With his decision presented in a neo-Gaullian style, to take up anew the
nuclear tests in Moruroa, a Polynesian island, Chirac, the new elected French
president, was undoubtedly unaware of the amplitude of protests that would arise
both in France and abroad. It could even be said that these have surpassed in
intensity the rage that followed the plastic bombing of one of Greenpeace boats
in Auckland on the 13th July 1985. This bomb attack, a true act of terrorism
perpetrated by the French State secret services, ended up in the sinking of the
"admiral" Greenpeace ship and the death of a Portuguese photograph
reporter. The ecological organisation was intending to get to Moruroa to prevent
imminent nuclear tests. Mitterrand had given his agreement to an operation which
resulted in a complete political fiasco: the socialist Defence Minister had to
resign, and the chief of the secret services (SDECE) who set up the whole
performance has been fired for the job done. As for the two French agents
arrested by the New Zealander police, they were objects of laborious dealings,
amid economical pressure and the payment of a large ransom. Many years had to
pass before the relations between New Zealand and France returned back to their
quasi standard course, at least at the level of state relations. In 1988,
however, the inhabitants of that region were to be given a new demonstration of
the reactionary and colonialist nature of French policy in the Pacific zone,
namely the bloody repression against the upsurge of the Kanak peoples who rose
up courageously to gain their national rights. While Chirac was holding the
function of Prime Minister during the first "cohabitation" period (1),
colonial barbarity fully revealed itself in the massacres of Ouveais cavern
where 23 Kanaks were killed.
Since
the announcement of the end of nuclear test moratoria, the denunciation of
French nuclear colonialism has expanded in spite of the efforts spread out by
the authorities to convince the peoples of the validity of their decision and of
the lack of danger concerning radioactive contamination. Generals declared that
they were ready to dive in the waters of the lagoon after nuclear explosion,
specialists have been invited to measure radioactivity rates; under the slogan
of "transparency", everyone swears to God that this will be the last
nuclear firing campaign and that immediately afterwards "France will
undersign the treaty of complete prohibition of nuclear testing". The
so-called weaponless nature of the tests is a lie. Mainly because average and
long term risks are here in play, as radioactivity is a matter of long term
consequences. Indeed, considerable amounts of highly radioactive rocks and gases
are produced each time an underground explosion takes place. The danger linked
to the diffusion of such a kind of thing, and in the end of radioactive
pollution, is as much effective than the stability of the rock plints in which
the tests are undergone is not securely guaranteed. French imperialism has
always refused that independent, steady and profound studies about radioactivity
questions to be realised in its Pacific colonies. The demands for definitive
stopping of nuclear tests expressed by the peoples living in the area of Moruroa
are all the more legitimate as those which take the decisions are living some
20,000 kilometres away.
If some governments display sensitiveness towards the
"guarantees" given by the French authorities, it is not the case for
the peoples living around Moruroa, even more particularly the youth, who have no
trust in them. Street demonstrations, appeals, boycott of French goods, actions
of sabotage against symbolic targets, are developing more and more, as we get
closer to the "firing dot" which is planned to come about around the
beginning of September. In France itself the contests are emerging in different
forms which involve very large strata of the population. Whereas the meanest
question is subject to an express public inquiry, several weeks have been here
necessary for the mass media to come out finally with the publishing of opinion
survey results. They show more than 60% of "unfavourable views"
against the set back of nuclear testing. A large scale disinformation is
practised; actions of protest in France are systematically and utmostly
minimized, further, they are plainly hidden. Every thing is done to give the
impression that opposition to nuclear tests exists only in foreign countries,
that this opposition is being manipulated; all of this for the sole goal to
promote chauvinistic reflexes. It does not work. Besides, the boycotting of
French goods by the peoples living in the Pacific countries, but also in Europe,
is extensively felt by the French people as a legitimate reaction of "self
defence". One could compare this type of action to the last massive boycott
against the gas stations owned by the oil monopoly, Shell. This latter mass
operation had obliged Shell to abandon its plan of damping a giant platform in
the North Sea. It reminds us of another very popular boycott event, against the
"outspan" oranges imported from South Africa in the last years of
Apartheid.
In
short, the political effects of such a decision are already negative for Chirac
and his team.
Hence,
the following questions arise: what are the prevailing reasons and interests
that compel Chirac to take this kind of decision, with all its consequences?
Those
who still have longings for De Gaulle welcomed this decision as a return to a
superpower military policy. As the spokesman of a weakened imperialism after
World War 11, De Gaulle wanted the atomic bomb. According to his own expression,
he wanted France to "sit down at the table of the superpowers". It was
also necessary to assert the domination of the metropolis over a huge colonial
empire, which was, at that time, threatened both by peoples' struggles and by
the ambitions of other countries, particularly of American imperialism. It is of
no extraordinary coincidence if all the French nuclear experiments have taken
place in the colonised territories. Algerian Sahara had been the first test
field with 17 atmospheric tests up to 1966, then and until 1974, 41 open-air
tests were realised in Polynesia, and finally, up to 1992, year of the moratoria
decided by Mitterrand, 134 underground tests passed through.
The military and political doctrine that expressed
this will has been called "the nuclear dissuasion" also called
"the striking force". It has been presented as an expression of a
policy of independence towards the two blocs. French imperialism drew out of it
an important argument in favour of an active policy of exporting any type of
weapons arguing the fact that these weapons would ensure to their buyers a
certain independence towards the two superpowers.
In Europe itself, the nuclear weapon being forbidden
to Germany, French imperialism enjoyed a political and diplomatic advantage
because of its possessing of the nuclear weapon. Presented as a symbol of
independence, French nuclear armament was in fact closely dependent of American
imperialism. As a matter of fact, the Gaullist concept of nuclear dissuasion is
a copy on the American imperialist concept. It relies on the idea that the
threat of the "nuclear fire", launched by French authorities in case
of a foreign military attack against national soil or colonies, was sufficiently
powerful, both because of its destructive strength and the choice of the
targets, that none of the aggressors will ever try to provoke it. The enemy was
clearly pointed out: the USSR and the member countries of the Warsaw Pact.
Soviet big cities were the targets. In other words, hundreds of thousands of
people were permanently kept under hostages conditions. The French doctrine, du
faible au fort (read from the weak to the strong), has evolved. Indeed, this
tout ou rien (read all or nothing)
principle evolved towards a doctrine that included an "ultimate
warning", involving "tactical" nuclear missiles less powerful.
These were supposed to be launched just before strategic missiles. This new
conception of dissuasion was a variant of NATO's "graduated response".
The
help from American imperialism had been essential in the setting of the French
atomic bomb. It continued, though discreetly, even after De Gaulle's decision to
leave NATO's command, in 1966. The disproportion in existing weapons stocks, the
technological dependency on the US and on their military instrument in Europe,
namely NATO, particularly in fundamental fields as information, radar
surveillance, techniques of miniaturisation, transmissions, etc., constitute the
concrete elements proving that the French "striking force" was widely
tributary to NATO’s military mechanism. Of course, only the President,
commander in chief of the weaponries, has the final responsibility in the
decision of launching the nuclear fire. However, the credibility of French
nuclear dissuasion derived of its dependence of the American nuclear
"umbrella".
The imperialist possessors of the nuclear weapon have presented it as the
"absolute" weapon because of the fundamental changes it supposedly
introduced in war. The proper conditions of its first use by American
imperialism, on August 6th and 9th in 1945 against civilian populations in
Nagasaki and Hiroshima, gave to the term of "weapon of massive
destruction" a terrible concrete meaning. Hundreds of thousands of people
died instantly, while thousands of survivors were deadly irradiated. The nuclear
shelling of Japan had, as it is more and more admitted at present, no military
justification and was mainly carried out by the American leaders as a life size
test for their new weapon. Through the nuclear weapon, they were convinced of
their lasting and absolute military supremacy, which was going to enable them to
dictate their own interests over the whole world.
The
socialist state, namely the USSR, has acquired the same type of weapon to
counterbalance the nuclear threat that US imperialism and its allies made exert
against the USSR and the other countries "of people's democracy", but
also, and more generally against the peoples struggling against imperialist
domination. When the revisionist leaders took over power in the USSR, they found
themselves at the head of a nuclear power which allowed them to challenge US
imperialism.
For
more than thirty years, the two imperialist superpowers fought one against the
other in every field for world domination. They imposed their dictate through a
permanent nuclear blackmail while accumulating considerable stocks of weapons.
In a first time, competition concerned the strength of nuclear charges and their
destructive "efficiency". Since the effects of an atomic bomb
explosion are practically irremediable (blow action, heat activity causing
gigantic fires, irradiations...), and as both superpowers had widely enough
quantities of nuclear heads in hand, their efforts concentrated in improving
shooting proficiency (better accuracy in guided missile precision, better
control of nuclear blow at high or low altitude...) and in techniques of missile
interception (densification of radar surveillance and control, building of
anti-missile missiles...). The sophistication brought about in these different
fields followed each other so rapidly that some of the vectors such as
long-range bombardiers were soon surpassed even before they had the chance to be
mass produced. Still, the announced bombardiers were made, for they signified
profitable contracts for the monopoles. (In France the most blatant illustration
of this is the "Mirage IV" squadrons which were actually surpassed but
still operative. They continue to secure profits for Dassault, be it only
through maintenance). This weapon's race ended up, during Reagan's period, in
IDS project (programme) (known as "star wars" or "nuclear
shield"). An immense cosmic project in which electronic and computer
companies take the lion's share. The development of nuclear weapon is itself
closely linked to the progress in electronics, computer and telecommunications
industry. The monopolists that overrule these sectors have become the modern
"weapon magnates". Their technology and their products invade not only
the sphere of armament but all the economy as a whole. Financed by the States,
the nuclear market, both civilian and military, provides them with lofty and
guaranteed profits even in a period of crisis.
The
big imperialist powers which possess the nuclear weapon have turned it into a
mythical weapon to terrorise the peoples and exert their world domination.
Nevertheless, the nuclear weapon is but an instrument among others serving their
imperialist domination. For this matter, it is worth quoting Engels' ideas
expressed in his Anti-Duhring:
"Violence is not a mere act of volition but demands for its
putting in practice very concrete previous conditions, especially instruments
where the most developed wins over the less developed; further, these
instruments have to be produced, that means also that the producer of
instruments of violence more perfect, let say the weapons, will win over the
producer of the less developed. In a word, the victory of the violence relies on
the production of weapons which relies on the production in general, thus on the
economical power, on the state reached by economy, on the material means
available for exerting violence". In other words, in the field of weapons
and weapon production, the same laws and the same contradictions inherent to
capitalism act ruthlessly, particularly those of frantic competition and of
unequal growth. The imperialist powers have been watchful on safeguarding their
monopoly over this technology. They even undersigned an international treaty
aimed to secure that monopoly, as for example, the treaty of non-proliferation.
Nonetheless, their rivalry and the weapons race lead them to disseminate nuclear
weapons in "allied countries" and to sell at high price equipments and
instruments for the manufacturing of the bomb. Every nuclear power plant that
produces electricity gives birth to plutonium which, after undergoing an
appropriate treatment, can serve military purposes. American, French and German
imperialists helped Israil, Pakistan and South Africa, in the time of apartheid
(3), to possess nuclear weapons. The USSR acted the same way with other
countries. In other words, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, about which
they complain, is the result of their own policy. Things have got to the point
where the nuclear club is less and less confined. Besides the five nuclear
powers (China, the USA, United Kingdom, Russia and France) we have now India,
Israil and Pakistan in the file. Let us also point out South and North Korea,
Irak and Iran, as many countries suspected to own nuclear weapons. As for Gemany
and Japan, they are equipped with such abundant nuclear fuels and all technical
means so that they can rapidly become possessors of the nuclear weapon.
This
is the expression of the new worldwide and chaotic balance of power. It is the
result of the unequal growth under the capitalist system, and particularly since
the fall of the Soviet Union and of its spheres of influence. It is the
expression of the division of spheres of influence, which is operating today
amongst the nuclear powers. A division in which new runners hurry up for their
share. The Gulf war was its first outward sign; it keeps on today in
Ex-Yugoslavia, in the Balkans, etc.
Chirac's
decision to proceed to a series of nuclear tests with the goal of acceding to
laser techniques of simulation must be fully identified with this context.
Namely, that the aim is the perfecting of nuclear weapons and not giving them
up. Arguing about the technical validity of nuclear tests is not the question.
Although they did have nothing to criticise about the nuclear tests as long as
Mitterrand was at the head of the State, the reformists, behind the Socialist
Party, centre their criticism on this level. When Mitterrand decided the
suspension of nuclear tests on April 12th, 1992, the latest President, with his
high sense of political tactics could assert that his successor would not be
able to go back over the decision. He was conscious of the little risks for
himself since he was performing the end of his mandate. Actually, behind the
decree of the moratoria, he was just keeping up with the American and Russian
leaders drawing the first consequences of the new worldwide political and
military situation. It was that of the death of Warsaw Pact and the diminishing
at short time of the threat of a military and nuclear confrontation with the
East. But this did not mean, in his mind, to abandon nuclear armament. Moreover,
he had himself underlined the fact that it was necessary to accelerate
investigations about nuclear simulation and carry out deep modifications of the
armed forces, and thus participate in the new international deal. The governing
team led by Balladur, Mitterrand's Prime Minister during his last period of
"cohabitation", carried out the elaboration of "project for the
future defence policy" (4), which remains the essential reference to the
political and military conception of French imperialism. But if this document
avoids taking a stand on the question of the reinitiating of nuclear tests, it
is because Balladur was, at that moment, unwilling to raise up polemical topics
that could endanger his personal presidential ambitions. He knew that public
opinion, on the whole, was hostile to such an act.
The
nuclear consensus
Once
the elections gone by, the representatives of the powerful lobby that had
"carried out", nuclear politics of French imperialism since the
fifties, and still keep on doing so, became much more active, considering that
too much time had been lost. With Chirac as President, they were given all the
warranties. Furthermore, they could expect to count with the consensus that had
been ruling nuclear questions for decades amongst the "right" parties,
social democracy and the revisionist party. Let's consider Mitterrand's case. He
was at the start in opposition to "the striking force" because he was
opposed to De Gaulle. He found direct protection under the American nuclear
"umbrella" much more suitable. He also took into account the fact that
the parties that claimed to be on the left were hostile to the atomic bomb. But
in 1978 he made an about-turn and joined the tenants of the
"unavoidable" character of "the striking force", the sine
qua non condition for any presidential ambition. He will drain the
Socialist Party in his wake. The revisionist PCF party leaders will join him in
this position, and from then on, will take part in the "national
consensus" around "the striking force". Surely, the PCF protested
against French "surweaponament and its participation to the "weapons
race", particularly from the time when Soviet-American negotiations were
engaged for weapons reduction. Still, it refuses to claim for abandoning purely
and simply, unilaterally and without any condition French nuclear weapon. This
is one of the fields where the demarcation line between the Marxist-Leninist
positions and the reformist and revisionist ones is clearly straight because it
deals with the vital interests of imperialism.
By referring
himself to "experts"' views to justify his decision, Chirac is only
pointing to the real centre of decisions in this matter. These civilian and
military "experts" are representatives of the most powerful monopolies
that rule the State. It actually illustrates State monopolist capitalism, which
(as it is written in The Political Economy Handbook published by the Academy of
Science of the Soviet Union in 1955) "consists in subordinating the State
apparatus to the capitalist monopolies and in using it to interfere in the
economics of the country, particularly through its militarisation, in the
purpose of securing maximum profits for the monopolies and to settle the
omnipotence of finance capital". They have interest in the expansion of
civilian and military nuclear industry for two reasons. Firstly, it insures them
exceptional profits through orders of the State. Secondly, they may hence have
at their disposal the most effective weapons that enable them to guarantee their
class domination and to safeguard their interests at the world level.
Toward
a banalisation of nuclear weapons
On
the base of the analysis made by military experts of the new balance of power in
the world, in regard with the contradictions among the imperialists, between the
imperialist powers and the less developed capitalist countries, as the
contradictions between the imperialists and the peoples, the main danger is
located in the "South". Hence the emphasis put on the higher grade of
troop mobility and on more effective tactical weapons. Easily moveable, these
armed forces are liable to intervene hundreds, indeed thousands of kilometres
away from the home country, wherever the "vital interests" of French
imperialism are threatened. These consist in every kind of road or sea routes by
which raw materials are supplied, and of the free circulation of goods; not to
mention the highly flexible notion of "defence of the values of
democracy" in the name of which any so called "humanitarian"
military operations can be legitimated. These scenarios do not leave out the use
of "tactical" nuclear weapons. In this category we find the so-called
"intelligent" missiles which, loaded with small nuclear charges, are
aimed to reach predetermined targets in restricted areas, then the nuclear
shells, and last the light weapons intended to shoot slightly radioactive
ammunitions. Such nuclear shells have been rocketed during the Gulf war.
Revelations have been made that the French arsenals, as it is true for other
nuclear countries, contain massive stocks of this kind of weapons available. To
make use of these weapons, especially the missiles, one needs that serious
resources, such as military satellites for target identification and missile
control.
These
"tactical" nuclear weapons come in addition to the modernised
inter-continental ballistic weapons. This may very well mean that the
"older" ones will be abandoned. French authorities will not neglect to
present this decision as a contribution to nuclear disarmament! In this sense
there is a great danger of banalisation of "tactical" nuclear weapons
usage and for a new impulse given to weapons production. This will also lead, in
general, to a higher degree of the militarisation of the economy, such a
phenomenon being typical of times of sharp crisis in the world's imperialist
system. This general tendency is also seen among the "allied"
countries like German, American and Japanese imperialism that are, nevertheless,
economically rivals while they follow up the same political, economical and
military trend, each for its own sake. Therefore their critical stand vis-à-vis
Chirac's government appear very hypocritical and have no link whatsoever with
peoples' anger and mobilisations.
It
stresses the importance of the popular movement in opposition with the renewal
of French nuclear tests. Its demands are concrete demands, legitimately sensed
by millions of people, much so since these tests swallow very large amounts of
money which are directly withdrawn from the working people through taxes and
other deductions carried out by the State. It brings forth a profound
contestation against militarism that is developing today in France and in the
other imperialist countries. Attacking one of its most active representative,
namely French imperialism, contributes to the struggles of the people against
this threatening evolution. It is a field of international mobilisation in which
the Marxist-Leninist parties have a particular role to play, especially to avoid
that opportunist forces succeed in deviating the movement toward chauvinistic
positions.
Paris,
19 August 1995
Central Committee of the Workers' Communist Party of France
Notes:
(1) Under
"cohabitation" we refer to the political situation in which the
President is of
a different political family than the
parliamentary majority. This situation that was not foreseen in the institutions
of the 5th Republic occurred twice
during Miterrand's period. It expresses that there are no fundamental
differences between the right parties and the social democrat party about the
management of the interests of French
imperialism. This has been particularly obvious in the defence policy where both
the right parties and the social democrat one have voted together several
budgets of the Ministry of Defence, the second budget of the
State behind the budget of education.
(2) The non-proliferation 's treaty implies that
the non-nuclear states renounce to it definitively. The nuclear powers engage
themselves to furnish them all kinds of aid in civilian nuclear production. That
means an attempt of maintaining the status quo in favour of the big powers.
(3)
The states which have helped South Africa of the apartheid time to become a
military nuclear power, the USA, Israel, France, Germany, made pressure on De
Klerk to dismantle this nuclear arsenal before the ANC came to power.
(4) For more about this “project for a new policy of defence", see our articles written in La Forge, in June 1994. See also our articles about nuclear tests of July and August 1995.