A French Pivot to Asia?

“France is everywhere in the world. And when we say we are going to the ends of the earth, I say ‘no, we are going to the ends of France.’ Vive la Polynésie française! Vive la République et vive la France!”

- President François Hollande, French Polynesia, 22 February 2016

France is a lot bigger than most people think. There are pieces of France in the Indian Ocean, Caribbean, North America, and the Pacific. Many of those French islands are in critical locations convenient for monitoring and strategic positioning. Also, each of its scattered island territories is allocated up to a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). As a result, France has the second largest EEZ in the world. Its approximate 11 million square kilometers are second only to the slightly larger EEZ of the United States.

Since the end of the Cold War, and with attempts at forging a European foreign policy, Paris has kept the profile of “overseas France” fairly low. However, major changes over the last year in France’s two main territories in the Pacific, New Caledonia and French Polynesia, may shake up the whole region, and beyond. The new engagements even raise questions about the development of a possible “fourth island chain” that could fundamentally alter the strategic map of the Pacific.

The first big event to catch strategists’ eyes was the 2016 announcement by Australia that it would be buying a dozen French submarines at a cost of AU$50 billion. With the sealing of the contract, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced, "We are married to Australia for 50 years.”

The Australian purchase had been closely watched. Since the end of the Cold War, Australia has been the main Western security partner in the region. A member of Five Eyes -- an intelligence sharing alliance with Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States -- and with relatively large and engaged defense and strategic communities, Australia has been an important Western ally in the region.

Many observers were perplexed by Canberra’s decision to go with France for the submarine deal. A Japanese government-backed consortium led by Mitsubishi was the early frontrunner for the contract. That would have fit into Australia’s strategic logic. For over a decade Australian leaders have been touring Tokyo, Washington, and Delhi trying to sell the role of Canberra in a strengthened Indo-Pacific security architecture. In 2007 this developed into the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue with members Australia, Japan, the United States, and India.

However, Canberra kept giving out mixed messages, undermining its own Indo-Pacific pitch. In 2008, a new prime minister pulled Australia out of the “quad” apparently over concerns that it would affect Australia-China relations.

Since then, Australia has continued sending conflicting signals about its relationship with China and its strategic priorities. Canberra dragged its feet before reluctantly allowing the United States to rotate Marines through the northern Australian city of Darwin, but then allowed a Chinese company to lease of the port of Darwin itself. While some members of the Australian defense and strategic communities raised deep concerns about China’s role in the region, three former Australian prime ministers have talked about how the United States should “share” the Pacific with China.

A purchase from Japan was the opportunity for Australia to align its defensive architecture with its foreign policy public relations. The decision to buy from France may have been purely technical but then Canberra should probably have dropped some hints to Tokyo about the way the wind was blowing. As it was, the surprise made the decision look like a slap-in-the-face to Japan from China by an Australian proxy. It also implied that, if China was a factor in the decision-making, Beijing had fewer problems with France.

From the French perspective, the sale was just the first of several big moves in Oceania. France seems very keen to get more involved regionally. In 2016, with the support of Australia, French Polynesia and New Caledonia were admitted into the main regional political grouping, the Pacific Island Forum, literally giving France a seat (or two) at the table on regional issues.

Additionally, the French Navy has started working with Australian authorities on illegal fisheries enforcement in both Australian and French waters (Australia and New Caledonia share a maritime border). In 2016, France and Australia also collaborated on the largest drug seizure in Australian history, in which 500 kg of cocaine were seized in Australia, and 606 kg of cocaine were seized by the French Navy in French Polynesia.

On its own, the French Navy began actively enforcing fisheries regulations in New Caledonian waters, resulting in the capture of several Vietnamese boats. Meanwhile, on the soft power front, in 2016 New Caledonia joined the Francophonie and there have been more regional academic exchanges and reinvigorated Alliance Francaises. Paris is also burnishing its bilateral relations with Pacific island countries. At the Paris climate change meeting, French officials met with Pacific island leaders without the presence of either Canberra or Wellington. It’s worth noting these are all French initiatives, with no involvement from the European Union.

Also in the last year or so, an unprecedented wave of French political leaders has washed over the region, with most promising to resolve longstanding disputes over compensation for the nuclear tests that ended in 1996.

The politicians have been trying to win support not only in France’s elections, but for their position on the upcoming New Caledonia referendum on independence. Unsurprisingly, all major French leaders favor New Caledonia staying part of France. In spite of recent violence, it is difficult to see how France will graciously let New Caledonia go in the case of a vote for independence, especially given many of Paris’ major regional defense assets are based in the territory.

All this is happening in the context of an already dynamic geopolitical situation in Oceania. In the past ten years, policies coming out of Canberra and Wellington have alienated formerly strong Western allies among the 14 Pacific island countries.

For example, most recently, both Australia and New Zealand have been putting heavy pressure on Pacific Island countries to sign onto an opaque regional trading agreement called PACER Plus (for more on this, see Grant Wyeth’s analysis later in this issue). In spite of attempted arm-twisting, Fiji and Papua New Guinea have refused to sign over concerns that the agreement heavily favors Australia and New Zealand and risks destabilizing their economies.

Against this background, it has been relatively easy for China to extend its reach deep into the region, affecting every country with which it has diplomatic relations. China helped Fiji set up a counter organization to the Canberra- and Wellington-dominated Pacific Island Forum grouping. It is providing scholarships to study in China for thousands of influential Pacific islanders. It is handing out hundreds of millions in soft loans and funding major infrastructure projects across the region.

Much of this activity is paired, overtly or not, with recipient countries accepting increased Chinese immigration. In many Pacific island countries, newly arrived Chinese communities are highly controversial, often devastating local businesses and occasionally being implicated in unprecedented criminal activity. As is common across the region, in Tonga in the last decade alone newly arrived ethnic Chinese have taken control of over 80 percent of the retail sector. The Chinese community in Tonga has also seen cases of Chinese-on-Chinese kidnap, ransom, arson, assault, and murder, as well as growing attempts at influence-buying and intrusion in the political process.

Meanwhile, in the French Pacific territories, there is also major, and growing, Chinese engagement. Paris’ policy toward China and French Polynesia seems to be following two tracks.

On one hand, given the weakness in France’s economy, all investments are welcome.

On the other hand, as China’s interest in the South Pacific have increased, it has become clear to Paris that, far from being “at the edge of the map,” France’s Pacific territories are on the renewed strategic frontline between Asia and the Americas, and are becoming increasingly valuable. French Polynesia alone covers an enormous area in the strategic heart of the Southern Pacific, with an EEZ of 4,767,242 sq km (for comparison, the total land area of the United Kingdom is approximately 243,610 sq km).