France is facing resistance as it prepares to host a meeting of New Caledonian parties in Paris from 4 September. Independence parties reject the third independence referendum of December 2021. A visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to New Caledonia, violence at a local nickel plant, the re-election of an independence leader as president of the Congress of New Caledonia, and a rebuke from the Melanesian Spearhead Group all underline the challenges ahead.

Indigenous Kanak independence supporters boycotted the third independence vote after France declined their request to postpone it due to the impact of Covid-19 on their communities. The 2021 poll returned an overwhelming 97% opposition to independence follow a narrowing 56.7% in 2018 and 53.3% in 2020. The votes demonstrated the strong Kanak commitment to independence, and the power of independence leaders, as they delivered increasing support for independence over the first two votes (43.3% in 2018 to 46.7% in 2020) and a resounding boycott of the third.

France and loyalist parties simply claimed three victories and want to ensconce New Caledonia firmly within France.

Independence leaders reject the result and want a new vote, with United Nations and International Court of Justice engagement. They have to date only talked with France, refusing to participate in trilateral discussions including loyalist parties.

Macron paid a visit to Noumea on 26–27 July, during which he lauded the three ‘clear’ votes to stay with France, which ensured ‘France’s place in the Indo-Pacific’ and France’s protection for the territory against large powers jostling for influence. France plans to increase its military presence in New Caledonia and create a defence academy to train regional militaries there. Macron said he would promote partnerships with Australia at the forefront, and he went on to visit Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea after leaving Noumea.

In a nod to his 2018 commitments to diversify the economy if New Caledonia voted to stay with France, Macron spoke of the assistance France would bring in mining, agriculture, energy, climate change, and economic and social equality.

Macron condemned the ‘isolation’ and ‘separatism’ of non-participation in discussion, which he said risked violence. He urged agreement ‘by consensus’ for a new political statute, an associated French constitutional amendment, and relaxation of controversial restrictions confining voting eligibility only to longstanding residents in local elections, by early 2024.

The chances of meeting that timetable appear slim. Despite Macron’s glad-handing walkabouts amid a sea of tricolour flags and the thousands of supporters at his address in the main plaza, a major independence party absented itself from his earlier roundtable, and Kanak independence leaders were notably silent during his visit.

Their response, days after he left Noumea, was dampening. The Union Calédonienne slammed the visit as a ‘non-event’, a ‘one-man show’, ‘seeming to divide positions and aggravate fractures’ with an ‘imperialist and condescending’ attitude to independence. It recommitted to restricted voter eligibility, which defined ‘citizenship and nationality for Caledonians’. It retained its opposition to trilateral discussions.

Palika-UNI described Macron’s speech as a ‘paternalistic, imperialist, neo-colonial’ view of the future governance of New Caledonia, with a ‘longwinded’ account of France’s geo-diplomatic strategy in the Pacific. The speech ‘did not respond to the territory’s needs’, added to political and institutional instability, and threatened peaceful discussion with the independence coalition. Still, the party committed to discussions on the future, for a ‘temporary statute’, but pending a self-determination vote ‘on full sovereignty’. It ominously recalled that it was France’s not taking into account Kanak claims which had led to civil war. The independence coalition had ‘only signed [agreements] … in the interest of peace’, without relinquishing sovereignty claims.

Other local developments are not promising either. Since April, trouble has been brewing over the threatened closure of the Poum nickel mine in the Kanak north. Just days after Macron’s visit, union protests at the main nickel plant in Noumea became violent, inflicting major damage. On 10 August closure of Poum was announced, a move scathingly criticised by independence leader Paul Néaoutyine.

The annual election of a president of the local congress also revealed bitter division. On 30 August independence leader Rock Wamytan was re-elected, mustering more votes than expected. Wamytan said his would be an ‘impartial presidency’. He emphasised dialogue, and the fragility of peace, saying New Caledonia would take its place with vigilance as a small country in the ‘large ocean of its ancestors’. Loyalist leaders denounced those who supported him, noting the inconsistency of his election with the three votes for staying with France.

Regionally, in a communiqué of 25 August the Melanesian Spearhead Group, formed in 1986 to support the independence coalition in New Caledonia, reiterated its ‘united’ support for New Caledonia’s decolonisation. It commissioned its chair to write to Macron to note that it did not recognise the results of the third referendum and strongly opposed the way in which it was conducted. The meeting also explored ways in which the group might engage with the International Court of Justice.

With China increasingly assertive in pursuing its economic and geopolitical interests abroad, US–China tensions are rising, leading many traditional American allies to consider following Washington’s lead in pursuing economic ‘decoupling’ from China. Their strategy aims to reduce economic reliance on China through extensive export controls and re-ordered supply chains.

Yet in Western Europe, France and Germany are showing an unwillingness to join their allies in decoupling from China. French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent comments that Europe should not get ‘caught up in crises that are not ours’ demonstrate this.

If anything, their relationship with Chinese capital is thriving. China is one of France and Germany’s major trading partners outside of the European Union and a significant export market for goods such as luxury goods and pharmaceuticals.

Exports to China made up 7.4% of Germany’s total exports and 4.21% of France’s in 2019, with these numbers growing over the last three years to record levels. Given China’s growing middle class, the country presents an enormous potential consumer market in years to come.

According to recent reports, France’s bilateral trade in goods with China exceeded US$100 billion for the first time in 2022, an increase of 14.6% on 2021­. The recent signing of 18 cooperation agreements by 46 French and Chinese companies across numerous sectors further emphasises the gathering pace of these trade relationships.

As for Germany, its total trade with China saw an increase of 21% from 2021. While exports increased by a modest 3.1%, Germany’s imports from China accounted for much of the growth, soaring by more than a third.

Specifically, Germany imports from China about two thirds of its rare earth elements, many of which are indispensable in batteries, semiconductors, and magnets in electric cars. This shows that Germany and France will rely more on China as time passes for the critical raw materials needed to fuel their economic growth and energy transitions.

Furthermore, various French and German companies would prefer to grow their established production facilities and extensive sales networks in China. With the trade relationship expanding so rapidly and estimates suggesting that more than 2 million German jobs depend on exports to China, the countries’ economies are set to become even more intertwined.

German companies Volkswagen and chemical processor BASF, for instance, are significantly expanding their investments in China. Volkswagen, which already has more than 40 plants in China, recently announced that it will invest billions in new local partnerships and production sites. BASF, which has 30, says it will invest US$10.9 billion in a new chemical production complex there.

Given all this new activity, making a show of decoupling from China could cause significant repercussions for France and Germany.

Ultimately, the costs of decoupling outweigh the benefits for the two governments. While their allies might come to bemoan their inaction, they just won’t forgo such significant opportunities for French and German companies in China.

Additionally, decoupling could trigger retaliation, as it did with Australia, with China halting exports to the two countries, increasing tariffs, or reducing market access to French and German goods. All in all, France and Germany are unlikely to shift from their stance. They’d prefer to let their markets flourish and work out the rest later.

Space is both an old and a new operational domain. It has been militarised since the earliest days of the space age in the 1960s as the major powers employed satellites for communications, intelligence gathering and early warning against missile attack. Since the end of the Cold War, use of space has evolved from being a supporting adjunct to terrestrial military operations to becoming an operational domain in its own right.

Late last year, Australia’s defence community heard the perspectives of four key thinkers in a panel discussion on the importance of the space domain for defence and national security. These included the head of Australia’s Defence Space Command, Air Vice-Marshal Catherine Roberts, the deputy commander of US Space Command, Lieutenant General John E. Shaw, the chief of UK Space Command, the Royal Air Force’s Air Vice-Marshal Paul Godfrey, and Major General Philippe Adam, the head of French Space Command.

The discussion began with a focus on why the transition from perceiving space as an adjunct to an operational domain has been a significant step for each of the four defence forces. Shaw noted that the move required the US military to think about operations in space and ensuring that a mutual support approach was established that led to broader joint and combined warfare operations. He raised the challenge that ‘now that space is an operational domain, how do you actually conduct operations in the domain, and how do other commands in terrestrial domains support space operations?’ This was echoed by the other speakers. Godfrey highlighted the rapid process of UK Space Command since its establishment in 2019.

The counterspace threat and the realisation that access to space is likely to be contested has been a key driver in reshaping the perception of space. Adam highlighted that French Space Command has also only existed from 2019, and was driven by the recognition that space is congested and competitive.  ‘We want to make sure that the strategic assets we have in space will still be there when we need them,’ he said. For Australia, Roberts noted that space was recognised as an operational domain in 2019 and in the 2020 defence strategic update and force structure plan which led to the creation of Defence Space Command. Highlighting the challenge posed by counterspace capability, Roberts noted that Australia had signed up to a voluntary ban on testing of direct-ascent, kinetic-kill anti-satellite weapons which produce space debris.

Standing up an entirely new military organisation to manage a vast operational domain like space has generated some key challenges. Shaw suggested that the main one was integrating space as an operational domain into a broader approach to joint and combined warfighting. He noted that another challenge is understanding the space environment, with ‘space domain awareness probably being our largest challenge’. He highlighted the importance of teamwork with allies and partners, via groups such as the Combined Space Operations, or CSpO, initiative, but also ‘partnering with commercial and civil organisations, and bringing transparency to the domain so that all actors can operate in it safely and in a responsible manner’.

Godfrey pointed to workforce challenges like retaining people with expertise, particularly when space must compete with other commands in a joint organisation. He highlighted procurement as an issue, saying that it was vital to have a procurement system ‘agile enough to stay at the leading edge of technology to be able to counter threats when you look at China as the pacing threat’.

Both Adam and Roberts identified similar challenges. The traditional maxim that ‘space is hard’ applies very well to earth-bound organisations trying to establish a space capability for defence and national security requirements. Roberts said ‘the biggest challenging has been about resourcing—people, money and looking after our people when we bring them in’ and then ‘thinking about how we’re going to fight [while] incorporating innovation at speed’. Adam noted that establishing French Space Command required the ability to ‘fit something new in a structure that was never designed for it’, acting ‘at a pace which is really, really quick’ and then ‘bringing it all together to make sure it is understood by military operations everywhere’.

A key discussion was how the four organisations will leverage the rapidly growing commercial space sector. Roberts said there was a need to ‘crack’ the rapid acquisition model that epitomised commercial space, which implied a ‘completely different way of thinking’ about procurement. ‘We’ve done some very small investments—we call them capability accelerators. These inform how we are going to do our operations moving forward.’ Godfrey indicated that input from venture capitalists was helpful and argued that ‘we need to understand in that horizon sense, what companies are out there–not just the big primes, but also a number of small to medium enterprises that may well have that silver bullet you’re looking for’.

Shaw made clear that he didn’t feel that there was another domain where commercial activities and technologies and capabilities were as synergistic with security than the space domain. Adam highlighted the need to understand commercial space as a market and recognised that it’s increasingly difficult to draw a line between civilian, commercial and military capabilities. Roberts reflected on the complexity of space missions: ‘You need to conduct your space missions with other operational domains, with people who are in different regions around the world and across different orbits. You’ve got to work through partners and allies, you also have to integrate commercial elements, and that’s a new challenge.’

Questions from the audience covered rules of behaviour and international cooperation, taking experiences in other domains and the challenges of managing relations with competitors. Of key importance for Australia was the role of space domain awareness, with Australia’s participation in space surveillance a key mission for Defence Space Command under CSpO. A key point from Shaw was about space being ‘supra-global’ in that it ‘touches every other [area of responsibility] and is something that every nation can play a role in’. This was a fascinating perspective to conceptualise a vast operational domain that will be of crucial importance to Australian and allied military operations in the future.

Five years ago, when Marine Le Pen faced Emmanuel Macron in the televised debate ahead of the second round of the French presidential election, she flunked the test. Taking an overly aggressive tone from the start, she was clearly out of her depth on economic issues, fecklessly flipping through her notes. In front of more than 16 million viewers, she lost 30,000 votes a minute over the course of the 2.5-hour debate, ceding 6% of the support she had when the day began. A few days later, Macron won the election in a landslide, 66% to 34%.

Le Pen was back for a rematch on Wednesday, in a much stronger position than she was five years ago, with polls giving her 45% support—although the dynamic seems to be in Macron’s favour. She has learned from her mistakes by ‘de-demonising’ her party. She had already kicked out her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, for Holocaust denial, and in 2018 she renamed the confrontational-sounding National Front (Front National) the National Rally (Rassemblement National), which has a more inclusive air and gives a nod to Rally of the French People (Le Rassemblement du peuple français), the movement Charles de Gaulle led after World War II.

Le Pen softened her image too, appearing with her cats on Instagram and even taking selfies with teenagers—some of them veiled. She has spoken about how difficult it was growing up in the Le Pen household and the fractious relations she has with her father and her niece, Marion Maréchal, who backed the far-right neophyte Éric Zemmour’s campaign in the first round. Le Pen also touted her experiences as a single mother. She even managed to use her humiliation during the 2017 debate to her advantage, connecting it to the everyday slights people suffer and spinning her rebound in this year’s campaign as an inspiring tale of hope prevailing over despair.

In this, she was helped by Zemmour, whose nastiness made her appear more moderate and unifying—an important component of a campaign strategy based on portraying Macron as the candidate who has divided France. She’s toned down some of her policies, too, notably abandoning her proposed referendum on leaving the euro, which in 2017 scared off older voters, who feared for their pensions, and also on the question of the death penalty, which she claims she no longer wants to restore.

So far, it’s been working: Only half of the French population now see Le Pen as a threat to their society. Many younger voters have been attracted to her proposal to exempt those under 30 from taxation, or to lower the value-added tax on gas and petrol to 5.5%—an immensely popular proposal in a country facing a cost-of-living crisis, like much of the rest of the world, owing in part to the war in Ukraine. Most French people no longer seem to believe she will be able to implement her harsher proposals on immigration or even the veil, which she wants to ban. French youth in the northern Paris suburb of Saint-Denis, one of the most ethnically diverse areas of the country, didn’t believe she would implement the veil ban because she ‘isn’t as bad as everyone says’.

But is the mask starting to slip? With the media spotlight in the second round focusing on her program instead of her personality, the things that haven’t changed since 2017 have come more clearly into view. That includes her proposal to insert a ‘national preference’ clause into the constitution, thereby guaranteeing that native French would have priority over all others when applying for jobs, social housing and other services.

After qualifying for the runoff with Macron, she also announced—in the midst of the Ukraine war—that France should seek a closer alliance with Russia and leave NATO’s integrated military command. And although she claims no longer to want to leave the EU, but rather to reform it ‘from within’, her European policy has been described by commentators as a ‘Frexit in all but name’. Even on a personal level, Le Pen has become tetchier with journalists and last week a protester was dragged out of one of her campaign rallies.

So, how did the debate go?

Its mostly technocratic—and cordial—character, focusing on macroeconomic matters, played to Le Pen’s normalisation. And while she seemed uncertain and hesitant on some issues, it was nothing like last time. Macron started strongly, getting the better of Le Pen on questions of the cost of living, and he was able to score points on her links with Russian President Vladimir Putin, particularly the financial ones, and her position on Europe. He consistently offered solutions to problems that Le Pen seemed happy just to raise, highlighting his competence, but he struggled to dispel his reputation for arrogance.

Things threatened to change when the question of the veil was raised. Le Pen repeated her prohibitionist position, and Macron accused her of fomenting civil war. But mostly the mask remained in place, and she seemed to be able to channel French popular anger. If anything, the debate staged two ‘normal’ candidates promoting their respective programs, however incoherent Le Pen’s is.

We will know on Sunday, after the vote, whether Le Pen’s mask slipped any further. But what already seems certain is that she has made herself politically attractive to more voters than ever before. Win or lose, she and her party are not going away anytime soon.

However relaxed and comfortable Indonesian Defence Minister Prabowo Subianto might be about Australia’s plans to acquire nuclear-powered submarines (SSNs), the visit to Jakarta of French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian has probably validated the very different view of Le Drian’s counterpart, Retno Marsudi. And whatever Le Drian may have intended to achieve on this theme in Jakarta, he may well have compounded the Australian government’s problems with Indonesia over this central plank of the AUKUS agreement while stoking Jakarta’s suspicions of Canberra’s trustworthiness.

Le Drian ostensibly visited Jakarta last week to mark the 10th anniversary of the France–Indonesia strategic partnership. The Quay d’Orsay’s official pre-visit announcement noted that Le Drian would ‘address the implementation of French and European Indo-Pacific strategies in support of a free, open space based on the respect for international law and multilateralism’, and that the visit came as France was preparing to assume the EU Council presidency and Indonesia the G20 presidency. Both sides’ priorities in these roles were to be on the agenda in his meeting with Marsudi, along with bilateral issues.

One of those issues was undoubtedly Indonesia’s interest in possibly procuring Rafale fighter aircraft, which would add to why Le Drian also separately met Prabowo. The Rafale option looks to be among the most appealing to Prabowo, though only time will tell whether French jets patrol Indonesia’s skies rather than the alternatives that he’s also been conspicuously exploring, such as the latest US F-16 variant. Securing a significant defence sale was presumably at least as big a motive for Le Drian’s visit as any ‘tin anniversary’, especially given that the relationship is unlikely to rank among France’s most important.

Details of what Le Drian discussed with his interlocutors, who included President Joko Widodo and Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Panjaitan, are sketchy. The French foreign ministry stated that, inter alia, the ‘principle of joint meetings of foreign affairs and defence ministers (2+2 format) was endorsed’. This, it added, made ‘France the third country—and the first non-Asian country—to benefit from this dialogue format with its Indonesian partner, commensurate with joint cooperation ambitions’ (which is presumably a ringing French endorsement of the notion that Australia is an Asian country, since Canberra already has such an arrangement with Jakarta).

Official Indonesian statements are sketchier. Prabowo’s defence ministry at least has announced that ministers discussed defence cooperation such as training and education, science, technology and industry issues, terrorism, and ‘defence research and development, including joint production’. And the two foreign ministers reportedly signed an ‘action plan’ to strengthen the strategic partnership and improve ties in defence and maritime affairs.

As for Le Drian’s courtesy call on the president, Jokowi reportedly raised ‘five main points’ relating to the bilateral relationship. Most were typically focused on economic issues, including Jokowi’s hopes that negotiations for a comprehensive economic partnership agreement with the EU would be accelerated and ‘bring concrete results’. He also thanked France for providing 4.8 million doses of Covid-19 vaccine.

From the perspective of Australia’s interests, the most striking moment of the visit came during Le Drian’s address to Indonesia’s leading international affairs think tank, the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). While his speech focused on issues such as multilateralism and the EU’s position on the Indo-Pacific, his response to a question on ‘minilateralism’—specifically, AUKUS and the Quad—took on a very different tone.

Ignoring the Quad, he levelled his remarks at AUKUS, stressing four points. The first two reiterated the theme of ‘betrayal’ in terms of both being ‘cheated’ out of a deal and being deceived by NATO allies and, in Australia’s case, a historical ally. He talked about American efforts to restore trust through various US commitments to France. He didn’t mention Australia in this context.

More significantly, his third point was that AUKUS was about ‘pressing a sense of confrontation with China’ (as the simultaneous translation put it). He said that, while France was not oblivious to China’s military threats and risks, he believed that the best way to respond to these threats was to ‘develop an alternative model rather than to first of all oppose’.

Perhaps his most significant point for Australian interests was his fourth, which went to the transfer of nuclear technology for submarine propulsion. He pointed out that until now no nuclear-weapon state had done this. But ‘if tomorrow Australia has some nuclear-powered submarines, why not, some other countries could ask for similar technology, it could be Indonesia, why not?’ He continued that, even though this technology was not covered by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the risk the arrangement posed of starting a trend was nonetheless of concern.

Irrespective of Le Drian’s intentions in answering the question in this manner—and it’s noteworthy that he didn’t cover AUKUS in his formal address—he would surely have known that his words would resonate powerfully with his audience, both at CSIS and more generally among Indonesia’s foreign policy establishment. While his depiction of Australia as duplicitous was evidently personal and heartfelt, it would also have struck a chord with those Indonesians who have characterised Canberra the same way over such issues as East Timor, Papua and spying allegations, irrespective of how justified that judgement might be.

Le Drian’s last point went directly to concerns about nuclear proliferation—issues that Indonesia highlighted in its official statement on AUKUS and the planned submarines. It corresponds closely ‘in spirit’ with subsequent official commentary to the effect that Indonesia was considering advocating a change to the NPT aimed at preventing non-nuclear-weapon states from acquiring SSNs.

Le Drian did not imply France’s support for any such move in his public remarks. But given the correspondence between the sentiment he conveyed at CSIS and Indonesia’s expressed position, it’s easy to speculate that the subject got an airing during the foreign ministers’ meeting.

Unsurprisingly, the Morrison government seems a long way from changing Le Drian’s mind on AUKUS and the submarines, irrespective of the best efforts of Australia’s highly capable ambassador in Paris and her team.

But whoever governs in Canberra now and into the future should at least make a priority of assuaging Jakarta’s worries on this subject, however overstated and unbalanced they are. While Indonesia’s prospects of changing the NPT and precluding Australia from having SSNs look remote at best—not least because several of its ASEAN colleagues do not share its views of Australia’s ambitions—the sooner the two countries can put this latest irritant to rest the better.

In the circumstances, the onus for doing so must primarily rest with Canberra. But if Jakarta is serious about treating Australia as a ‘comprehensive strategic partner’, it might weigh up how conscientiously Australia has pursued the goal of nuclear non-proliferation over many decades and meet it halfway. Our shared strategic interests are too important to do otherwise.