Of ships and bombs and tuna fish ...

Pim Opinion

At first thought there is not much connection between nuclear testing and tuna fish and yet there are similarities to be seen in the attitudes displayed towards the people, and the environment, of the Pacific by the American Tunaboat Association, and the French government. Arrogance is a word one might choose to use; insensitive is another and pig-headedly selfish a portmanteau third.

In this issue we devote considerable space to the extraordinary saga of the bombing of Rainbow Warrior, the little Greenpeace ship due to lead a protest flotilla to gadfly the French nuclear test site on Moruroa atoll, in French Polynesia. We also publish a letter from the president of the American Tunaboat Association objecting to our long-standing criticism of the attitudes and fishing methods of some of his members. While the A.T.A. isn’t yet into testing neutron bombs, nor the French extensively into violating Pacific exclusive economic zones, we think the two items display in common an alarmingly callous attitude of mind towards little countries largely unable to resist these intrusions.

The Greenpeace affair heaped egg on the French face, caused great chortling, even in their own country, over the ineptitude of their spies, and has had precisely the opposite result to that which the French initially sought when first they decided upon their incredible, hare-brained scheme.

Far from damaging Greenpeace, the affair has given their protest priceless international publicity.

Equally, one might propose, the refusal of the American tuna trawlermen to recognise the exclusive economic zones which the rest of the world honors, and the crude manner in which they, and the government they so effectively lobby in Washington, respond when the little island nations protest, cannot do the United States much good. It is worth considering how much the A.T.A. attitude contributed to the decision of Kiribati to cock a snook at the U.S. and sign a fishing agreement with the Soviet Union. Or, to put it rather more constructively, whether President Tabai would have been quite so keen to do business with Moscow had the American tuna men possessed a better reputation in the Pacific. As it is, Kiribati has done the locally logical thing and played one super-power off against the other to their own benefit, but the

region is discomforted to the extent that the already extensive, largely clandestine, Soviet presence in the ocean has been made a little more respectable and, upon that, will extend in the future.

The French political situation in the area, notwithstanding the Greenpeace affair, is similarly curious. Their current approach to the future of New Caledonia may be applauded. Given the background upon which they are trying to glue a solution, the temper and style of the more extreme whites (and also of some of the Kanak elements) and their own external policies, they have so far done much better than many expected of them.

In French Polynesia they are also instituting some constitutional changes which will give that territory a status very similar to that of the Cook Islands’ good and constructive relationship with New Zealand. Gaston Flosse thus benefits from the efforts of the Caledonian Kanaks he professes to condemn.

But the nuclear testing program to which all Pacific nations, including Australia and New Zealand, so strongly object continues on Moruroa and Fangataufa, which uninhabited atolls have now been ceded in perpetuity to France; legally they are not now part of French Polynesia. Indeed, President Mitterrand decided to hold a court of his officials and administrators on Moruroa, presumably just to show that whatever ludicruous antics his spies might perpetrate, France remained determined to continue testing in other people’s backyards. In this he is quite secure enough, even in French Polynesia, for while there will be in Papeete demonstrations against it, they will be small, for the program is less an issue inside that territory than outside it. That the rest of the Pacific was outraged by the visit appeared to bother the French leader not at all.

Yet, both the American trawlermen, and the supporters of France’s Force de Frappe, must realise that the Pacific is no longer a remote region. It is growing rapidly in political and economic importance. The little island countries might not ever have much in the way of economic strength, but they have positions of considerable strategic value, and, today, governments perfectly capable of throwing spanners in quite large international works.

And the more they feel insulted, ignored, or down-trodden, the quicker they will be to reach for the spanners.