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Tag Archive for: France
Tag Archive for: France
The making of Macron
Relief and pride are the main emotions many French citizens are feeling after the first round of the French presidential election, in which Emmanuel Macron finished first. For once, the pollsters were right: the two favored candidates—Macron and the National Front’s Marine Le Pen—advanced to the second-round runoff on May 7. Gone is the sense of anxiety that had attended the weeks, days, and hours before the election, owing to fears that France would wake up to a second-round choice between the far-right Le Pen and the far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon.
Many observers saw France as economically, socially, and politically vulnerable—even more so than the United Kingdom, the United States, or Germany—to such a choice. After the UK’s Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s victory in the US presidential election, surely this was Le Pen’s window of opportunity. Some of us, only half-jokingly, have even mused about where we would flee if Le Pen won. Between a Great Britain that is leaving the European Union, and a US under Trump, there are few good options.
Fortunately, reason and hope prevailed over anger and fear, and French citizens defied those who warned that populism might triumph in the land of the French Revolution. While a Le Pen victory is technically possible, the composition of the French electorate makes it highly unlikely. Very few of Mélenchon’s leftist voters will cross over to the extreme right. And while some of the center-right candidate François Fillon’s supporters may now vote for Le Pen, it will not be enough to sway the election in her favor.
In other words, the French exception is alive and well. France’s contrarian electorate has demonstrated to the world—and especially to the Anglo-Saxon world—that one need not betray one’s defining values to defeat populism. Despite a recent wave of terror attacks, the French have proved their resilience against the politics of fear. And even with Euroskepticism on the rise, the pro-European candidate, Macron, received more votes than any other.
Exceptional circumstances sometimes give rise to exceptional characters. Without the French Revolution, Napoleon Bonaparte would have remained a junior officer in the French Royal Army. Similarly, albeit less dramatically, if France’s two main political parties had not collapsed, the 39-year-old Macron, who was unknown to most French voters a year ago, would still be just another economic whiz kid.
Macron looks like a French John F. Kennedy and he campaigned in the mode of Barack Obama. But he got where he is because the Socialist Party of François Mitterrand is dead, and the conservative Les Républicains are in shambles. The Socialists, for their part, could not come up with a modern political agenda. And the Republicans failed to tap another candidate after Fillon became tainted by scandal.
As a result, France, despite its reputation for melancholy, self-doubt, and pessimism, is about to elect its youngest-ever president. At that point, however, Macron will face a whole new set of challenges, starting with legislative elections that are scheduled for June. Will Macron end up with a governing majority in the National Assembly, or will the right present a united front and force him into the uniquely French practice of cohabitation?
In France’s semi-presidential system, cohabitation means that the executive branch can become paralyzed if the president and the prime minister represent different political factions. But Macron wants to prove that he can implement the majority-coalition model followed in parliamentary systems, with an “alliance of the willing,” comprising different but compatible political sensitivities, pursuing a common goal.
To my mind, France is ripe for a coalition government that can transcend increasingly anachronistic left-right political lines. The real political divide in France, as in so much of the West, is now between those who defend global openness and those who favor a return to nationalist isolation.
Macron will have to acknowledge the cultural roots of traditional left-right divisions, while also addressing the deep-seated, revolutionary anger that now exists in France. Despite Macron’s strong showing in the first round, some 40% of the French electorate voted for the Euroskeptic candidates Le Pen and Mélenchon. Restoring these voters’ confidence in existing institutions, and reintegrating them into the political mainstream, will not be easy. Defeated parties will be tempted to take to the streets and block attempts at reform. Having failed at the ballot box, they may—in traditional French revolutionary fashion—resort to “the barricades.”
Macron has demonstrated his immense qualities as a candidate. After May 7, he will have to prove that, despite his youth and lack of experience, he can become a great president. Winning power is one thing; but it is another matter to exercise power effectively, while avoiding the authoritarian tendencies that can emerge under extraordinary circumstances.
That is the task facing Macron. Driven by a sense of destiny, he must resist the temptations of Bonapartism. In the meantime, the democratic world should see Macron for what he is: a beacon of hope in a sea of doubt and despair.
Planning for President Le Pen
After the United Kingdom’s unexpected vote to leave the European Union and Donald Trump’s unexpected triumph in the US presidential election last year, you might imagine that Europe’s chancelleries have developed detailed contingency plans for a victory by the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen in France’s presidential election. You’d be wrong.
The thought of President Le Pen is so terrifying, it seems, posing such a threat to the future of Europe, that it remains for many a possibility they dare not entertain, much less plan for. But that threat is precisely why Europe must address seriously the possibility of her winning, however unlikely it may seem.
There is no doubt that, as President of France, Le Pen could do serious damage to the European project. She has positioned herself as the antithesis of German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and pledged to leave the EU’s border-free Schengen Area and the eurozone. As for the EU itself, she promises to follow in the UK’s footsteps, renegotiating the terms of her country’s membership, and then calling a referendum on the agreement. If the EU rejects the reforms Le Pen demands, she will campaign for a French exit.
But there would be important differences between Brexit and Frexit. Whereas many UK Euroskeptics envision a global Britain trading with the world, Le Pen wants to introduce protectionist policies. In lieu of openness, Le Pen—who now casts herself as a Gaullist—wants to deepen ‘great power’ relations with Russia and the United States, as she focuses on defending ‘traditional’ Christian values and fighting terror in the context of a multipolar world order.
To support those objectives, Le Pen promises to increase French defense spending to 3% of GDP (the NATO target is 2%), while making it clear to voters that none of that spending would support stabilization missions in Africa. In this sense, a Le Pen victory would amount to a rupture not just with the European mainstream, but also with France’s strategic orientation over the last few decades.
To be sure, opinion polls still favor the independent centrist Emmanuel Macron in a second-round run-off. But many fear that Macron’s supporters will not be as inspired as Le Pen’s to turn out to vote.
In fact, in recent months, Le Pen’s popular support has remained rather consistent, with her lead in opinion polls for the first round remaining stable, even as French politics is thrown into upheaval by scandal and mistrust. This perfect political storm has caused France’s two-party system to fragment into a four-party arrangement and has all but knocked the favourites out of the running, while leaving Le Pen largely unscathed.
The reasons for Le Pen’s rise have as much to do with her reinvention of the National Front as with the external political environment. She has managed to escape the extreme-right ghetto, with a grand strategy, shaped by her ally Florian Philippot, that aims to broaden the Front’s appeal to key groups that previously avoided it, especially civil servants, women, and Catholics.
As Philippot has advanced this plan, claiming that the National Front is ‘neither left nor right,’ he has also been working to lay the groundwork for a Le Pen-led government. To this end, he is seeking to build a new political elite to serve in a National Front government and help overcome resistance to the party’s agenda from France’s ‘deep state.’ And he has been exploring what the president can and cannot do—including calling referenda—without permission from parliament.
Compared to Le Pen and her team, Europe’s leaders seem woefully underprepared. Of course, with so many unknowns, there is a limit to the plans they can share publicly; indeed, at this stage, specific statements may even prove counterproductive. But that does not mean that EU leaders should simply warn that a Le Pen victory would spell the end of the EU and leave it at that.
Instead, EU leaders should be considering to what extent they would be able to work around a Le Pen presidency. Even if she wins, she will struggle to gain a parliamentary majority, meaning that she may well end up in what the French evocatively call cohabitation with a hostile parliament and prime minister. Would other EU leaders be able to form an informal coalition with those elements of the French government?
Europe’s leaders must also begin thinking about how they should respond to Le Pen’s request to renegotiate the terms of France’s EU membership, and to what extent they should resist her efforts to remove France from the rest of Europe. Should the European Commission develop its own plans for a French exit from the eurozone and Schengen?
There may even be a case for Europe’s leaders to facilitate France’s withdrawal from the EU, lest Le Pen attempt to dismantle the EU from within, by building alliances with the likes of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. It is certainly a possibility that must be considered.
To say that these are difficult questions is an understatement. But that is precisely the point: bringing them out into the open demonstrates just how disruptive Le Pen’s victory would be. Indeed, from the EU’s perspective, a hostile president in France, the country of Jean Monnet, would be far more destructive than Brexit.
If we have learned one thing from the annus horribilis that was 2016, it should be that opinion polls are fallible. Rather than shut their eyes and hope that, this time, the pollsters are vindicated, the EU should prepare even for the worst-case scenario. Such plans may never have to be implemented, but Europe’s leaders should make them now, rather than wishing later that they had.
Can Macron march to victory?
The French presidential election race has rarely been so tight and so interesting. The four candidates (three men and one woman) who have a real chance of getting through the first round on 23 April are proposing four competing visions of France’s future.
The latest polls put Marine Le Pen (far-right National Front) at 24%, Emmanuel Macron (center-left movement En Marche!) at 23%, François Fillon (leader of the conservative Republicains) at 18.5% and Jean-Luc Mélenchon (far-left Unsubmissive France) at 18%.
A key feature of this campaign has been the incredible rise of Emmanuel Macron. Thrust onto the political stage as Francois Hollande’s economy minister in 2014, Macron founded his own political movement En Marche! just a year ago. It has already gathered more than 200,000 members. Traditionally, only candidates supported by a strong party base could win the presidential election, but now Emmanuel Macron has recast French politics and has a genuine chance of becoming president. What can explain his sudden surge?
Macron has framed his strategy around an optimistic message—that the French, despite years of economic difficulties, should not accept inexorable decline. His program promotes the liberalisation of social structures to support innovative economic, social, and technological projects to create more wealth and economic growth combined with the strengthening of the welfare state.
En Marche! promotes the full engagement of French society into the global economy to maximise the economic benefits for France. Macron’s program is also deeply pro-European Union: emphasising institutional reform and restoring a strong Franco-German relationship. Like Angela Merkel, Macron wants to welcome hundreds of thousands of refugees seeing them as an economic boost rather than a threat. The leader of En Marche! wants France, including the French overseas territories, to engage even more with the world. Therefore, Macron strongly supports the deepening of new partnerships, such as the French-Australian relationship.
Macron’s successful strategy also stems from a message that rejects the traditional left-right dichotomy positioning him as an innovative candidate committed to renewing French politics. As voters in Western democracies turn away from long-established parties, Macron offers a movement organised around new faces from civil society rather than the old political class. He wants to marry two different concepts of democratic power sharing to enable citizens to be more involved with national politics. The first one promotes a horizontal deliberative decision-making process and was conceptualised by French philosopher Paul Ricoeur, whose assistant happened to be Macron. The second and traditional one is more vertical, with politicians holding the ultimate authority.
Macron’s march to victory faces three major obstacles.
First, he’s become the main target of all the other candidates, from the left and right. The strength of these attacks comes from the fact that Macron is not only popular but because En Marche! stands for the rejection of traditional political parties and the status quo. His opponents share a common interest in bringing voters back to their organisations. On the left, Mélenchon claims that having been a banker is not compatible with implementing left-wing policies, a claim Macron rebuts by asserting that he’s one of the very few candidates with a genuine knowledge of the economy. Benoît Hamon has accused Macron of having betrayed the Socialist party by creating En Marche!, a hypocritical accusation since Hamon has spent the last few years publically criticising the Socialist President François Hollande for being too liberal.
Second, Macron, as a former minister, must detach himself from the legacy of Hollande, the most unpopular president of France in the history of the Fifth Republic. The man now dubbed ‘Emmanuel Hollande’, by the right’s Francois Fillon has focused his strategy on convincing voters that he won’t follow the same policies as the incumbent president. But his task has been made harder because of the support he’s received from numerous mainstream politicians, from communists to members of Les Républicains, including former prime minister Manuel Valls. While Macron has asserted that public support for his candidacy would not guarantee a politician a position in his cabinet, such widespread endorsement across the political spectrum poses a challenge for his campaign platform of renewal.
Finally, Macron must also convince France that his program does not only assist the educated and wealthier part of the French population, which benefits from globalisation, but also protects workers and farmers who see it as a threat. In a country where 41% of the population associates globalisation with economic decline, Macron’s call to ‘free the forces’ of society does not appeal to these voters when compared to the more populist platforms of Le Pen or Mélenchon.
This election constitutes a moment of profound political questioning for a deeply divided French society. Will Macron’s path towards a new political discourse prove to be a victorious march to the French presidency?
The two faces of French populism
Will French voters have to choose between two extremes at their presidential election? In advance of the first round of voting this weekend, the fear that France will surrender to populism is significant, with far-right candidate Marine Le Pen at 24% in the polls and far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon at 18.5%.
Le Pen and Mélenchon differ in several significant ways. Mélenchon promotes a green revolution, for example, while Le Pen remains a climate change sceptic but their political programs have much in common.
Le Pen and Mélenchon have built their discourses on the key concept of ‘independence’. They claim their programs have the same goal, giving back to France an independence that the country has supposedly lost by engaging too deeply in globalisation. This is not a surprise from Le Pen, whose party, the National Front, has always promoted policies of withdrawal from globalisation. She says the French nation, its identity, its way of life, its culture and its language are gravely threatened by global standardisation and immigration.
The surprise comes in Mélenchon changing his tune from the Internationale to the Marseillaise. The leader of Unsubmissive France has made the restoration of the nation’s lost sovereignty a key part of his anti-globalisation discourse and claims, like Marine Le Pen, to defend the interests of the ‘forgotten’ France the workers and the farmers. Both candidates promise the solution to social decline lies in protectionism.
Both candidates are also strongly opposed to the EU, attributing the primary responsibility for the economic and unemployment crises to Brussels. They promise to put an end to European policies of austerity and they blame Angela Merkel’s Germany for the social crisis in European countries. Consequently, Le Pen and Mélenchon want France to leave the Euro Zone. Le Pen goes even further and promises to leave the EU itself: a post-Brexit Frexit. Internationally, both candidates call for reconciliation with Vladimir Putin and the restoration of a strong partnership with Russia, even saying that the recent use of chemical weapons in Syria wasn’t necessarily perpetrated by Assad.
While the candidates don’t share the same view on immigration, Mélenchon’s recent political shift on this issue may bring voters from the National Front to Unsubmissive France. In fact, while Mélenchon claimed during the 2012 elections that France should welcome all refugees, the far-left candidate now promotes the regularisation of illegal immigrants already in France but wants strict policies to avoid new large waves of immigration. While Mélenchon’s migration policy has progressively become tougher, it is not as strict as that of Le Pen who claims that she will simply stop migrants from entering France.
Both candidates claim their program is the only one dedicated to a redistribution of wealth in France. Significantly, Le Pen and Mélenchon are the only two candidates who promise to lower the retirement age to 60, which seems complete demagogery when the level of debt in the pension system is considered. Both also promote protectionist policies, including withdrawal from all free-trade agreements. French populism is quite left-wing economically, given the country’s long tradition of public involvement in the economy and strong welfare system. However, economic policy is difficult for both candidates. A large majority of French people remain attached to the Euro and believe that Mélenchon’s and Le Pen’s economic programs are not realistic and would lead France to bankruptcy.
Both Le Pen and Mélenchon present themselves as the only anti-establishment candidates, at a time when French voters are calling for far-reaching political renewal. But both very much belong to the system they claim to reject. Mélenchon is a former socialist minister and Marine Le Pen belongs to an extremely wealthy family long involved in politics.
The programs of these two populist candidates reflect a social crisis in France and the aspiration, as in the US and the UK, to return to an idealised—but inaccurately painted—past. Far-right and far-left strategies have been very successful in the same constituency, the working class and the least-privileged in the population, who have felt the main impact of ten years of economic crisis.
Admitting you voted for a populist candidate has lost its taboo in France and both candidates seem to have been able to bring their own rhythm and direction to the presidential campaign. But they offer nothing more than rhetoric based on tired tropes about a clash of civilisations and class struggle.
France’s extraordinary election
Sixty years after the signing of the Treaty of Rome, France is poised to hold an election that could make or break the European Union. A victory for the pro-EU independent centrist Emmanuel Macron could be a positive turning point, with France rejecting populism and deepening its connections with Germany. If, however, French voters hand the presidency to the far-right National Front’s Marine Le Pen—who was, tellingly, just warmly received by Vladimir Putin in Moscow—the long European project will be finished.
Clearly, this is no ordinary French election. With the EU’s survival on the line, the stakes are higher than in any election in the history of the Fifth Republic. So, does France’s nationalist, xenophobic right have a real chance of coming to power?
To be sure, the National Front is well established in French political life. Le Pen’s father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, founded the party in 1972, and led it until 2011, when his daughter took over. But its electoral success has so far been limited. While Jean-Marie made it to the second-round runoff in 2002, he ended up losing badly when the center and the left united behind Jacques Chirac.
Like her father, Marine Le Pen is likely to make it to the second round in May; indeed, polls have her winning the most votes in the first round. Many remain confident that she will be defeated in the runoff: Macron is projected to win 63% of the vote in a head-to-head contest against Le Pen. But populist victories in 2016—particularly the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald Trump as US president—have shown that the unthinkable can happen.
In fact, the old French proverb, ‘never two without three,’ may seem to indicate that, after those two votes, a Le Pen victory is all but inevitable. Then again, maybe France will be the third electoral loss for extreme-right candidates, after those in Austria and the Netherlands, providing definitive proof that the populist tide can be resisted.
Exceptional circumstances do sometimes favor the emergence of exceptional personalities, as in the 1930s—a tragic decade to which today’s political hysteria has often been likened. But, like the proverbial ‘rule of three,’ the results can be negative or positive. Just as US President Franklin D. Roosevelt emerged as a ray of hope during the worst economic crisis in America’s history, Macron is spreading optimism among a French public disillusioned by a combination of violence, mediocrity, corruption scandals, and ideological confusion.
Macron’s wife jokes that he takes himself for Joan of Arc, the French peasant who saved the country from the British in the Middle Ages. Physically, Macron evokes more the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, during his first campaign in Italy. Some see in Macron a romantic figure straight out of a Stendhal novel, a modern Fabrice del Dongo, who decides not to be a mere spectator of the world, but to act on it. He advances his mission through a combination of youthful energy, self-confidence, political cunning, technocratic competence, and a sense of moderation.
Macron embodies a sea change in French electoral politics: the erosion of the traditional cleavage between right and left. He is representing his own centrist movement (En Marche !). No independent has ever won the French presidency, but, again, this is no ordinary election.
In fact, neither of the two main parties—the Socialists and the Conservatives (Les Republicains, as they now call themselves)—is likely even to reach the election’s second round. This rejection of traditional parties echoes the rejection of Socialist President François Hollande, whose popularity sank so low (to just 4% at one point) that he opted not to seek another term, a first in the Fifth Republic’s history. It is also reflected in the risk of substantial voter abstention, unusual for a country that takes presidential elections very seriously.
Many French have perceived this election as a kind of eternal reality-television show. It may be fascinating, but there is little confidence that the myriad issues that are shaping it, from unemployment to terrorism and security to retirement benefits to the moralization of political life, will be resolved. (Here lies another difference from previous elections, which were largely shaped by one or two major issues.)
Like Dongo—or Macron—the French people now will have their chance to go from spectators to autonomous actors. They can elect their candidate of hope, like Americans did in 2008, when they chose Barack Obama. Or they can elect their candidate of fear, like Americans did in 2016, when they chose Donald Trump. In either case, the effects of their choice—like the choices of their American counterparts—will be felt by countless others.
Of course, France is not America; it is, for one thing, less strategically important to the world. But France is strategically vital to the EU. And, in a sense, the composed and politically savvy Le Pen may be even more dangerous than the erratic political novice currently occupying the White House. That is why much of the world—at least the democratic part of it—is watching this most unusual of French elections unfold with bated breath.
Making the most of the French connection
One of 2016’s more notable surprises was the selection, in April, of French shipbuilder DCNS as the principal partner to design and build Australia’s future submarines. Few Australians would have anticipated that outcome, but it’s among the more reassuring developments of the past year, because we’re able to manage its consequences. But this isn’t to say that handling deeper cooperation with France won’t require renovation in policy or in conventional thinking.
Australian–French strategic cooperation has grown steadily, from the signing of the FRANZ agreement on Pacific disaster relief in the early 1990s, to the establishment of the biennial ‘Croix du Sud’ multinational military exercises in New Caledonia, and the forthcoming Mutual Logistics Support Agreement, which will grant Australian forces regular access to French Pacific military bases.
But the 2016 submarine decision has taken Australian–French cooperation beyond logistics into unfamiliar territory. It challenges a notion that, despite formal acknowledgement of broad like-mindedness, and despite a rapprochement after decades of wariness over French policies in the South Pacific, Australia and France are too far outside each other’s spheres of understanding to collaborate in more sophisticated ways.
The submarine contract isn’t just any defence procurement effort. It might be Australia’s largest, with a projected cost of $50 billion and a rolling build planned to last until 2050, but as a commercial materiel project it’s essentially no different from the selection of Spanish company Navantia to build the Navy’s replenishment ships, or even the engagement of local Australian shipbuilder Austal to replace the Pacific patrol boats.
What distinguishes DCNS is that it’s the only shipbuilder working on or seeking Australian naval contracts (such as Navantia, or Italy’s Fincantieri) that’s majority-owned by a power with strategic as well as commercial interests in Australia’s region. Behind DCNS’ bid for the contract are the larger needs of the French State, which regards closer security ties with Asia–Pacific countries as major opportunities for economic gain in otherwise difficult times.
It was another of 2016’s surprises to see France’s territories New Caledonia and French Polynesia (which are literal extensions of the metropole) admitted as full members of the Pacific Islands Forum, which affords France unprecedented opportunities in regional trade and multilateral investment. This was the culmination of a marked change in French Pacific strategy, which was previously strongly individualistic and isolationist. Even if concerns linger over the question of the territories’ possible independence, the PIF’s acceptance of French membership signals a consensus that France now contributes credibly to Pacific governance and development, and that it intends to increase the returns on its investment.
We begin 2017 having to deal more closely with a France that sees distinct advantages in our sensitive submarine contract and an influential role in the PIF. How do we ensure that our interests, too, are well served?
In December 2016, Australia and France signed a treaty that redefined the ways in which we share classified information. The treaty sets standards for mutual recognition of classification categories and security clearances, as well as determining the responsibilities of government agencies and contractors collaborating on sensitive projects. In the short term, this streamlining will facilitate work on the submarines, but the Australian and French governments’ Joint Media Release indicates that the treaty enables cooperation across a much wider range of security issues.
There’s been no statement on what these future areas of cooperation will be, but it’s reasonable to envisage that one priority might be to facilitate further the exchange of counterterrorism officers—an initiative between Australia and France which began in 2015. Convergences of interest on areas like counterterrorism allows Australia a mechanism to chart a course for the bilateral security relationship on terms we can negotiate systematically and with legal force. We can look our partner in the eye and make reasonable requests.
At the same time, the treaty complements an agreement signed in January 2017 between Flinders University and four French schools of engineering, to begin collaboration on research projects supporting submarine-building.
The types of expertise that Australian and French government agencies and high-tech industries can now share, the regulations governing those exchanges, and the numbers and diverse roles of the specialists involved, are acquiring institutional shape and depth. In the longer term, that will allow us to exercise our like-mindedness to a far greater degree. It’s an opportunity to redress a long Australian neglect of the French world-view, which we’ve not invested in considering whole. If nothing else, broader access to what France is thinking will help to relieve any friction that may also lie ahead.
The consequences will be gradual and the bilateral relationship is unlikely to become as intense and all-embracing as the one we share with, for instance, the United States. But as unexpected and unorthodox as those changes may be, they demonstrate that Australian–French bilateralism is building a strategic partnership of real consequence. It’s one area of foreign policy in which 2017 is off to a reasonable start.
France and security in the Asia–Pacific
France’s defence- and security-related activities in the Asia–Pacific are often underestimated, sometimes distorted or simply ignored. The natural focus on the role of major powers in the region—the US, China, India and Japan—causes the contribution of a strategic actor, considered first and foremost as European and therefore an outsider, to be overlooked; however, this actor exercises global power at the diplomatic, military and economic levels, including in the Asia–Pacific region.
The point here is not to overestimate France’s strategic role in the region, but merely to recognise that after its role was diminished at the end of the first Indochinese conflict, France became involved again strategically in the early 1990s—a movement that has expanded in recent years. This reflects a lasting strategic realignment that can be seen in French defence policy and more tangibly at the regional level in operations, cooperation and dialogue.
My ASPI report released today surveys France’s growing presence in the Asia–Pacific from the Indochina War and efforts to resolve the Cambodian conflict, through to the country’s 21st century contributions driven by strategic engagement related to globalisation, new threats, multilateral regional cooperation and increasingly interconnected strategic zones.
Over the past 25 years, France has shown that its regional defence commitment is serious, lasting and based on clearly identified strategic interests and solid, multifaceted bilateral cooperation. These relations continue to develop for the mutual benefit of France and its partners.
France offers them operational experience that’s quite exceptional for a medium-sized power, but one that’s engaged on every sea in the world, in operations in the Mediterranean, the Middle East, the Sahel, the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Guinea. France’s involvement in several theatres of operations raises the profile of its defence cooperation internationally and increases interest in the training available in its military schools (which welcome around a hundred officers from Asia–Pacific countries every year).
France’s partners recognise its capacity for independent situational assessment, which contributes to its independent foreign security policy, mostly due to its highly efficient space capabilities. This strategic independence and the vast range of French defence capabilities are all assets recognised by its partners in the Asia–Pacific.
France has delivered approximately €30 billion worth of defence equipment across the Asia–Pacific in the past 25 years, making it a major provider to nations including India, Australia, Singapore, Malaysia and South Korea. It has also established productive technological and industrial partnerships with some of those countries, which in turn contribute to building up the defence capabilities, interoperability and strategic autonomy of France’s partners.
If the number of ministerial meetings is considered a pertinent indicator of the importance of France’s defence relationships, it’s worthwhile noting that the Minister of Defence, Jean-Yves Le Drian, had almost 120 meetings with his counterparts and senior political representatives from Asia–Pacific countries between mid-2012 and today. This is clear evidence of the sizeable role accorded to the Asia–Pacific in France’s strategic agenda.
The results of renewed French commitment to the region are significant, but that doesn’t mean that France is fully satisfied with the current situation. New bilateral cooperation opportunities open up every year, and France hopes to commit to them within its means and capabilities. Promising cooperation reinforcement opportunities are appearing on the horizon with major regional powers—in particular India, Japan and Australia—as well as with the US, with which regular consultations have been established at high level on the strategic context in the Asia–Pacific.
France also intends to pursue its commitment within multilateral security forums and has declared an interest in taking part in ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting Plus activities, believing that this structure contributes pragmatically to the development of regional capacities to confront current and future security challenges and that France could provide a useful contribution.
Does France carry weight in the major strategic balance in the Asia–Pacific? The answer to this question is ‘No; not directly.’ But if the question is whether France contributes to regional security and to the development of defence and security capabilities in a large number of countries in the Asia–Pacific, then I believe that the answer is clearly a positive one. France doesn’t overestimate its strategic role in the Indo–Pacific region but considers it to be significant and appropriate and would like it to be better known. Its key defence partners in the region know what France does and appreciate its contribution, even if that can’t be said for the media and academia, despite their major role, by action or omission, in forming perceptions of political actors.
Australia and France: time to plan a closer partnership
France is on the move. Since the release of its 2013 White Paper on Asia–Pacific Security, the country’s been pursuing its interests in the region with an ebullient energy. At the same time, Australia’s own strategic priorities are bringing us into closer contact with France on important matters, with the choice of French company DCNS to build our future submarines being just one of these. The convergence in the Australia–France relationship is more meaningful than dollars and project management.
At a time when the United States’ strategic interest in this region might be about to wane, France’s strength and long-term intentions offer opportunities that we’ll grasp if we’re observant and prepared. That will only be possible if Australia makes the effort to truly understand France. We must also overcome attitudes that paint France simply as a provocative interloper, or as a partner for occasional disaster relief operations and military hardware purchases. Certainly from the 1960s into the 1990s, France’s activities defied international conventions, and the bilateral relationship suffered. Nuclear tests in French Polynesia, challenges by Australia and New Zealand at the International Court of Justice and violent uprisings in New Caledonia are still well within living memory. But that sour taste has little bearing on the new reality for Australia (save perhaps the problem of fallout). France has a more complex and constructive role to play in the region and Australian policy should respond accordingly.
Our Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (CSP) declares like-mindedness on a range of values and international issues, and the 2016 Australian Defence White Paper acknowledges France as a dependable partner in disaster relief and anti-piracy, affirming Canberra’s support for Paris’ counterterrorism work. That’s to say nothing of our historic cooperation in war, countless people-to-people connections, France’s stable governance of its regional territories, or its shares worth billions of euros in the European Investment Bank which support development projects across the Pacific.
It’s tempting to leave strategy at that. In these uncertain times, France’s regional presence comes as something of a relief: democracy, good business, prosperity, security, low risk, no worries.
Except that not analysing France and not being curious about its intentions and capacities leaves us seriously under-informed. Distance is an illusion. France’s preoccupations at home, in NATO, in the EU and at the UN are significant to our shared world-view, but they also distract from the influence that France can wield in our region.
By luck, choice and circumstance, the Indo–Pacific interests of France and Australia now overlap in unprecedented ways.
At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue, French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that France would coordinate European naval patrols in support of freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. France has also invoked UNCLOS to expand an overseas EEZ that’s already the world’s second-largest and secure rights to much-needed oil and gas reserves, including below the seabed off New Caledonia.
That move suggests an intention to stick around and participate further in regional economic development, a welcome prospect for capacity-building. But it also implies that France may be reluctant to give up New Caledonia if the territory votes for independence in 2018, which should alert us to lingering resentments of French sovereignty among the indigenous Kanaks. If the referendum result is contested, would Australia understand the French and Kanak positions in sufficient depth, and make policy to contribute constructively to a peaceful resolution?
And how will Australian shipbuilders forge lasting and productive relationships with DCNS as it builds the future submarines? It’ll be logical for France to try and understand our strategy in order to maximise its commercial returns, but will we follow that logic to understand French industrial policy, to our own strategic benefit? If the decision is made to upgrade the Shortfin Barracuda submarine from diesel-electric to nuclear power, can we assume Australia embrace French expertise?
Australia seems to register matters like these as stand-alone episodes, strategically unconnected and limited to discrete areas of policy. But together they play directly and saliently on every tenet of our regional strategy: the rules-based order, stability to our near north and credible military capability. France shows every intention of continuing with policy that corresponds to ours. The difficulty is that, over many years of relative quiet, Australia has failed to appreciate France’s comprehensive strategy. It’s time to refresh our interpretation. But how?
One crucial lesson from the nuclear decades is that France has a longevity and a freedom of action independent to those of other powers in the Indo-Pacific. Capable, potent, experienced, embedded and dispersed, France is a credible presence, able to act quickly and decisively, but just detached enough from the region’s everyday political whirlpools to make cautious, forward-looking judgements. France’s stance on the South China Sea dispute, in favour of freedom of navigation, suggests Paris is prepared to play a leadership role beyond Europe.
Whatever follows, strategically there may soon be no arm’s-length distinction between France proper and France in our near neighbourhood. It’s in Australia’s interest to understand what the metropole is thinking and doing. As the Pacific becomes an increasingly contested place, there will be harder challenges, and less readable neighbours. Ensuring that the growing Australia–France relationship serves regional stability depends on our deep understanding of France. Analysts and policymakers should make haste slowly.
National security wrap
The Beat
Gaming body tackles corruption
A newly formed video gaming industry body, the eSports Integrity Coalition (ESIC), aims to combat fraud and cheating in competitive video gaming. On Tuesday ESIC integrity commissioner Ian Smith warned against organised crime and match fixing in the growing global e-Sports market, which generates approximately US$500 million annually. Mr Smith estimates that regulated gambling on e-Sports will grow to $20 billion by 2020, while grey and black market betting will net between $200–300 billion. ESIC is pushing for industry-wide adoption of its anti-corruption code of conduct, but so far only two major gaming leagues, ESL and Dreamhack, have signed on. On a related note, the UK Gambling Commission recently released a discussion paper highlighting the risk of in-game products and virtual currencies facilitating money laundering.
Philippine–Indonesian policing cooperation
The Indonesian and Philippine governments have announced a cooperative investigation into an organised crime syndicate trafficking Philippine passports to Indonesian pilgrims. On Thursday 18 August, Philippine immigration police arrested 177 Indonesians at Manila’s main International Airport for carrying unauthorised passports. The Indonesians were en route to Saudi Arabia to perform the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca. Both governments are keen to stop those exploiting the Hajj visa quota system, which has a shorter waiting list in the Philippines than in Indonesia.
CT Scan
FARC deal
The Columbian government and FARC agreed on a peace accord last Wednesday after 52 years of fighting. The narco-insurgent group’s known for kidnapping and attacks on both key infrastructure and security personnel. There’s still a ways to go to implementation, and some analysts predict fresh violence over control of the drug trade.
The long war
The Taliban have overrun Jani Khel in Eastern Afghanistan, a district that sits on a major route to Pakistan. ISW’s latest map (PDF) shows the group’s expanding influence. CSIS’s Anthony Cordesman highlights the need for a serious review of US strategy in Afghanistan in his latest report (PDF).
Telling stories
Last Thursday the New York Times released a 2013 study of Saudi textbooks by the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. The report, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, notes that, while some reform has occurred, the books still contain intolerant passages that incite violence. The Saudi monarchy’s no stranger to criticism over its links to an extremist narrative—criticism that’s been flowing freely over the past few weeks.
On the counter-narrative front closer to home, Hedaya released its follow up report to Australia’s Regional Summit to Counter Violent Extremism on Tuesday, titled Undermining Violent Extremism Narratives in South East Asia: A How-To Guide (PDF).
Checkpoint
Le Touquet deal here to stay—for now
On Tuesday UK Home Minister Amber Rudd and French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve met to discuss Calais-to-Dover border controls and growing problems in the so-called Calais ‘Jungle’. The French have grown dissatisfied with the 2003 Le Touquet treaty, which imposes ‘juxtaposed controls’ that allow British authorities to conduct immigration checks in Calais rather than in the UK. The growth of large migrant camps in Calais—over 7,000 individuals, most without housing—has sparked appeals for a renegotiated deal. Despite inflammatory commentary preceding the meeting (including Nicolas Sarkozy’s demand that Britain shoulder a greater part of the migrant burden) and Brexit, both parties emerged pledging ‘close co-operation’ on securing the Channel Tunnel and Calais port.
SA port finds more asbestos
Hundreds of South Australian workers at Port Pirie may have been exposed to asbestos fibres in Chinese imported equipment. SA Deputy Premier John Rau revealed the discovery last week, criticising the federal government’s border security efforts and calling for urgent talks between state and federal authorities. The disclosure is the latest in a string of imported asbestos incidents and adds to pressure for further investigations—including Senator Nick Xenophon’s call for a re-convened senate inquiry and a full audit of all imports potentially containing asbestos.
First Responder
World at risk
Bündnis Entwicklung Hilft and UN University’s Institute for Environment and Human Security released their 2016 WorldRiskReport (PDF) last Thursday. The report assesses the disaster risk for 171 countries based on exposure to natural hazards, susceptibility (based on infrastructure, nutrition, poverty, and economic capacity), and a country’s coping and adaptive capacities. Australia performs well in the index, ranking 121, however many of the south-west Pacific Islands are some of the most at-risk (PDF) with Vanuatu, Tonga, Solomon Islands, PNG, and Timor-Leste all in the top 15—climate change and rising sea levels are a huge challenge for the region.
Energy diversity
Calls to re-think Australia’s energy security are becoming more (PDF) frequent (PDF). ASPI’s Anthony Bergin had an excellent piece here on The Strategist this week looking at diversifying the RAN’s fuel supply, as well as Australia’s broader energy resilience strategy (or lack thereof).
In Europe, NATO’s Energy Security Centre of Excellence tested a ‘Deployable Modular Hybrid Power Generation & Management System’ with the Lithuanian Armed Forces in the August ‘Strong Hussar’ military exercises. The generator limits the environmental impact of deployments, incorporating conventional fuel sources with renewable energy.
And finally, a new app—‘Windyty’—lets you track meteorological phenomena across the globe.
The forgotten actor in Australia’s counterterrorism plans
Malcolm Turnbull has requested that Australia’s counterterrorism agencies develop a strategy to prevent rapidly radicalised terrorists from carrying out Nice-style attacks in public areas. Senior sources have told The Australian that the Prime Minister is particularly concerned about an attack that uses a vehicle as a weapon, which could cause devastating casualties.
Prime Minister Turnbull has directed counterterrorism coordinator Greg Moriarty to quickly identify lessons for Australia arising from the Bastille Day attack in Nice. In particular, Moriarty will advise government on how vulnerable Australia’s public areas are, and how authorities can protect open areas where large numbers congregate. Given the history of mass-casualty terrorist attacks on soft targets , it’s absolutely critical Australia looks to protect such venues and spaces.
But our record in this area is mixed: it’s not clear that we’ve got a nationally consistent approach to safeguarding mass gatherings, despite the publication five years ago (PDF) of national guidelines by the National Counter-Terrorism Committee.
Mass gathering protection is fundamentally focused on counterterrorism and public safety. As the public’s vulnerability at such events is high, the level of residual risk to places of mass gatherings—such as sporting events and entertainment precincts—is more often much higher than other infrastructure, such as power stations, transport or water facilities. Compared to infrastructure protection, it’s probably fair to say that protecting mass gatherings has been the area least amenable to national leadership.
Some jurisdictions have seen the problem simply as one of community policing and working with those responsible for occupational health and safety issues.
We need a nationally consistent approach when it comes to information sharing and pooling of knowledge between business and governments at all levels on this issue. It’s helpful that we have a Mass Gatherings Advisory Group (MGAG) that sits under the Australian New Zealand Counter–Terrorism Committee, and the Mass Gatherings Business Advisory Group, that feeds into the MGAG.
But the forgotten actor here is local government: when it comes to consequence management, resilience lives locally, so the importance of local government shouldn’t be overlooked.
Australia has about 560 local government bodies—and their responsibilities go well beyond the traditional functions of rates, roads and rubbish. While the states have the primary responsibility for most emergencies, it’s at the local level where responders will be first on the scene.
Local government can promote the importance of security at places of mass gathering within their communities. It can also promote a nationally consistent approach to protecting places of mass gathering at the local level.
The Nice attack showed that it’s not always capital cities that are the location of attacks. When you get out of Australia’s major cities, local government is really the primary governance actor in many of our regional areas. For instance, they’re heavily involved in approvals for major events, such as festivals, sports carnivals and working with police, contractors and the private security sector. They’re often responsible for road closures and CCTV in areas where there’s public safety risks.
Local government is the level of government closest to where the population lives and works. It’s responsible for the provision or coordination of local resources. There’s little doubt that terrorist attacks will occur in local government areas and will have a direct social, economic, psychological and cultural impact on that local area.
It’s unclear what involvement local government believes it currently has in counterterrorism planning, prevention and response or what role the federal government sees for local government in counterterrorism planning, prevention and response. Local government isn’t mentioned in the most recent COAG national counter terrorism strategy (PDF), nor in the guidelines on the protection of places of mass gathering from terrorism.
The local government peak body—ALGA—has been involved in discussions around natural disaster management in Australia, and is represented on COAG’s Law, Crime and Community Safety Council. But there’s no evidence that ALGA’s had any involvement in broader counterterrorism strategy.
It’s unclear what assets and resources local government can provide before, during and after a terrorist attack—physical, social, intelligence, plant, medical-mortuary, personnel, local knowledge and so on. It’s also unclear how extensive local government resources in mental health and youth work can contribute to countering violent extremism by making young people feel part of a local community. There’s been little attention given to determining the consequences for local government of a terrorist attack: financial costs but also damage to social and economic systems, to structures, to regional reputation.
More work needs to be undertaken to identify the capability of local government in relation to counterterrorism and how local government could be better integrated into our counterterrorism plans.