{"id":139852,"date":"2025-05-28T22:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T22:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/139852\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T22:41:10","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T22:41:10","slug":"opinion-can-macrons-france-be-a-credible-power-in-the-indo-pacific","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/139852\/","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Can Macron\u2019s France be a credible power in the Indo-Pacific?"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Friday, France\u2019s President Emmanuel Macron will conclude a five-day tour of Southeast Asia<\/a> with a keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. The visit, which has included stops in Vietnam and Indonesia, was planned for a long time. Macron confirmed his attendance at the Shangri-La during a speech in Paris in January. Beyond that speech, Macron aims to use this tour to reaffirm French ambitions in the Indo-Pacific.Those ambitions were first articulated in 2019, two years into Macron\u2019s first term, when the French government released its Indo-Pacific Strategy \u2013 the first for a European country. In contrast to its neighbours in the European Union, France views itself as a resident power of the Indo-Pacific: seven of its overseas territories<\/a> are located in the region and host 1.65 million French citizens.<\/p>\n

By extension, 93 per cent of France\u2019s exclusive economic zone is estimated to be in the Indo-Pacific. On France\u2019s map of the Indo-Pacific, Southeast Asia lies between its sovereign islands of the Indian Ocean, such as La Reunion, and those of the Pacific, like Wallis and Futuna.<\/p>\n

In recent years, through the French presence in the Indo-Pacific, Paris has felt the effects of the US-China competition across the region. As a result, Macron promotes a French strategy that seeks to avoid the logic of great power rivalry and emphasises cooperation with like-minded Asian states. While French officials may express concerns over Chinese maritime policies, they refuse to confer centrality on these issues in their engagement with local partners.<\/p>\n

This approach, sometimes dubbed the \u201cthird way\u201d, echoes the foreign policy of Charles de Gaulle at the height of the Cold War, when France identified itself as both a close ally of the US and a power capable of engaging on its own terms with the Soviet Union and the non-aligned nations.<\/p>\n

Today, this French approach appeals to small states and middle powers in the Indo-Pacific eager to stay away from the rivalry between Washington and Beijing. From the outset, India has been Paris\u2019s closest partner in supporting that goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Friday, France\u2019s President Emmanuel Macron will conclude a five-day tour of Southeast Asia with a keynote speech…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":139853,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5309],"tags":[2103,20788,186,3801,1395,14787,2113,34,2000,299,36,2194,730,10406,8262,837,1411,332,60683,2143,2943,657,2723,15,49,2150],"class_list":{"0":"post-139852","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-france","8":"tag-airbus","9":"tag-association-of-southeast-asian-nations","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-beijing","12":"tag-china","13":"tag-cold-war","14":"tag-dassault","15":"tag-emmanuel-macron","16":"tag-eu","17":"tag-europe","18":"tag-france","19":"tag-gaza","20":"tag-india","21":"tag-indo-pacific","22":"tag-indonesia","23":"tag-israel","24":"tag-paris","25":"tag-russia","26":"tag-shangri-la-dialogue","27":"tag-singapore","28":"tag-taiwan","29":"tag-ukraine","30":"tag-united-arab-emirates","31":"tag-united-kingdom","32":"tag-united-states","33":"tag-vietnam"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114587873871054985","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139852","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139852"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139852\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/139853"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}