately aware of the South Pacific to a greater extent than any preceding Prime Minister under the Fifth Republic, and he extended that awareness to foreign relations in the zone, being the first French Prime Minister to visit Australia and Fiji, in August 1989, and New Zealand, in April 1991. This activity, as he himself pointed out, underlined the regard with which Paris held the region, and was a sign of willingness in Paris to improve contacts and bridge differences.[cciv]

 

The two tours made by Rocard fulfilled comprehensively the criteria concerning the conduct of French South Pacific policy as laid down by Cheysson in November 1981. Rocard made patient efforts to explain French nuclear policy to the sceptical Australian and New Zealand press corps, and was able to present a positive summary of recent developments in New Caledonia under the Matignon Accords.[ccv] While in Christchurch on 30 April 1991 he met New Zealand environmentalists to discuss French policy on the Antarctic, and drift net fishing.[ccvi] Emulating those French representatives who had gone before him, in 1989 and 1991 Rocard unambiguously informed his hosts in Canberra, Wellington and Suva that France reserved the right to conduct policy as it saw fit in the Pacific TOM. In the case of his New Zealand tour, the opening of another series of nuclear tests at Moruroa six days after his departure from Christchurch on 1 May 1991 drove that message home.[ccvii]

 

Compared to earlier decades, French diplomatic activity since the late 1970s has shown signs of greater attention being paid in Paris to foreign relations in the South Pacific. The three embassies established in 1980 provided a diplomatic network that reinforced the cross-accreditation in the 1970s of the French Ambassador in Wellington to island states. During the 1980s the French Ambassador in Suva took charge from his counterpart in Wellington of relations with Tonga, Tuvalu, Nauru and Kiribati. (Table 45) While French diplomatic relations with Polynesian island states generally fared well, links with Melanesian nations were beset with troubles. As will be discussed in greater detail in chapter 8, two French Ambassadors to Vanuatu were expelled in the 1980s, and the Solomon Islands declined cross-accreditation of the French Ambassador in Port Vila. In Papua New Guinea the French Embassy survived the minor tribulations of periodic anti-nuclear and anti-colonialist protests by local unions, only to be struck in March 1991 by the announcement of its impending closure by the Quai d'Orsay as part of budgetary cutbacks. After the reduction of the embassy staff to two by April 1992 (one diplomat and a security guard), it was decided in Paris to retain the post after all.[ccviii] The decision to close the Port Moresby Embassy had been described in July 1991 by Alain Vivien, then Secretary of State to Foreign Affairs, as a major mistake that would set back French regional diplomacy.[ccix] In the end, Vivien's position prevailed over budgetary considerations. In spite of the efforts of successive French Governments to improve relations with the South Pacific, progress during the 1980s was uneven and interspersed with diplomatic setbacks in the cases of the Melanesian states.

 

Above ambassadorial level, changing approaches to the region were implemented. Various bodies established to consider Pacific policy changed name and form due to the differing influences of metropolitan French political parties. The decision to form the South Pacific Council in 1985 was a response to the high profile that regional issues had assumed that year. From 1986 to 1988 such measures as the appointment of Flosse, the conferences of senior officials, and the creation of the Interministerial Committee devoted to the South Pacific, similarly responded to the prominence of regional issues, and marked an attempt by the Chirac Government to distinguish its initiatives from those of the Socialists. After the end of cohabitation the reactivation of the South Pacific Council, and the creation of the post of Permanent Secretary to the South Pacific, were in turn motivated by the desire of the Rocard Government to distance itself from the activities of the Chirac Government.

 

From 1988 to 1993 continuity in structures existed but, relieved of major controversy comparable to that of 1985, for Paris the South Pacific in general was no longer as pressing a dossier as it had been. That the South Pacific Council only met once during this period of Socialist Government is revelatory in this respect. French geostrategic rhetoric about the Pacific being the new centre of the world, and about the necessity for France to bolster its interests there, had lost its asserted urgency by the early 1990s. The collapse of the Soviet Union removed whatever military threat there might have been. And on the political level, the suspension of its nuclear testing and the implementation of the Matignon Accords rendered France a more welcome partner in regional affairs than it had been. With regard to innovations in regional representation, the one effort made was the appointment of Jacques Lafleur as French trade delegate to South-East Asia and the Pacific on 20 July 1993.[ccx] Lafleur resigned from the post months later due to commitments as Deputy for New Caledonia. Gaston Flosse's absence from the stage of regional representation under Balladur was notable. As a close associate of Chirac's, Balladur's greatest rival in this period, Flosse was unlikely to regain his former position as Secretary of State Charged with the Problems of the South Pacific.

 

Under Chirac's presidency, surprisingly Flosse likewise did not regain his former position, although he was selected to be France's signatory to the Rarotonga Treaty in Suva on 25 March 1996.[ccxi] The failure to recreate a permanent post for Flosse was indicative of the lower priority that the South Pacific held for Paris in the mid-1990s. By the time of the annual meeting of French ambassadors in Paris on 28 August 1996, the South Pacific was no longer a major agenda matter. Instead, in a press conference that day, Hervé de Charette, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, declared that Latin America was to form the major new axis in the development of French regional diplomacy.[ccxii] Perhaps too the change in emphasis was indicative of Flosse's greater preoccupation with the pressing issues of French Polynesian domestic affairs. Consequently, French representation at the height of regional discontent over Chirac's resumption of nuclear testing in 1995 had been entrusted to Jacques Godfrain, a representative of the Ministry of Cooperation. It was he who was selected to attend the South Pacific Forum meeting at Madang, PNG, on 16 September 1995 to present Paris's case for further tests and not the charismatic Flosse.[ccxiii] It was evident that the priorities of French liberals and conservatives in government had changed since the days of Flosse's regional shuttle diplomacy from 1986 to 1988.

 

 A year later, there still existed some superficial resentment over French testing, in spite of tests having ended in French Polynesia in January. The South Pacific Forum announced in August 1996 that France would not be invited to its annual meeting, scheduled for September in the Marshall Islands.[ccxiv] Nevertheless Forum members had still not allowed French actions to hinder wider trade, diplomatic, cultural and technical cooperation, as is discussed in chapter 8. Following the end of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific in February 1996, in the absence of further sources of tension, France shall be free to pursue its target of regional integration into the twenty-first century, although this evolution will be dependent on socio-economic and political stability in the Pacific TOM.

 

 

Notes

[i] In order to protect against unscrupulous operators, no notes, bibliography or other references are provided in this Web publication. Readers wanting a specific reference may contact me at wsmccall@maxnet.co.nz.

 

© Wayne Stuart McCallum 1996.

 

 

 

Contents         Previous Chapter         Next Chapter

 

 

 

Web site © Wayne Stuart McCallum 2003-2017