Then the political and diplomatic aftershocks began. Two governments called their ambassadors home from Paris. International groups filed formal protests. Environmentalists and antinuclear activists called for boycotts of French wines and other goods and services. In Papeete, Tahiti’s largest city and the capital of French Polynesia, the test provoked a peaceable sit-in that turned into a riot when police tried to break it up. Battles between police and protesters armed with rocks and chains left at least 20 people injured, including a police officer who was beaten senseless by the mob.
Sometimes the French seem positively eager to antagonize the rest of the world. The non-French tend to respond in almost Pavlovian fashion, raising their hackles at the slightest whiff of Gallic arrogance. No one can be sure what might become of the established international order if this immemorial pattern of behavior should be broken. French President Jacques Chirac shrugged off the international criticism as mere “hysteria.” The French themselves were ambivalent. A poll last week in Le Monde indicated that 59 percent of the French public disapprove of renewed nuclear testing. But the survey also found that 60 percent think their country needs its nuclear arsenal. France’s ability to deliver a devastating nuclear attack has been a article of faith for governments of all persuasions for more than three decades. Sovereignty, security and national honor dictate that the country must not rely on outsiders to defend it.
But defend it from whom? Since before the end of the cold war, France has been working to perfect its submarine-launched ballistic missiles and their warheads. The program’s objective was to produce nuclear missiles able to penetrate Moscow’s antiballistic-missile defenses. Yet since the collapse of the Soviet Union, such calculations seem to belong in the history books. France’s war gamers refuse to say who their potential nuclear adversary might be. The point, for France, is that a time may come when there is an enemy. Antinuclear passions may run deep throughout much of Europe–but with the world’s nuclear club expanding all the time, Paris is certain it’s the no-nukes crowd that’s out of step, not France.
Such thinking has not been popular among France’s partners in the European Union. Paris has tried to mollify them by offering to spread its deterrent umbrella across the continent–or at the very least, open it wide enough to cover Germany. Writing in the International Herald Tribune last week, France’s National Assembly speaker, Philippe Seguin, contended that France’s arsenal could evolve into a European arsenal–and he accused those who oppose the offer of “bad faith and outlandish francophobia.”
In classic French style, Seguin fanned the uproar while ostensibly trying to quell it. He sneered at environmental concerns over the Mururoa tests, saying France is pursuing “a policy that aims to defend Bosnians rather than baby seals.” He didn’t say precisely how the defense of Bosnia is incompatible with that of baby seals–or what possible use a military strategist might find for nuclear weapons in the midst of the Balkan war.
The real issue isn’t whether humans or wildlife should have priority; it’s whether France’s nuclear tests are safe. Although about 180 tests have taken place in French Polynesia since 1966, scientists see no evidence that its waters have been poisoned. Still, Mururoa’s neighbors have a question: if the tests are so innocuous, why doesn’t the French government bore holes beneath the Bois de Boulogne and set them off there? Obviously, because the French people would never stand for it. So what makes Paris think the people of the South Pacific are any different? “We’re not guinea pigs,” says Oscar Temaru, the mayor of Papeete and a leader of the French Polynesian independence movement. “We have children. Why didn’t Jacques Chirac ask our opinion?”
That isn’t Chirac’s way. But whatever the outcry in Australia, Japan and Tahiti, Europe may yet find it can use a leader who isn’t afraid to make people angry–even if that leader has what some might regard as the handicap of being French.
