The New York Times, August 27, 1995. Week In Review, p. 15. The Bomb and the Boomerang: France meets an eco-superpower. By Thomas L. Friedman (NYT Foreign Affairs columnist.) Sydney, Australia. On the surface, Australia's bitter opposition to France's plans to conduct nuclear weapons tests in the South Pacific next month needs no explanation. I mean, how would you feel if someone came from the other side of town to test his toxic fertilizer on your backyard? "But it's totally safe," say the French. Safe? ask the Aussies. Safe you say? If it's so bloody safe, then why don't the French test their bombs under Euro Disney and not half a world away beneath the coral of the Mururoa Atoll? A good question, and just one of the raasons why it's impossible to exaggerate the depth of popular indignation here at President Jacques Chirac's decision to resume nuclear testing in Polynesia, thereby violating the de facto ban on such explosions that every nuclear power except China has been observing. No wonder French bakeries in Sydney have had their windows smashed, French cars their tires sliced, French products boycotted and a French Consulate firebombed. "We are not at war," the French Ambassador to Australia complained -- just before he boarded a plane to Paris after being summoned home by his Government. Ah, but the Ambassador was wrong. Because beneath the surface, this is a war. It is a war between two very different concepts of sovereignty, and one we are going to witness more and more of in years ahead. It is the clash between a traditional, inward-looking, nationalistic form of sovereignty, embodied in Mr. Chirac's Gaullism, and a very broad, expansive, outward-looking new notion of sovereignty embodied in environmentalism. Scholars have long argued that Gaullism is a form of psychotherapy, an ideology invented by Charles de Gaulle to rebuild French dignity after the excruciating humiliation of being defeated by the Nazis and liberated by the Americans. The Gaullist in Mr. Chirac says that France, as a self-proclaimed Great Power, must maintain an independent nuclear option, and an independent military identity. Therefore, it will test the newest weapons in its nuclear arsenal, because that is the French national interest. And if the rest of the world doesn't like it, well, all the better. That is the fun of being a Gaullist. I detonate, therefore I exist. What the French, who have no environmental movement, have totally missed is the development elsewhere in the world of a concept of environmental sovereignty. Environmental sovereignty says my home, my space, isn't just limited to my borders on a map. It includes the air I breathe, the water off my shore and the whole extended food chain upon which I rely. Environmental sovereignty is not confined either by conventional borders or by conventional time. That is, the French say there is no danger of the Mururoa Atoll fracturing and leaking the massive radiation that has been trapped in the volcanic rock beneath it from 139 French underground nuclear tests since 1975. Well maybe there is no leakage today, but what about in 50 years? 200 years? In the Gaullist view of the world there is France and there is the rest of the world, there is "home" and there is "away," and where you test your nuclear weapons is away -- way, way, away. In the environmentalist view of the world, there is no "away." The whole globe is home, so away is home and home is home. One reason Mr. Chirac has to play out his Gaullist fantasies in the South Pacific is that he can't play them out in Europe anymore. There, French nationalism has been repressed because France has surrendered part of its sovereignty to be a member of the European Union, and a united Europe. France's E.U. partners would never allow it to test in Europe. This clash between France and Australia, observed the Australian writer Paul Sheehan, will be the first real confrontation between a traditional superpower and an ecological superpower. But a clash it will be. Mr. Chirac insists he will plow ahead with his tests. He is wrong. It is a mistake. And as they say around here, the bomb's gonna boomerang. If the French President had any sense he would heed the message of a popular Australian bumper sticker. It says simply: "Don't Blow It Jacques." [End]
