French South Pacific Policy 1981-1996
by Dr W. S. McCallum © 1996
Conclusion
This conclusion integrates the themes of parts 1 and 2, the domestic politics of the Pacific TOM and French foreign relations in the region, as the basis for a summary of French policy in the South Pacific since 1981. As became evident in part 2, there has been some interplay between French national politics and external relations in the South Pacific, with both positive and negative consequences for the perception of France by governments in the zone. In encouraging the economic development of the Pacific TOM, French Governments worked towards furthering links with these territories' regional neighbours. Political debate over Kanak nationalism in New Caledonia and over the role of nuclear testing in French Polynesia spilled into the arena of international politics, with the South Pacific Forum members acting as advocates of anti-colonial and anti-nuclear policies perceived in Paris as anti-French.
There are two major pitfalls in considering French policy which this work has endeavoured to avoid. The first consists of explaining presumed shifts in policy through analytical preoccupation with what are assumed to be major dilemmas. One French commentator, Jean-Christophe Victor, has suggested that progress came from crisis in the South Pacific. South Pacific countries' criticisms of French conduct in the region made Paris rethink and reshape its policy.[i] To some extent this is a valid judgement. The formation of high level committees to consider French policy in the South Pacific in part reflected a response to events in the zone. It was not merely coincidental that Mitterrand oversaw the creation of the South Pacific Council in December 1985, at a time when the South Pacific Forum was promoting the Rarotonga Treaty, when the Greenpeace affair had yet to reach its protracted conclusion, and when the issue of New Caledonian self-determination remained unsettled. The activities of Flosse as Secretary of State to the South Pacific demonstrated the concern of the Chirac Government too to respond to regional critics of France.
Yet while the administrative bodies dealing with the South Pacific came and went, the standing goal of furthering the integration of France into the region through patient dialogue and cooperation with the states of the South Pacific, articulated by Claude Cheysson in the National Assembly in November 1981,[ii] stood as a policy orientation which predated and transcended disputes later in the 1980s. The South Pacific Council, as well as the posts of Secretary of State to the South Pacific and Permanent Secretary to the South Pacific, were expressions of a French willingness to improve relations with the zone which has subsisted regardless of changing governments in Paris. Two integral parts of that South Pacific presence, whether administered by Socialist Governments or under cohabitation, were the maintenance of support for nuclear testing until April 1992 for reasons of national defence, and an unbending refusal to unilaterally grant independence to the Kanak minority in New Caledonia because of basic democratic and constitutional considerations. Such continuity in policy should not be obscured by analytical fixation with disputes that have not durably threatened the French presence in the region.
The crisis resolution assessment of French policy formulation preferred by some French political writers[iii] should not moreover be taken too far in the context of French external relations with the South Pacific. Placing aside the sensationalism of contemporary press accounts, and the overstated comments of political leaders of the day, it might be asked if this model was entirely appropriate. As neither the Rarotonga Treaty nor the Rainbow Warrior affair posed a serious threat, either to Mitterrand, to the Fabius Government, or to French sovereignty in the South Pacific, to what extent might these issues validly be considered crises for the Fifth Republic? They might be better described as passing contretemps. The influence of Forum lobbying on French policy for the South Pacific should not be overestimated. For all their individual and joint efforts, it cannot be said that the nations of the South Pacific alone brought about any policy changes in Paris on the major issues of New Caledonian self-determination or nuclear testing. Nor, more notably, did the varying degrees of discontent expressed by these countries over French policy on these subjects weaken the resolve of Paris to pursue greater cooperation with the South Pacific.
The scenario of French Governments responding, or failing to respond, to encroaching crises has some greater applicability to their exercise of domestic policy in the French Pacific, although here too its importance should not be misjudged. The succession of statutes prepared for New Caledonia in the 1980s constituted evolving responses to Kanak activism and French loyalism in the territory, but at no point did local discontent menace state institutions or sovereignty, in spite of pessimistic predictions of civil war and secession. Neither claims by the RPCR from 1984 to 1985 that Socialist reforms were leading inexorably to Kanak independence, nor Tjibaou's apocalyptic assertions from 1987 to 1988 that the Chirac Government was attempting to eliminate Kanaks, proved to be more than wild, politically-motivated invective, as unconstructive as the divisive, cliché-ridden declamations French parliamentarians voiced over New Caledonia. The inclination shown by party leaders in Nouméa and Paris from 1984 to 1988 for the politics of confrontation has receded to some degree since the signature of the Matignon Accords. The political fits and starts of the earlier period have been replaced by sustained efforts which, whatever their shortcomings, have been designed to improve the status of Melanesians in New Caledonian society, through the accordance of greater economic and administrative responsibilities to them, and by working toward the wider economic development of the territory.
While unrest disturbed New Caledonia in 1984, French Polynesia, on the other hand, could only with difficulty be described as experiencing crisis. The smooth implementation of the Internal Autonomy Statute that year contrasted with the rapid abandonment of the Lemoine Statute, which had been promulgated at the same time. The renovation of French Polynesian administration by the introduction of the new statute in 1984, and its modification in 1990, were calm, ordered responses to the lobbying of French Polynesian political leaders. Nevertheless a decade later the territory faced major problems to which statute reform alone could not adequately respond. Mismanagement by Territorial Governments since the granting of greater autonomy in 1984, political infighting in Papeete taken to absurd extremes, and the reduction of the fiscal support to the local economy provided by the nuclear test programme since the test suspension announced in April 1992, placed French Polynesia in a difficult situation that by 1996 had not necessarily been resolved by the nostrum of economic compensation from Paris.
The second pitfall to avoid in the analysis of French relations with the South Pacific is uncritical acceptance of the responses of regional governments to French policy. This work began with examination of the administrative policy and reforms implemented in the Pacific TOM, as investigation of their functioning and problems is central to understanding the French presence in the South Pacific. The fundamental limitation of regional perspectives on France in the zone in the 1980s and into the 1990s, noted at length in chapters 6 and 7, has resided in an inability to accept or to understand the constraints French Governments faced over self-determination in New Caledonia, as well as regional incomprehension over Mitterrand's acceptance of nuclear deterrence and the implications for French Polynesia. Certain double standards evident in the stances of South Pacific states should not be disregarded. In addressing nuclear policy and decolonisation issues Australia, the largest nation in the zone, exercised a penchant for taking anti-colonial and anti-nuclear positions at France's expense while turning a blind eye to its own colonial heritage and its continuing nuclear alliance with the United States. Prime Minister Lini's acceptance of French aid at the same time as making anti-colonialist and anti-nuclear remarks was the most pronounced example of an island leader who attacked French Government policy while accepting its benevolent aspects.
This work has preferred to look at the French Pacific from the French viewpoint in order to better understand why governments in Paris behaved in a certain manner which South Pacific Forum nations frequently found difficult to comprehend, or to sympathise with. The reactions of South Pacific states to French policy are less important in comprehending the reasoning for French regional policy than an examination of the economic, social and political structures of the Pacific TOM, the influences of French political parties, the constitutional workings of the Fifth Republic, as well as the view of the region from Paris. Regional perceptions, often clouded by misunderstandings and partisan political outlooks, have constituted more of an obstruction than an aid to rigorous examination of French regional policy.
For this reason, as well as transcending the view of French policy conduct as a response to a series of flashpoints, this conclusion presents an assessment of the implementation of French internal and external policy in the South Pacific since 1981 judged by the criteria set in Paris. A balance sheet is drawn up to enable assessment of the extent to which French Governments achieved their policy goals under Mitterrand's presidency.
In addition to dispelling the myths and misunderstandings associated with South Pacific perspectives on France and the region, so too this work has attempted to penetrate French party political posturing with the aim of ascertaining the extent to which French Governments differed from one another in policy conduct. In the process a great degree of continuity has been described. Just as the French preoccupation in external policy, whether overseen by Socialist or liberal-conservative governments, was to improve the Fifth Republic's relations with the South Pacific, in the administration of the Pacific TOM similar continuity was perceptible. Party propaganda of the 1980s concerning future prospects was misleading in this regard. Right-wing scaremongering in Nouméa and Papeete at the time of the elections of 1981 about the imminent encroachment of communism under the Socialists did not come to pass any more than did the excessively optimistic Socialist promises of a transformation of life in the French Pacific.
Over a decade has passed since Joseph Franceschi's statement of Socialist intent, offered in the National Assembly debate on the DOM-TOM in 1980, of "an new economic, social and cultural policy" for the DOM-TOM without forgetting to consult the inhabitants of the territories themselves.[iv] This reference to the need for political consultation with the inhabitants of the DOM-TOM, also outlined in the Eighth Plan, had certainly been acted upon in the French Pacific by the 1990s. Kanak militantism by the FI and later by the FLNKS played no small part in prompting government reforms for New Caledonia, whether to the advantage or to disadvantage of the Fronts. The creation by the Mauroy Government of the Internal Autonomy Statute in French Polynesia, in consultation with Flosse, showed the degree to which Paris was prepared to transcend party political differences. It was the Socialists, in government for most of the period examined by this work, who played the major part in reforms in the Pacific TOM. From 1986 to 1988 their reforms in New Caledonia were overturned under Chirac, but not durably, while in French Polynesia, his administration was content to leave in place legislation which had been introduced by them. During the second period of cohabitation from March 1993 to May 1995 the Balladur Government did not contemplate statute reform, preferring to avoid creating the opportunity for further controversy and confrontation of the sort provoked by reform under the Chirac Government in the 1980s.
Statute reform in New Caledonia and in French Polynesia implemented by Socialist Governments from 1981 gave the inhabitants of French Polynesia and New Caledonia greater control of their own administration, and enabled them to take charge of elements of local economic, social and cultural policy. The Internal Autonomy Statute created a Territorial Government in French Polynesia, with its own Ministers, within the context of the Fifth Republic. The Statute formally recognised local culture, and equipped territorial representatives with the means to formulate social and economic policy. After abortive attempts at statute reform by Socialist Governments and by the Chirac Government from 1984 to January 1988, the promulgation in November 1988 of the new territorial statute set up by the Matignon Accords allowed Kanaks and loyalists in New Caledonia greater influence over economic, social and cultural policy by ceding them administrative control at provincial level. Any assessment of the Matignon Accords prior to their culmination in 1998 is necessarily provisional, but as long as the cooperation between the French State and territorial parties is not disrupted by a return to violent militantism, they can be judged to have enjoyed some success. This state cession of greater powers was not necessarily a good thing in the case of French Polynesia, where territorial politicians' profligate spending, divisive bickering and unimaginative administration contributed to rising debt and budgetary problems, which were in turn aggravated by the loss of territorial revenue derived from the French military presence following the suspension of nuclear testing.
The administrative renovations implemented in New Caledonia and in French Polynesia were not contemplated for Wallis and Futuna, arguably the part of France least touched by Socialist reforms under Mitterrand. The modernisation of local public works went on there, largely unaffected by changing governments in Paris, as did a refusal to contemplate statute reform in Paris until 1991. Incongruously, regardless of the absence of major Socialist reforms in the Territory, the electoral influence of the PS nonetheless experienced staggering growth from the time of Mitterrand's election in 1981 until the end of his second term 14 years later. In the second round of polling in May 1981 against Giscard d'Estaing, the Socialist candidate had attracted a slender following of 113 votes in Wallis and Futuna, or 2.30% of territorial votes cast (Table 23). Seven years later, against Chirac his support rose in the second round to 1,694 votes or 26.42% of territorial votes cast (Table 27). By comparison Mitterrand's successor, Lionel Jospin, enjoyed unprecedented support. In the second round of the 1995 French presidential elections, in Wallis and Futuna he gained 2,494 votes (44.42% of the 5,614 votes cast), against Chirac's 3,086 votes (54.97% of votes cast).[v] This was one of the most surprising and paradoxical consequences of Mitterrand's terms in office at the end of the first period of Socialist presidency under the Fifth Republic, and in spite of its shortcomings, Wallis and Futuna was more receptive to change under Socialist leadership than it had ever been before.
While introducing territorial administrative changes, reforms undertaken by Paris from 1981 did not transform the economic situation of the French Pacific. What were described in the Eighth Plan in 1980 as the underlying socio-economic disadvantages of the Pacific TOM remained present in the early 1990s. The geographic situation of these territories limited the extent to which economic growth might occur. The distance of the French Pacific from metropolitan France meant that goods imported from Europe, on which all three territories remained dependent, continued to be expensive owing to high freight costs. The competitive pricing of exports to Europe was likewise hindered by shipping costs, and by competition from producers closer to metropolitan France. That over 90% of New Caledonian nickel was exported to Japan rather than to France was due to the availability of nickel from sources closer to France, resulting in lower import costs to metropolitan French industry. Although developing trade links has been a part of the integration of the French Pacific with its regional neighbours, these links, as in the DOM, have yet to advance to the point of displacing dependence on expensive imports from metropolitan France.[vi] In 1993 the General Planning Commission estimated that an absolute majority of the imports of the TOM came from metropolitan France, and that an absolute majority of their exports were destined for metropolitan France.[vii] Trade with Pacific neighbours was restricted by the limited market potential of island state economies and, in the case of the larger Australian and New Zealand markets, by their own production capacity, as well as by the Australasian capacity to import goods more cheaply from other island exporters such as Fiji.
The Eleventh Plan for the DOM-TOM, published in 1993, reiterated the structural problems which had been described by the Eighth Plan thirteen years before. The economic development of the Pacific TOM was restricted by their small population bases, the narrow range of exploited resources, and their "massive" dependency on state subsidies and expertise.[viii] It was urged, as in past plans, that local production bases should be expanded, both for import substitution and for export growth, were lasting economic development to take place. However, as mentioned above, the geographic and demographic barriers to such progress remained considerable. Past unrealistic targets such as the hope that the TOM would become self-sufficient in food had been abandoned by the Eleventh Plan. By the 1990s attempts to promote commercial agriculture in the French TOM, as in the DOM, had fallen far short of expectations held in the 1970s. State and territorial development initiatives had been unable to restore agriculture in New Caledonia and in French Polynesia to levels it had enjoyed three decades before. Manufacturing and light industry were still of marginal importance, a reflection of small local markets, lack of resources, and the distances from major export markets. Tourism was referred to in terms of its great potential, but this potential was likewise hindered by distance from major markets, and by high prices. Plans for EEZ exploitation had still not gone beyond talk of great potentialities, whether in the fields of deep sea fishing or mining.
Apart from established industries such as mineral exploitation in New Caledonia and pearl farming in French Polynesia, no major chances for export-led economic growth in the Pacific TOM presented themselves. According to the Eleventh Plan, of the Pacific TOM, New Caledonia appeared set for the most prosperous future, although this scenario was dependent on the resolution of political tensions under the Matignon Accords.[ix] The French Polynesian economy was described by the Eleventh Plan as being in a perilous situation.[x] Reduction in the past level of funding from the nuclear programme, difficulties in attracting tourists to the territory, and the absence of major new production areas were considered to be major troubles that needed addressing. A single sentence devoted to development prospects in Wallis and Futuna concluded that what finances locals enjoyed existed thanks solely to the presence of state administrative and social services.[xi] Considering the low level of exports from Wallis in Futuna this was a reasonable assessment.
As was indicated in the Eighth Plan, the existence of proportionately large state and territorial administrative and social services in the Pacific TOM served as a brake on the promotion of primary and secondary sector production. As civil service jobs continued to be better paid and more secure than private sector posts, they attracted the better educated inhabitants of the French Pacific. The gap between high civil service salaries and those received by workers and management in the private sector had not been closed and was regarded as a problem still to be solved.[xii] Although the presence of large state and territorial administrations overseeing the operation of welfare facilities in line with metropolitan French standards had resulted in improved standards of living, in the absence of employment opportunities to welfare recipients an assistance mentality had also been instilled.[xiii] Welfare had to be displaced by job creation.[xiv] The traditional answers of encouraging private investment in a variety of areas were suggested as the best manner of overcoming the employment problems of the Pacific TOM, even while past inadequacies in private sector job creation were admitted.[xv]
The Eleventh Plan added that an evolution of mentalities was required, both in Paris, and among representatives from the DOM-TOM. The leaders of the DOM-TOM had to go beyond begging for state funding and take the initiative of resolving socio-economic problems by themselves.[xvi] This latter point was particularly relevant to French Polynesia.[xvii] The Plan questioned the deficiencies of state administration in the Pacific TOM. The various Ministries in Paris had to improve their coordination in the DOM-TOM and train more administrators with specialised knowledge of local conditions. Again, French Polynesia presented a good example of the consequences of lopsided planning by one Ministry without adequate coordination with others. Thirty years after the implantation of the CEP in French Polynesia, while the demands of national defence had been satisfied, officials in Paris and Papeete were still trying to resolve the social and economic consequences of the greater dependence the presence of the nuclear testing programme had promoted. Referring to the use of French Polynesia as a platform for nuclear testing, the Eleventh Plan observed "National strategy is flawed when both the societal effects of this influence and the consequences of its change, suspension and reduction are neither measured nor taken into account."[xviii] A similar case could have been made for New Caledonia. French settlement there in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, facilitated by the confiscation of tribal lands from the indigenous inhabitants, and their cultural and social marginalisation by colonial society, had created inequalities and interethnic enmity which state reforms in the 1980s only partially addressed. Whether current and future leaders of the Fifth Republic will be capable of setting right the damage caused by their predecessors remains to be seen.
The Eleventh Plan was a revelatory document in that it highlighted the degree to which past optimism has been replaced by greater realism in Parisian administrative circles. The Plan demonstrated that the Socialist hope of radical social and economic change in the Pacific TOM from 1981 had been restricted by a range of structural considerations that government reforms may never overcome. While the idealistic Socialist future projected for France by Mitterrand and the Mauroy Government in 1981 had receded into history by 1993, the social inequalities and economic deficiencies they faced in the French Pacific remained to test the imagination of the Balladur Government and its successors.
By 1996 the Juppé Government faced fewer substantial challenges in the domain of foreign relations than in the administration of the Pacific TOM. Differences over nuclear testing and the fate of New Caledonia, to which much speculation and commentary had been devoted in the 1980s, had been calmed by the conclusion of French nuclear testing in the South Pacific in January 1996, and by the continued implementation of the Matignon Accords. The positive response of the South Pacific Forum to these two developments facilitated the dialogue with regional nations, and the greater cooperation, that French Governments had been pursuing since the 1970s.
The improvement of French relations with South Pacific countries through diplomacy and aid has been a more durable feature of French regional relations than the periodic expression of differences over nuclear testing and the fate of New Caledonia. With only rare exceptions (the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu), South Pacific states have generally hesitated to harm their relations with France over these issues. Only the Solomons and Vanuatu were prepared to disrupt diplomatic contacts by expelling or refusing to accredit French diplomats on political grounds. With the minor exception of the Hawke Government's embargo of uranium sales to France from 1983 to 1986, no South Pacific government in the 1980s adopted trade sanctions against France on the grounds of anti-nuclear or anti-colonial policy. The Lange Government, in spite of protesting the bombing of the Rainbow Warrior as a breach of New Zealand sovereignty, had not been willing to participate in anti-nuclear protests in waters of Moruroa when approached by Greenpeace earlier in 1985.
France, for its part, usually offered a conciliatory response to regional criticisms of its presence, while refusing steadfastly to tolerate South Pacific attempts to influence the exercise of domestic policy in the Pacific TOM. The French response to Forum lobbying in the UN over New Caledonia consisted of patient, unbending explanation of the constitutional and democratic motives for its actions, regardless of the degree of hostility to the exercise of French sovereignty over its Pacific possessions. On the subject of testing in French Polynesia, France has invoked the prerogative of its sovereignty over the territory, and the dictates of national defence policy, as adequate justification for its activities. Protests over French policy in these two areas have been seen by Paris as constituting a regional challenge to its authority over the Pacific TOM. Sometimes the French defence of its policy from this challenge has involved overly peremptory ripostes. The Rainbow Warrior bombing proved that certain officials in the Ministry of Defence were capable of making an ill-measured response on the basis of faulty intelligence and paranoia, action which damaged France's image in the region. The expulsion in 1987 of the Australian Consul in Nouméa, for having distributed innocuous aid to Melanesians, was unconvincingly trumped up by the Chirac Government as political interference at a time when Australian comments on New Caledonian policy were an irritation. On other occasions, French Governments have been notably patient. The maintenance of relations with the Lini Government in the 1980s, however reduced, was an example of fortitude under trying circumstances for the sake of retaining French influence in Vanuatu.
In other cases, what was considered evidence of 'French arrogance' by regional leaders when Paris refrained from meekly accepting their criticisms, was no more than the sort of reaction they themselves might have offered if a foreign power had challenged aspects of their own national policies. That French Governments refrained from international lobbying taking to task Fiji for its ethnic troubles, Australia for its heritage of discrimination against Aborigines, or Papua New Guinea for its handling of atrocities on Bougainville, is demonstrative of a degree of restraint and tolerance absent in the foreign policy conduct of the South Pacific Forum. French comments made on such issues were instead limited to their use as illustrations of why South Pacific nations should address their own internal problems before venturing to advise France on its domestic affairs.
This French avoidance of treating the internal affairs of South Pacific countries as a legitimate domain for commentary proved advantageous in improving aid relations with Fiji from the time of the coups in 1987. Good relations with Tonga were a constant during the 1980s and 1990s. In spite of the philosophical distance between French Republican and Tongan monarchic values, there were no grounds for mutual discord because neither Paris nor Nuku'alofa impinged on the other's domestic policies. In these instances French circumspection, combined with the expression of good-will through aid and cooperative efforts, contributed to the aim of generally improving relations in the South Pacific.
The expansion of the French diplomatic network in the South Pacific from 1980 as Paris's response to the changing international situation there occurred in spite of both regional antipathy to France, and past French disinterest in the zone. French diplomatic relations, trade and cooperation, built up with Australia and New Zealand since the 1940s, continued regardless of certain differences of opinion. As well, France made important progress in increasing its participation in the grouping of independent nations established in the South Pacific as a result of British decolonisation from the 1960s. Although relations with the Melanesian Spearhead Group members were not a model for success in the 1980s, in the 1990s the possibility for improvement remains provided divisions in New Caledonia do not experience a resurgence. In contrast, inroads made by French diplomacy in Fiji and Polynesia have produced more positive results for Paris.
For all the improvements in French relations with the South Pacific since the 1970s, the global importance of these developments should not be exaggerated. As a consequence of the marginal importance of the South Pacific in world affairs, and considering French foreign policy preoccupations elsewhere, the zone is not likely to be a major priority for France in the rest of the 1990s. Nonetheless, since the 1970s Paris has shown a greater awareness of its South Pacific presence, working actively to maintain its Pacific TOM and to improve its foreign relations in the zone. Unless a majority of the electorate in one or more of its Pacific Territories claims independence, France should maintain its existing presence in the South Pacific into the twenty-first century. Whether or not the Pacific TOM become independent, French Government policy is to promote their integration into the region in order to lessen dependence on a distant mainland, a positive precondition for the maintenance of good relations with neighbouring states and the furtherance of bilateral and multilateral links.
Should France's relations sour in the event of a resurgence of political violence in New Caledonia, any resumption of South Pacific Forum lobbying over these issues will probably not greatly harm the maintenance of a French South Pacific presence. French representation in the region has survived adverse Forum reactions before nearly 30 years of objections to nuclear testing in French Polynesia, disapproval of the French handling of the decolonisation of the New Hebrides, pro-independence lobbying over New Caledonia, and protests over the Rainbow Warrior bombing, to list but the most prominent examples. If the 1980s and 1990s offer any precedent, the more beneficial aspects of the French presence in the South Pacific in terms of trade, cooperation and aid will limit the extent to which the Forum would be prepared to campaign against French interests. As in those two decades, France would in any case pursue its domestic policies in the Pacific TOM and, as far as possible, its foreign policy of regional integration, regardless of any regional hostility.
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.
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