Strategic Comments

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tstc20

France’s approach to the Indo-Pacific region

To cite this article: (2022) France’s approach to the Indo-Pacific region, Strategic Comments,
28:6, i-iii, DOI: 10.1080/13567888.2022.2139497

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13567888.2022.2139497

Published online: 21 Oct 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 95

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=tstc20
 Strategic Comments
France’s approach to the Indo-Pacific
region
In February 2022 – only two days before
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – France
published an updated version of its Indo-
Pacific strategy and, as then-president
of the Council of the European Union,
organised in Paris a Ministerial Forum for
Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific. Foreign
ministers from 27 EU member states
and roughly 30 Indo-Pacific countries
participated, along with representatives
from several multilateral and regional
organisations. The updated strategy calls
for France to provide solutions to the
security, economic, health, climate and
environmental challenges facing those in the
region. But the most important objective of
the strategy is defending France’s uniquely
large sovereignty interests in the region,
which Paris feels have been challenged
by China’s growing military power and
international behaviour. The enduring
nature of these interests means that Paris
has remained focused on multilateral
initiatives and military operations in the
Indo-Pacific despite the outbreak of war
at the edge of Europe, as French Minister
of the Armed Forces Sébastien Lecornu
confirmed in his speech at the June 2022
IISS Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
President Emmanuel Macron made the
same point in September in a speech to
the Conference of Ambassadors in Paris,
as did the country’s new foreign minister,
Catherine Colonna, during her first trip
to the Indo-Pacific the same month. The
question now is whether Paris will be able
to deliver on many of these commitments,
including those that will require the French
Armed Forces to operate at a high tempo
across large swathes of the Indian and
Pacific oceans. To do so, it will probably
need to rely on support from its main
partners in the region – namely India and
Japan – and other EU member states.
French sovereignty interests in
the region
France differs from other EU member
states because it has significant sovereignty
interests in the Indo-Pacific. Seven of its
13 overseas departments, regions and
communities are located in the Indian
and Pacific oceans. More than 1.6 million
French citizens live in these territories, and
an additional half-million live elsewhere
in the region. Réunion and Mayotte, two
French departments located, respectively,
ISSN: 1356-7888
east and northwest of Madagascar, are the
only outermost regions of the EU located
in the Indo-Pacific. Collectively, France’s
overseas territories give it sovereignty over
a significant maritime zone, particularly in
French Polynesia. Indeed, France has the
world’s second-largest exclusive economic
zone (EEZ), which is defined by the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea
as an area in which coastal states have
special rights to maritime resources and
fishing and to conduct scientific studies.
Roughly 30% of France’s 10.2m square
kilometre EEZ is located in the Indian
Ocean, and 60% is located in the Pacific.
The Indo-Pacific is also a daily theatre
of operations for the Ministry of the
Armed Forces. The region is divided
into five military commands, with three
based in French Polynesia, New Caledonia
and the southern Indian Ocean (known
as ‘sovereignty forces’) and two based in
Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates
(UAE) (known as ‘presence forces’). These
joint regional commands are staffed by 7,000
permanently deployed personnel. France
has appointed 18 regional defence attachés
covering 33 countries, who are meant to
protect French nationals and territories,
assert French rights in its EEZ and participate
in defence-cooperation activities.
The region is also home to a large
diplomatic network, with 25 embassies
representing France in 39 countries, not
including two representative offices in
Taiwan and North Korea. In December
2020, France joined the Indian Ocean Rim
Association, and in the summer of 2021,
it chaired the 7th Indian Ocean Naval
Symposium. It now wishes to join the
ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus
and the Regional Cooperation Agreement
on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery
against Ships in Asia.
A strategy years in the making
It took three years, from 2018–2021, to
develop and release a comprehensive French
strategy towards the region. The main
principles and objectives of the strategy
were set out in speeches given by Macron
in India (March 2018), Australia and New
Caledonia (May 2018); at the Conference
of Ambassadors (August 2019); and at the
Choose La Réunion Summit (October 2019).
The Ministry of the Armed Forces
was the first French ministry to publish a
security strategy for the Indo-Pacific. It was
presented by the defence minister during
the 2019 IISS Shangri-La Dialogue, with the
French aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle
making a port of call in Singapore for the
first time since 2002. Security and defence
issues initially dominated French strategy.
It was afterwards that the Ministry for
Europe and Foreign Affairs published ‘The
Indo-Pacific space: a priority for France’
(L’espace indopacifique : une priorité pour la
France), which included an inventory of its
cooperation efforts in the region.
In September 2020, France became
the first EU member state to appoint an
ambassador for the Indo-Pacific, Christophe
Penot, formerly Paris’s envoy to Malaysia
and Australia. The ambassador’s main
tasks were to coordinate French diplomatic
efforts in the region and complement the
actions carried out by others, including an
ambassador for regional cooperation in the
Indian Ocean zone.
In July 2021, a more formal government
strategy was published ahead of Macron’s
visit to Japan and French Polynesia. This
78-page document confirmed France’s
ambitions to implement new multilateral
initiatives in the region. The French
approach has since been understood
as consisting of four ‘pillars’ reflecting
the diversity of challenges in the Indo-
Pacific: security and defence; economy and
connectivity; multilateralism and the rule
of law; and climate change, biodiversity
and sustainable ocean management.
Calling out, but not confronting,
China
Top French officials frequently insist that
their regional strategy is not directed
against China and that challenges in the
Indo-Pacific should not be approached in
purely confrontational terms. They assert
that their objective is to respond to the
aspirations of most of the countries in the
region, which do not want to be locked
into a binary choice between China and
the United States. Yet, on a political level,
one objective of the strategy may also be
to accentuate differences in the French
approach compared to those approaches
taken by Anglophone countries, while
also promoting French arms exports to
countries such as India, Indonesia and the
UAE, which is ultimately an important goal
of France’s foreign policy in the region.
Volume 28 Comment 21 October 2022
 Figure 1: France’s exclusive economic zone
Clipperton Island
Wallis and Futuna
French Polynesia
France's exclusive economic zone
Departments and regions of France
The result of this strategy is the use
of some concepts that are ill-defined and
difficult to understand, such as France
offering a ‘third way’, serving as a
‘balancing power’ (puissance d’équilibre)
or seeking to ‘protect the liberty of
sovereignty’, which Macron mentioned in a
speech in September. This style of discourse
can be counterproductive because regional
partners might conclude that France has an
ambiguous position or that its position is
not fully credible.
The French approach is more explicit
in practice, including with respect to
China across at least three dimensions.
Firstly, France denounces the Chinese
strategy of rapidly arming itself, which has
upended the regional balance of power.
The Strategic Update of the Ministry of the
Armed Forces published in January 2021
mentioned China more often than Russia
(25 versus 22 references, respectively). And
while France had previously long avoided
mentioning Taiwan in its diplomatic
communications, it has recently begun
speaking out multilaterally (with the G7
and the EU), bilaterally (with Japan and
Australia) and in direct terms, stating that
it opposes unilateral changes to the status
quo in the Taiwan Strait.
Secondly, France strives to demonstrate
its power-projection capabilities. In the
summer of 2021, the French air force led
the Mission HEIFARA WAKEA exercise,
projecting three Rafale fighter aircraft,
two A330 Phénix refuelling aircraft, two
A400M Atlas transport aircraft and about
170 aircraft personnel from metropolitan
France to the South Pacific. In January
and February 2022, the air force projected
two Rafale F3-Rs and one A330 Phénix
from metropolitan France to Réunion as
part of the Mission SHIKRA exercises in
East Africa. Paris was sending a message
that it is capable of projecting forces
independently, including strategic forces,
ISSN: 1356-7888
Saint Pierre and Miquelon
Saint Martin and
Saint Barthélemy
Guadeloupe
Martinique
French Guiana
Mayotte
Glorioso Islands
Juan de Nova Island
Bassas da India
Europa Island
Crozet Island
from the mainland to the South Pacific to
defend its territories.
Lastly, the regular deployments that
the French Navy organises, particularly
in the South China Sea, allow Paris to
reaffirm that the freedom of navigation
and overflight and the right of innocent
passage, as provided for in the United
Nations Convention on the Law of the
Sea, can be exercised without hindrance.
In 2021, as part of the ‘Marianne mission’,
France deployed a nuclear-powered attack
submarine, Émeraude, to the South China
Sea for the first time. And, in October,
the French Navy’s main intelligence-
gathering ship, the Dupuy de Lôme,
transited the Taiwan Strait, according to an
announcement made by the minister of the
armed forces during a Senate hearing.
Regional partnerships
France has been developing its partnerships
with India and Japan for decades. It signed a
strategic-partnership agreement with Japan
as early as 1995 (updated as an ‘exceptional
partnership’ in 2013) and another with
India in 1998. Paris has frequent high-level
interactions with Tokyo, formalised by a
political-military dialogue at the foreign-
and defence-ministerial levels (‘2+2’) since
2014, as well as innovative formats like the
Global Maritime Dialogue since 2019 and
the Indo-Pacific Working Group since 2020.
The first listed objective of the roadmap
for Franco-Japanese cooperation (2019–23)
is to strengthen cooperation in the Indo-
Pacific region.
France’s relationship with India has
risen in importance and is developing in all
areas, with a Joint Strategic Vision of India-
France Cooperation in the Indian Ocean
Region adopted in 2018. The countries
have participated in several joint exercises
– Shakti, Varuna, Pégase, Desert Knight and
Garuda – illustrating their efforts to improve
integration and interoperability. They have
Tromelin Island
Réunion
New Caledonia
New Amsterdam and Saint Paul islands
Kerguelen Island © IISS
also worked together on arms sales and
manufacturing, with France building six
Scorpéne submarines in Mumbai and the
sale by Dassault of 36 Rafales to New Delhi.
France no longer considers Australia
to be a strategic partner. Paris said that
it was caught by surprise after Canberra
announced in September 2021 that it would
not move ahead with its contract with
the French-owned Naval Group to build
diesel submarines and would instead
build nuclear-powered submarines with
assistance from the United Kingdom and
the US as part of the AUKUS nuclear- and
technology-sharing agreement. The fact
that Canberra changed governments in
May 2022 made it easier for both sides to
turn the page in the relationship, and the
new Australian Prime Minister Anthony
Albanese visited Paris after the June NATO
summit in Madrid. The countries are
drafting a bilateral roadmap that should
be released before the end of 2022, and
Macron may decide to visit Australia as
part of this trip to the region for the G20
summit that will be held in Bali, Indonesia
in November.
France’s efforts at multilateral
coordination in the region have led to the
creation of new formats such as the France–
India–Australia Trilateral Dialogue, which
was started in 2020, discontinued and then
resumed at the sidelines of the UN General
Assembly in September 2022. A France–
India–UAE Trilateral Dialogue began in
2022 with stated ambitions in security and
defence, climate and technology. While
these two dialogues primarily cover the
Indian Ocean, a France–Japan–Australia
dialogue could be formed to focus on the
Pacific Ocean and such issues as climate
change, illegal fishing, supply chains and
access to critical materials. France also
supports initiatives in the Indo-Pacific that
aim to mitigate and adapt to climate change;
address environmental crime such as
Volume 28 Comment 21 October 2022
illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
activities; and enhance preparedness and
responses to natural disasters.
Outlook
The French strategy downplays the
important role played by the US in the
Indo-Pacific, given that it is the Western
country with the most diplomatic influence
and largest military presence in the region.
This raises questions about how the two
countries may or may not coordinate
in the coming years, even if they have
increased their level of collaboration since
US President Joe Biden took office in 2021.
For example, France has participated in
several military exercises with the US
(including the Rim of the Pacific), stationed
a liaison officer at the headquarters of
the US Indo-Pacific Command in
Hawaii and conducted fisheries-policing
operations with Australia, New Zealand
and the US. It is possible that France
will agree to join some initiatives of the
Quadrilateral Security Dialogue such as its
Climate Working Group or its Critical and
Emerging Technology Working Group.
France will continue to strengthen and
modernise its capabilities in the region to
reduce the gap between its ambitions and
capabilities. This includes the permanent
deployment by 2025 of six new Félix Éboué-
class patrol vessels to replace the four
currently present in the region, as well
as the replacement of the old Falcon 20H
Gardian with the Dassault Falcon 2000
Albatros to improve France’s surveillance
and maritime situational-awareness
capabilities throughout the region. But in
the face of the massive naval rearmament
in the region, it is unclear whether this
will make a significant difference. The
permanent deployment of a Mistral-class
amphibious assault ship would, however,
change the situation by increasing France’s
operating capabilities.
There are questions about the credibility
of the EU strategy for the region, adopted
in September 2021 and developed with
active participation from France. The
combined effort of EU member-state
armed forces could relieve some pressure
on French forces to increase the tempo of
their operations in the region, but to do
so, these states must remain committed
in the face of Russian aggression near the
bloc’s eastern border. Many of the points
agreed as part of the 2021 EU strategy were
not new but were instead a rebranding of
initiatives already in place. In addition, the
€300 billion (US$297bn) European Global
Gateway Initiative, meant to provide
regional infrastructure investments as
an alternative to China’s Belt and Road
Initiative, has failed to fund significant
projects. Thus, if Paris plans to rely on
other EU member states to support its
broad diplomatic and security objectives in
the Indo-Pacific, one of its most important
tasks through the mid-2020s will be to
encourage Brussels, Berlin and others to
increase their financial commitments and
the number of military assets operating
regularly in the region. But this will not
be easy.

go.iiss.org/stratcom For information on sales and reprints of

Strategic Comments, as well as subscriptions, contact:
T&F Customer Services, Informa UK Ltd, Sheepen Place,
Colchester, Essex, CO3 3LP, UK. Tel: +44 (0) 20 7017 5544;
Editor: Paul Fraioli Fax: +44 (0) 20 7017 5198; Email: subscriptions@tandf.co.uk

Volume 28 Comment 21 October 2022 © The International Institute for Strategic Studies