NEW CALEDONIA is a French colony. The Kanaks form 42 per cent of the population living on native reservations while white population grows fat from the land once owned by them.
On 21 November, three days after a new government had been elected dominated by the whites, Kanaks led by FLNKS (the Front for National and Socialist Liberation for Kanaks) announced the establishment of provisional government. Their aim was to lay the basis for 'future Kanaky'.
In pursuance of their demands for independence they began to occuns the white territory, erecting ricades to block off the roads and kid. napping the sub-prefect, Jean-Claude Demar.
The Mitterrand government in France has been unable to do a deal with the Kanaks and major divisions opening up the establishment as how to solve this crisis. The report below is based on an article by Claude Gabriel and Jean Jaredo newspaper Rouge.
The press have attempted to portray the Kanak's fight dependence as a band of savages on revolt. the Wing tnelr land. racism assassinating Pierre Declerq. territory the polls, the FLNKS.
all activists of making confined to native reservations.
barwillie COlONISIS blockaded.
French Territorial referendum in 1986.
French not in control of the situation.
for inthe warpath. This is designed to divert attention away from the cause of the French Caledonia has launched continual attacks on the Kanaks, stealpractising rampant September 1981, independence leader The success of the recent election boycott, where 80 per cent of the Kanak population stayed away from strengthened the hand of Their demands for the release of imprisoned during the election period and for a declaration the elections null and void were backed up by the only protest actions available to a rural population Actions were taken which directed the anger of the Kanaks against the The 'Caldoches' lands were occupied and 'their' roads i als forced me demole govern ment to make its first retreat. They accepted the possibility of dissolving the and holding a This shows that the authorities are They wish to diffuse the revolt with promises of a transition to independence.
The argument they use to deny independence to the Kanaks is that they lie.
LAST WEEK'S meeting defence ministers one of the most momentous decisions in western policy for many years. The meeting agreed to the US army doctrine of Follow-OnForces Attack (FOFA) - the plan for deep, strikes into Europe as part of a new offensive strategy for NATO in central Europe. Even more the US representatives meeting were still not satistied: they want a deep strike capability that will reach into the Western regions of the USSK, according to Sunday's Observer.
OLIVER MACDONALD looks at what lies behind the new key NATO military decisions.
Rather desperate and largely successful efforts have been made by the government to keep the significance of last week's NATO decisions hidden from the public.
Parliament about it have met silence on the ground that all is 'confidential'. come? people here knew the implications of what is being decided, they recognise that the 'threat' in Europe is not a Russian but an American one.
We need to remind ourselves the developments in Europe over last 18 months. First Cruise and Pershing begin to arrive weapons against the USSR same time, the US military HQ for europe IS being moved from many to Britain. . Then, at the 14 May NATO Defence Council Meeting, the European states finally agree to the principle of Emerging (ET) so called conventional systems designed for use in new offensive tactics. Now we have FOFA - the war-fighting doctrine to tie all these things together.
FOFA Finally, the US is pushing for FOFA be supplemented by "Airland Battle' doctrine of the US al lily - combining deep strikes in the enemv rear with very advance and the immediate use of integrated nuclear, chemical and convențional systems. The US army used its rapid advance technique in NATO 'Operation Lionheart' autumn and the West German has signed an agreement with the US Army over Airland Battle.
All this would be public opinion here if it were known through the mass media. That's one big reason for the cover up.
The second reason for the cover-up is the fact that a number of West European officials are themselves terrified of the American push in these airecuons. They against them and for that reason they must keep things secret: it is a cardinal sin in NATO debates to public opinion against the US.
The public relations declarations on ET and deep strikes from NATO commander General been that all this will lessen the alliance's dependence on This is a lie Defence Minister John Nott explained way back in December 1982 when the US first raised these and before the Europeans realised how determined the Americans were about them.
Nott told the Financial Times' respected Defence Bridget Bloom (12 December 1982): 'West European governments view the growing debate with some concern. There has been an element of misrepresentation in suggestions that une new lechnology NATO rely less on nuclear weapons.
The Critchley MP has similarly indicated his opposition to FOFA in a few cryptic lines at the end of a Guardian 'Agenda' page article this autumn.
But the only public explanations allowed for publication in the mass media here as to why ET and FOFA may be a bad thing are such purely of took Eastern menacing, at the Questions in WILl Because would of first strike At the GerTechnology the rapid ground during the army dynamite to weapons, so-called line) Soviet forces will deployed forward for attack. argue mobilise call ll a bulzkreig stralegy Rodgers has nuclear as Tory ideas in saw Pact in the event of war.
the correspondent vateur In France on 13 January, 1984.
could help Europe expert Julian and less beltevable. Tornado attack aircraft of NATO forces technical reasons as the high cost of ET, dependence on US supplies of ET FOFA's technical unreliability, and the fact that new Soviet battle tactics along the central European front make FOFA irrelevant in the event of a Soviet attack second eschelon (second be already The only half-way serious article in the mass media on the threat of FOFA was a piece by Robin Cook in the Times last week. He pointed dul that the US army manuals on FOFA the Nazi term for their surprise attack aggressive thrusts in Europe. But Cook also seems to have missed the point Ol the new strategy, thinking that since it is aimed at East European targets it will be counter-productive as it will . only strengthen the unity of the War- like To find the real threat posed by FOFA we must turn to Mr. C. Bertram, the recently retired Director of British Institute for Strategic Studies, being interviewed not by the British media but by Nouvel Obserpeace-movement-tree Bertram stated: 'I think Europeans should temper their enthusiasm for this project (ET and FOFA) ... The idea of an invasion of the West by the forces of the East is becoming less 'What is the scenario of a possible war in Europe at the end of the 1980s? marches East my opinion, that phenomenon of contagion stemming from a crisis that explodes in one or more countries of the East and that degenerates into war. What is the best manage such crisis? Certainly not a strategy which demands from the start deep strike against the enemy.
'It is necessary to be very prudent in the decisions which will be taken from now until 1990 for Europe's defence. It is certainly not a matter, in order to deter an already improbable attack, or endowing ourselves with an arsenal which will transtorm every even localised crisis into a general conflict.' Speaking here is the head of the main establishment think tank of the British Armed Forces. Naturally he, Robin Cook, assumed that the US administration is making an intellectual error - they somehow assume that the leaders of the greatest military force the world has ever seen are idiots and morons.
This type of British Americanism should be rejected by the Left. We have no reason whatsoever to believe that the present US leadership, which CaL. Lull around its 'allies' in Western Europe. is a bunch of ignorant hicks. We must assume that they know what they're doing in what Robin Cook calls 'a fundamental shift strategy.
In reality such a military shift implies a shift of political strategy. Since 1956, US real policy towards Eastern Europe gradually evolved away from Dulles' notion of grabbing Eastern of a Europe out of the grip of the USSR towards using Hastern lever for changing the economic and West alerman of the Us inded Germany's NATO's -continued to explicitly reject the frontiers of Eastern Europe and to allow for the possible liquidation of Poland through a return to Germany's 1937 frontiers.
East But the East-West 1970-72 brought official recognition of the post-war frontiers and the 'Sonnenfeldt' Soviet hegemonv in wastern curope As far as NATO policy was concerned all this simply made public what had merely long been the US's real policy this policy corresponded to NATO's military posture in Central Europe.
stated change in the policy of the US anti- towards Eastern Secretar of State repeatedly declared, even in the official framework of the Stockholm conference earlier this year, that the rings US rejects Soviet Eastern Europe. argued this two days after Reagan began his NATO's relations job shows that the US meant to grab Eastern Europe? Of course not. The US does not want war today - and Hitler certainly never wanted it with the West in 1939. The United Socialist Action 14 December 1984 ty.
happening now.
European Bloc. forward.
Wing. on two Europe hegemony, aspirations Reaganite military nihilation, tion to my. because to of the Right.
Europe as a indeed official political aims still Europe, central Europe could it b treaties of doctrine of accepting offensive FOFA?
• Finally major With Reagan there has been a new Europe The Reaganites Schultz has foreign hegemony Over The fact that he Europe 'peace candidate' public answers Does this mean the US wants war left. States wants to achieve its political aims through the threat of victory in the event of war. It is a matter of diplomacy through military superioriThe US arms build-up makes the USSR put increasing pressure on East European budgets in response — as is The US's economi war against the USSR, and against some of its allies in Eastern Europe creates growing internal strains centrifugal tendencies East An explosion occurs in this or that For an East regime fearing an explosion produced by economic crisis tries to leave the bloc in the hope of massive Western economic assistance. Soviet threats to intervene militarily are countered by US threats of deep strikes against Soviet units both in the country concerned and in Western Ukraine and Belorussia. The Soviets back down, the bloc breaks apart, NATO surges That is the scenario with which the United States is now play.
As far as the labour movement is concerned, we must be crystal clear issues concerning Eastern otherwise we will be com pletely disoriented by the new NATO strategy. The present system of Soviet the resulting authoritarian-bureaucratic regimes in Eastern Europe in no way satisfy the of the populations of Eastern Europe. But at the same time military pressure never mind a US-West German inspires against Eastern Europe, will carry the peoples of tha half of the continent towards an not liberation. Any soluthe problems of Eastern Europe will not come from the US a:Secondly, the West Europear establishments' readiness to be dragg ed along by the Reaganites is a classic example of appeasement. The West European state establishments are incapable of resisting this anti-Soviet nilitary build-up despite the threat hat it poses to their own state securit do so would involve repudiating the "Soviet menace' anc do that in turn would mean creating chaos in their own domestic politics, chaos especially in the parties At present Labour has no policy alternative to the new US politico military strategy. It has phraseolog) about the simultaneous disbandmen of NATO and the Warsaw Pact, but at the same time the real commitment of PLP leaders to increasing Britain's spending on conventional forces ir justified by the supposed need to 'balance' the 'Soviet threat' it This justification is not actually believed by people like Healey. Ho be when the Times itself wants to pull half the British Army of the Rhine out of Germany to form a third world strike force, and when almost half of the US senate wants to pull 90,000 US troops out of Europe, while simultaneously both the Times and senator Sam Nunn want to step up preparations such as The real reason for Healey's com•mittment to increasing conventional spending is simply to prove loyalty to the US and help Britain's status as a Western military Europe. But the effect of all this is for to tail along the The starting point for a Labour alternative to FOFA would be a new policy that challenges Reagan's European policy all along the line, that seeks a non-NATO solution to the powder keg that Eastern has become under Soviet hegemony and that offers socialist to the capitalist crisis in Western Europe Some leaders of the Labour left, like Tony Benn, have started to raise this agenda and it must now be tackled with urgency by the whole of the
Socialist Action 14 December 1984