2025: France’s year in the Indo-Pacific?

France’s presence in the Indo-Pacific in 2025 started with a bang. The Rafale fighter jets launched sorties from the French aircraft carrier, Charles de Gaulle, while entering the Indian Ocean on their way to Goa and the wider Indo-Pacific.

Dubbed ‘Mission Clemenceau’ after the early 20th-century French statesman Georges Clemenceau, who travelled to Asia in 1920 to lead a decisive victory during World War I, the deployment of the French Carrier Strike Group (CSG) in the Indo-Pacific earlier this year was one of many achievements.

The Mission itself was one of the largest ever undertaken by the French Navy in years.  In addition to the Charles de Gaulle and its 22 Rafale Marine jets, there were four frigates of various kinds, one supply ship, one nuclear attack submarine and at times, a few maritime patrol aircraft. More than 3,000 personnel were at sea, manning and operating these complex systems, from November 2024 to April 2025.

For the first time since the 1960s, the CSG sailed to the Pacific Ocean to enhance interoperability with partners and allies alike through joint bilateral and multilateral exercises. These cooperations helped bolster maritime security along key regional chokepoints, most notably in the Indian Ocean during the exercise La Pérouse, where the French Navy and eight regional partners, including India, trained to secure the sea lanes of communication.

For the first time since the 1960s, the CSG sailed to the Pacific Ocean to enhance interoperability with partners and allies alike through joint bilateral and multilateral exercises.

Further west, in the Arabian Sea along India’s western seaboard, the CSG joined for the first time the Indian Navy with INS Vikrant for the 23^rd edition of the bilateral exercise Varuna, the most complex one to date, with air, surface, and underwater exercises.

These two examples demonstrate that the presence of the French CSG is a “cooperation aggregator”, allowing regional navies along the mission to train together and develop a comprehensive understanding of the maritime domain. As such, in the last 10 years, more than 30 foreign ships have been integrated into the various French CSG missions, including the recent ones in the Indo-Pacific in 2019 and in 2023, with an Indian Ocean focus.

In Search of France’s Shangri-La

The diplomatic impact of the 2019deployment in Singapore was maybe best showcased when the French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Southeast Asia just weeks after the CSG’s port calls. His speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore in May felt like a political and security mirror of the naval diplomacy initiatives achieved by the CSG, at a time when the US appeared to have scaled its commitment toward multilateral engagements, exemplified by Pete Hegseth's assertive and unilateral stance at the Dialogue.

Indeed, Emmanuel Macron was the first European and P5 leader to deliver the Shangri-La inaugural speech. The echo of the President’s call for a “coalition of independences” to be built between Europe and Asia was a reminder of the Bandung spirit, emphasising resistance to bloc mentality and blind alignment. This message did not stem from naiveté, as France has remained unequivocal and firm in its criticism towards Chinese actions in Taiwan and the Philippines–a region where the French Navy is regularly deployed. It has also been critical of the United States' increasingly brazen behaviour in imposing its foreign policy choices on others.

Lastly, President Macron was adamant in refusing to pave the way for an “enlarged mandate” of NATO in the Indo-Pacific, which would stoke tensions, while maintaining a form of “strategic ambiguity” in case of the use of force in the Taiwan Strait and France’s possible course of action, which would be looked at with “great caution”.

Beyond the rhetoric, this means that France and Europe can together weave a “third way” with willing Asian countries that refuses to be dragged into a zero-sum mindset of great power rivalries.

Beyond the rhetoric, this means that France and Europe can together weave a “third way” with willing Asian countries that refuses to be dragged into a zero-sum mindset of great power rivalries. This is exemplified best by the growing momentum to forge closer ties between India and the EU through trade and security cooperation, with twin goals of delivering on a free trade agreement and a security pact in the near future. To deliver these and more, the new EU-India strategic agenda published last September could serve as a base for the emerging fields of cooperation to be discussed early next year for the EU-India summit.

However, France and the EU will need to back up this ambitious vision—France updated its Indo-Pacific strategy last July—with credibility. And nowhere is that credibility more evident than in the southwestern Indian Ocean.

The Indian Ocean Centrality

Before he toured Southeast Asia, President Macron made a state visit in April to Madagascar to take part in the Indian Ocean Commission (IOC) leaders’ summit, which had not taken place since 2014. This time around, coinciding with the 40^th anniversary of the organisation, France could justifiably look back with some satisfaction at the accomplishments made in the past decade in the maritime domain in collaboration with the EU and the IOC member states.

Firstly, the EU’s MASE programme was critical in propping up the regional maritime security architecture, with the creation of a fusion centre in Madagascar (CRFIM) and a coordination centre in the Seychelles (RCOC). With this success, the OIC has decided this year to deepen and expand the scope of this architecture to other subregions with the Safe Seas Africa (SSA) initiative.

Secondly, through the EU’s CRIMARIO programme, France and other East African states have been able to develop a comprehensive mapping of the maritime domain (MDA), using the IORIS tool, critical in ensuring the success of the regional efforts against maritime illicit activities. Likewise, CRIMARIO is now being broadened to the rest of the Indo-Pacific, to replicate its tangible results to other regions in need of a better MDA picture, such as the South Pacific.

Last but not least, during the IOC summit, President Macron officially announced the opening of the Indian Ocean Academy based in La Réunion to act as a catalyst to strengthen security initiatives in the Indian Ocean through four pillars: maritime security, civil security, domestic security, and regional stability.

This new centre serves as a perennial reminder of France’s vital interests in the region via its territories in Mayotte and La Réunion. The latter is the hub of France’s defence and security commitment to the South-Western Indian Ocean. The French armed forces based on the island (FAZSOI) are the largest among all of France’s overseas territories, with more than 2,000 air, sea, and land personnel. They also participate in various HADR missions when neighbouring countries face climate-related disasters, benefitting the larger region.

In maritime security, blue economy, and regional stability, Paris will be best able to team up with New Delhi, as both countries share the presidencies of multinational bodies in 2026 that are consequential for the Indian Ocean region: Indian Ocean Commission for France, Indian Ocean Rim Association and Indian Ocean Naval Symposium for India.

Similarly, the FAZSOI operate jointly with regional armed forces to foster jointness and interoperability, such as the April 2025 Exercise Tulipe with the armed forces of Comoros, Seychelles, Madagascar, and Mauritius.

In addition, the Indian Navy, through MAHASAGAR, regularly deploys in the region and acts as a net security provider in tandem with France’s forces. This was recently demonstrated with an Indian Navy training and PASSEX exercise in La Réunion last September and even more dramatically with the IOS Sagar mission in East Africa last spring. This India-France dual security providers’ capability could be better coordinated through a mechanism similar to the existing FRANZ initiative in the South Pacific between France, Australia, and New Zealand.

Together with willing countries, France and India could cover for the current shortcomings in the regional maritime domain. There is a lack of capacity in air maritime surveillance that needs to addressed, as France does not have a dedicated patrol aircraft based in La Réunion and India’s P8 are only stationed in Goaand Tamil Nadu; An improvement could be made by extending Indian air access to Agalega and Diego Garcia, and for France to have a more regular surveillance aircraft stationed in La Réunion—the fleet is currently based in metropolitan France. Expanding this bilateral maritime domain awareness cooperation with Australia could equally bolster the coverage of the South Eastern Indian Ocean through the Australian air and naval facilities in the Cocos Islands, where the Indian Navy and Air Force were already deployed in 2023.

While the region has become a busy sea lane of communication following the rerouting of maritime shipping away from the Red Sea and toward the Cape of Good Hope, navies of the South-West Indian Ocean lack a towing capacity in the event of a collision or incident on a large vessel. This capacity could be shared with Mauritius and other Indian Ocean Commission countries.

What could come after this eventful year for France in the Indo-Pacific? In maritime security, blue economy, and regional stability, Paris will be best able to team up with New Delhi, as both countries share the presidencies of multinational bodies in 2026 that are consequential for the Indian Ocean region: Indian Ocean Commission for France, Indian Ocean Rim Association and Indian Ocean Naval Symposium for India. And what better way to discuss these topics than a visit by President Emmanuel Macron to India early next year, as co-chair of the AI Action Summit hosted by PM Narendra Modi? 

Guillaume Gandelin is a Visiting Fellow with the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation.

• International Affairs
• European Union
• India
• The Pacific, East and Southeast Asia
• france in indo pacific region
• france india relations
• france indo pacific strategy
• french interest in indo pacific
• indo pacific region
• mission clemenceau France

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