Since April 2016, Australia and France have been married. Their wedding present consisted of twelve submarines, which engaged both countries in a fifty-year union. This metaphor, created by former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and former French President François Hollande , represents the deep level of strategic cooperation in which Paris and Canberra have engaged since 2012 and the signature of the French–Australian Strategic Partnership . How did these two countries reach such a high level of commitment to each other, when only about two decades ago, a group of Australians bombed the French consulate in Perth to protest against French nuclear testing in the Pacific? This book aims to investigate the dynamics behind this historically ambiguous relationship.

More precisely, this study explains why and how France and Australia are currently engaged in a process of strategic and economic mutual empowerment and how this rapprochement has been possible, owing to thirty years of diplomatic efforts to overcome ongoing culturally and historically constructed misunderstandings and conflicts. Employing an approach based on constructive theories and Joseph Nye’s doctrine of “smart power ” to analyse this evolution, this book investigates how two very different Western powers have adapted to the twenty first century’s “international disorder” (Beeson and Hameri 2017). The concept of empowerment, now used in International Relations, originally comes from the field of psychology. Zimmerman and Perkins define the concept as “a construct that links individual strengths and competencies, natural helping systems, and proactive behaviours to social policy and social change” (1995, p. 569). Moreover, they add that “empowerment suggests that participation with others to achieve goals, efforts to gain access to resources, and some critical understandings of the socio-political environment are basic components of the construct” (1995, p. 571). This book was primarily designed to understand why, since the end of the Cold War, the bilateral relationship between France and Australia has dramatically improved. In fact, during the Cold War and until the last French nuclear testing in the South Pacific in 1996, relations between Paris and Canberra were regularly stormy, and French and Australian foreign policy-makers perceived a genuine mutual mistrust. Therefore, the aim of this study has been to understand which interests, which personalities, which elements of the global context have led France and Australia to engage in a regional and global rapprochement, and what have been the human, economic and political prerequisites which enabled it. This book demonstrates how French and Australian foreign policy-makers have understood that, in regard to their numerous common interests, both countries had to mutually empower each other in order to strengthen their own power, regionally and globally. This book is the first to propose an answer to these questions. It argues that these inclusive dynamics of empowerment constitute the response of two diverse middle powers to current global threats and represent a tool suitable for modernising the strategies and practices of both countries’ diplomacies.

Australian and French foreign policies have been challenged by the global reconfigurations of the twenty first century. As Joseph Nye explains, “power always depends on a context”. In the current context, power can be considered three-dimensional: military, economic and the “realm of transnational relations that cross borders outside of government control” (2011, pp. xiv–xv). The year 2017 has witnessed the completion of the globalising shift away from the international order that was established after the end of World War II, as demonstrated by US President Donald Trump’s negative attitude towards the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Populist parties have gained power in many Western democracies, threatening the current international order but highlighting some of the destructive consequences of globalisation.

This book understands globalisation in the context of two of its definitions. According to Neil Brenner, globalisation constitutes the “accelerated circulation of people, commodities, capital, money, identities and images through global space”, leading to “disembedding social, economic and political relations from their local-territorial preconditions” (1999, p. 431). Moreover, Jan Nederveen Pieterse perceives “globalisation as hybridisation: structural hybridisation, or the emergence of new, mixed forms of cooperation, and cultural hybridisation, or the development of translocal mélange cultures” (1994, p. 161). Decades of rapid globalisation have forced actors in the field of International Relations, official and non-governmental, to redefine their foreign policies and actions in order to adapt to a world influenced by increasing insecurities. While the United States remains a “hyperpower”, defined by Hubert Védrine as the state “predominant in all areas of power: economic, technological, military, monetary, linguistic and cultural”, global affairs seem less and less controlled by Washington’s order. Therefore, according to Nye, “two great shifts are occurring in this century: a power transition among states and a power diffusion away from all states to nonstate actors” (2011, p. xv). More precisely, the most important factor of this power transition has been, since the end of the Cold War, the economic, followed by the diplomatic, rise of Asia. The rapid and extraordinary development of the Asian continent, symbolised by the current global weight of China and India, has significantly reshuffled global dynamics. The rise of Asia has had a tremendous impact of the French–Australian bilateral relationship, as this book demonstrates.

Globalisation, as with any process, is neither simply positive nor negative. However, the globalisation of the economy and its political, social and cultural consequences have challenged international actors differently with respect to their identity , security and interests. In fact, while globalisation does not automatically lead to an Americanisation of the world,¹ “the United States has ruled as the supreme chief of globalisation because it has ruled in a system which it has imposed and which primarily benefits itself” (Védrine 2001, p. 3). Many countries, such as France, have felt deeply threatened by such global dynamics, which are often perceived as an accelerating factor of a potential European decline. Countries such as Australia, on the other hand, have demonstrated more confidence in the outcome they can attain thanks to the internationalisation of the economy. Moreover, from what was once a bipolar division of the world, international relations are increasingly led in a multipolar context. While these dynamics have often been perceived as contributing to insecurities, they have also made it possible for countries such as France and Australia to develop a more independent foreign policy regarding some significant global and regional issues. Therefore, such tangible and significant modifications of the international order have impacted the traditional conceptualisation of power. This book adopts Hubert Védrine’s classification of powers, which provides the most relevant hierarchy for analysing the French–Australian bilateral relationship (2001, p. 4). According to Védrine, states can be classified according to five categories of power. On top of this hierarchy, the United States maintains its global influence as “hyperpower”. Next, seven countries constitute “globally influential powers”: China , France, Germany, India, Japan , Russia and the United Kingdom. Védrine opens the question as to whether the EU could be included in this category or not, since power cannot be reduced to hard power alone but must also include soft power. At a third level there are between twenty and thirty countries, considered by Védrine as “powers”, some of them having a regional influence, for example, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Indonesia , Iran, Italy, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The fourth category encompasses countries “without power and often influenced by a power”, and the fifth group is composed by “pseudo-states”, which have originated from the proliferation of sovereignties and are not able to exercise their own sovereignty without becoming failed states. Both the second and third groups can be considered middle powers , but with different levels of diplomatic reach. Diplomats interviewed for this research in Paris and in Canberra define France as a “global middle power ” and Australia as a “regional middle power”, a distinction adopted by this book.

Specialists in International Relations have also witnessed the progressive multiplication and diversification of actors involved in international policies since the end of the Cold War. These state and nonstate actors are not just international but also transnational, such as multinational companies, international organisations and migrants. Another factor is the development of an international civil society in addition to the traditional concept of national ones.² This international public opinion, even very diverse, deeply influenced by the media as this book illustrates, particularly regarding Pacific issues, encompasses “generosity, devotion, networks, militancy, interests, lobbies, beliefs and a fair amount of disguised real power” (Védrine 2001, p. 8). “Nonstate actors now crowd the stage” (Nye 2011, p. xvi). The diversification of actors involved in foreign policy raises new issues without having made the old ones disappear. It has also reinforced existing balances of power, which means that globalisation has become neither fairer nor more democratic. As Joseph Nye asserts, “in an information-based world of cybersecurity, power diffusion may be a greater threat than power transition” amongst great states (Nye 2011, p. xiii). Consequently, decision-making processes have become more complex, because they have had to take into account more and more diverse interests. Foreign policy discourses and strategies have to be based on new political narratives, as the French–Australian relationship illustrates, in order to remain legitimate and, therefore, to reinforce themselves. This book highlights all the different types of actors who have been involved in the evolution of the French–Australian bilateral relationship since the end of the Cold War.

Finally, the transformation of international affairs since the end of the Cold War, visible through both a transition and a diffusion of power, has led to an increasing interdependence between states which share interests, values and cultural links. The progressive French–Australian rapprochement and the constitution of their strategic partnership takes place within this context. Facing increasing challenges to their power, economy and identity , states often cannot reach their international objectives alone: “On many transnational issues, empowering others can help us to accomplish our own goals” (Nye 2011, p. xvii). This book demonstrates the ways in which Australia and France have fully integrated this logic. As Martine Piquet highlighted, “the two countries’ difficulties in finding their place in a rapidly changing world. […] France and Australia have had to reconsider their positions on the international scene, and in the process, to reconstruct self-images, while not necessarily liking the image of themselves mirrored in the other’s criticisms” (2000).

Therefore, this book asserts as its main argument that the transformation of the French–Australian bilateral relationship since 1985, and the constitution of their genuine strategic partnership since 2012, has been conceived by Australian and French policy-makers as a process of mutual empowerment . Canberra and Paris have constructed this mutual support to help each of them to modernise their own diplomacy, with the aid of a new alliance and new practises, and to answer together new regional and global challenges. Moreover, this book argues that this progressive empowerment has not only been possible because of the settlement of three main conflicts between France and Australia—the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), the French nuclear testing issue and Australia’s opposition to French policies in New Caledonia —but also because French and Australian policy-makers have implemented supports for dialogue to help overcome their ongoing misperceptions and misunderstandings and to align their approach to regional and world issues.

Since the study of International Relations must be conducted within its historical context, this book analyses the evolution and dynamics of French–Australian relations since the end of the Cold War. This study starts in 1985–1986, an historic moment understood according to Nicolas Offenstadt’s “diachronic” and “synchronic” approaches (2006, pp. 42–44). A diachronic approach studies moments according to which elements they keep from the past and which they open up for the future. A synchronic one focuses on t...