By extension, 93 per cent of France’s exclusive economic zone is estimated to be in the Indo-Pacific. On France’s 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.
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.
This approach, sometimes dubbed the “third way”, 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.
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’s closest partner in supporting that goal.
