The
interplay between France, Australia and neighbouring Pacific island
nations has improved since the days of French nuclear testing – but
tensions remain
This week, French president François Hollande is making a flying visit to Australia and the French territory of New Caledonia.
The interplay between France, Australia and neighbouring Pacific
island nations has improved since the days of French nuclear testing and
the armed conflict that divided New Caledonia in the 1980s. But behind
the diplomatic bonhomie, there are looming decisions on
self-determination and debate over France’s ongoing role in the Pacific.
After attending the G20 meeting in Brisbane, Hollande flew to New
Caledonia for his first official visit. The island nation, one of
Australia’s closest neighbours, is one of three French dependencies in
the Pacific region. After a rushed program over 36 hours, Hollande
returned to Sydney to begin the first ever state visit to Australia by a
French president.
In recent years, successive ALP and Coalition governments have
welcomed France’s ongoing colonial presence in the Pacific islands,
presenting the French state as a force for stability in the region.
In 2012, then prime minister Kevin Rudd signed the Australia-France
joint statement of strategic partnership, highlighting improved
relations between the two countries. This policy reflects co-operation
with France on the global stage (for counter-terrorism,
non-proliferation and NATO operations), but also France’s contribution
to regional maritime surveillance. The bipartisan support to keep the
French government onside is driven in part by concern that French
disengagement from the Pacific would increase Australia’s obligation to
provide development assistance to newly independent states.
But as Hollande meets Australian prime minister Tony Abbott in
Canberra, there are some areas of tension between the socialist party
leader and his conservative host – especially on climate policy.
During his visit to New Caledonia, Hollande and French foreign
minister Laurent Fabius joined a high-level dialogue on climate change,
attended by prime ministers and presidents from Vanuatu, Kiribati, Niue,
Tuvalu and Cook Islands and diplomats from other Pacific nations.
The island leaders welcomed France’s role as host of crucial climate
treaty negotiations to be held in Paris in December 2015 – one of the
pillars of a global deal in Paris will be adequate and accessible
climate finance for vulnerable countries. Last week, US president Barack
Obama pledged US$3bn to the Green Climate Fund (GCF), a new global
mechanism to respond to the ravages of climate change in developing
countries. In Noumea, Hollande highlighted France’s recent €1bn
commitment to the fund.
The contrast with Canberra could not be sharper. Australia was
co-chair of the GCF until October 2013, but at last year’s Commonwealth
meeting in Sri Lanka, the incoming Abbott government announced that it
would not contribute to the fund at this time. With another pledging
round this week, Canberra is under diplomatic pressure to follow a range
of developed countries – Germany, Sweden, New Zealand, Mexico and South
Korea – which have pledged resources.
Hollande’s fleeting visit to New Caledonia also highlighted another
crucial challenge for the islands region – the decolonisation of the
remaining dependent territories administered by France, Britain, the US
and New Zealand.
France has colonies in every ocean of the world and Paris wants to
retain a strategic foothold in the Asia-Pacific region through its
presence in New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna.
In a major speech in Noumea, Hollande said that the French government
will remain neutral between supporters and opponents of independence
for New Caledonia, as they move towards a referendum on
self-determination before the end of 2018. He stressed however that
France would remain a Pacific power, welcomed by its neighbours: “That
wasn’t always the case in past decades. But today, they ask us to remain
present, because we can also help assure the future of the region.”
With the post-2008 financial crisis in Europe, there is growing
discussion within the French state about the need to reduce spending in
France’s overseas dependencies (each year Paris allocates some 2.5bn
euros to its Pacific territories). Key ministries however argue that
French taxpayers must continue extensive funding to maintain France’s
status as a mid-sized global power.
A February 2014 report by a French Senate commission argued that the Pacific should be an ongoing strategic focus:
“The exercise of our sovereignty over these vast stretches and the international competition we face are certainly a difficult cost to bear in this period of crisis. But this is an investment for the future, an historic opportunity for growth and expansion.”
For France, with its far-flung colonial empire, the UN convention on
the law of the sea provides significant advantages. With overseas
dependencies in the Pacific, Caribbean, Indian and Atlantic Oceans,
France has the world’s second largest exclusive economic zone (EEZ),
after the US. France has only 340,290 square kilometres of EEZ in
Europe, but its overseas dependencies add 11m square kilometres
worldwide, including more than 7m in the Pacific.
A recent Senate report highlights the importance of this maritime
zone, both for sovereignty and for potential economic benefits:
“Thanks to its overseas possessions, France is one of the countries affected - indeed the most affected - by this revolution in sharing the oceans. Its EEZ is in fact the second largest behind that of the US and beyond this, the most diverse. Present in both hemispheres and at all points of the compass, the French EEZ is the only one on which the sun never sets”
New Caledonia holds an estimated 25% of the world’s nickel reserves
and in the eastern Pacific there are also significant seabed resources,
which can be tapped with new technology. French corporation Technip is
working with Nautilus Minerals to support seabed mining in waters off
Papua New Guinea, while Total is partnering with Oil Search in
exploration for hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Papua. Geoscience Australia
and France’s Extraplac program have jointly explored international
waters between Australia and New Caledonia, to determine the presence of
a new petroleum reserve in the Capel and Faust basins.
A central focus of current Australia-France engagement is through
military cooperation, especially for maritime surveillance in Pacific
EEZs. The 2006 Australia-France Defence Co-Operation Agreement sets the
framework for engagement through officer exchanges and joint military
exercises like Southern Cross and Pitch Black.
Paris is also eager to extend Australian purchases of French military
technology from corporations like Thales and Eurocopter, which have
major investments in the Australian defence sector. In Australia,
Hollande is accompanied by a major delegation of French business leaders
and officials hope to expand the relatively limited trade between the
two countries (Last year only 0.2% of France’s principal imports came
from Australia, which is ranked 53rd amongst all countries exporting to
France).
Less publicised are common interests in cyberspace, intelligence and
metadata collection. Like the ANZUS allies, France monitors satellite,
internet and telecommunications from installations in the Pacific.
Last July, the French newspaper Le Monde reported on the signals
intelligence program run by the Direction générale de la sécurité
extérieure (DGSE) – the French intelligence service best known in the
islands for the 1985 bombing of the Rainbow Warrior. Regional
communications are monitored by an interception installation in New
Caledonia which came into operation in 2006. This facility is located at
the French military’s naval airbase at Tontouta (New Caledonia’s
international airport, outside Noumea).
Pacific island governments have joined Australia to welcome improved
relations with Paris since the end of nuclear testing and the signing of
the 1998 Noumea Accord in New Caledonia. However while welcoming French
commitments on aid and climate policy, many Pacific governments have
remained active in their diplomatic support for self-determination in
the region.
The Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG) is the key forum for support to
independence movements in New Caledonia and French Polynesia. The
sub-regional organisation, which links Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Solomon
Islands, Vanuatu and the Front de Liberation Nationale Kanak et
Socialiste (FLNKS), is currently chaired by a member of the Kanak
independence coalition.
In 2013, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Nauru and other countries
successfully proposed a resolution to the United Nations General
Assembly for the relisting of French Polynesia on the UN list of
non-self-governing territories.
This resolution opened the way for greater scrutiny of French
Polynesia by the UN special committee on decolonisation, including the
health and environmental impacts of 30 years of nuclear testing at
Moruroa and Fangataufa atolls. French diplomats reacted angrily to the
UN resolution and have refused to transmit information to the UN special
committee, as required under the UN Charter.
Canberra and Paris are eager to cooperate on global issues like
trade, the conflict in Ukraine and the war on ISIS, but this expanding
friendship may soon clash with regional interests and relationships. The
Australia-France strategic partnership will raise further debate as New
Caledonia moves closer to a referendum on self-determination in the
next few years.
Nic Maclellan in Noumea