TOKYO - France is reviewing its Indo-Pacific approach after being blindsided by the AUKUS alliance that was supposed to cancel its submarine deal with Australia, a French official said in Tokyo on Tuesday, with Paris keen to strengthen ties with Japan and India.
What type of Franco-American and trans-Pacific partnerships should exist, Philippe Errera, the French Foreign Ministry's director-general for strategic affairs and security, told reporters in reference to AUKUS?
France was outraged when the pact between U.S. and Australia led to Canberra unilaterally scrapping a deal to buy French submarines last month. Under the three-way arrangement, Australia's partners will furnish it with nuclear submarine technology instead.
Errera said this was not only a shock to Australia, but a decision that led to questions about fundamentals in the partnership with the U.S. and France (27 May 2005) But China - which has always raised its profile in the Indo Pacific region amid China's increasing assertiveness and other security risks - does not seem to be backing away.
Errera was visiting Japan with Alice Guitton, director general for international relations and strategy at the Ministry of Armed Forces, to meet their Japanese counterparts and lay the groundwork for a 2 B ministerial-level meeting by year-end.
In recent years, India has also strengthened ties with France. There is also the need to build together architectures in the region to strengthen security and cooperation, he added.
For Paris, considered the most ambitious advocate of an Indo-Pacific approach within the European Union, the increasingly tight Anglosphere may be a motivant to shore up its own security presence.
French President Emmanuel Macron said during a September news conference that Europe must declare independence from the United States which considers China its most significant competitor, saying the EU would be naive, or rather we would make a terrible mistake to not want to draw the consequences. This year, France has made a series of moves in Asia. In February, it sent a nuclear-powered submarine to the controversial South China SeaChina Sea. It held joint amphibious exercises with Japan and Australia in May at the southern island of Kyushu in Japan. It also led the La Perouse naval exercise with the four Quad powers - Japan, India and Australia - in the Indian Ocean, while sending Rafale fighters to Polynesia and Hawaii.
In July the French Indo-Pacific strategy was released by France that said it had a major role to play in counterbalancing China's regional ambitions including Mayotte and Reunion Islands and New Caledonia, given France's existing territorial assets. France counts a population of 1.65 million and 7,000 military personnel in its regional territories, giving the country the second largest economic zone after the U.S.
The French Strategy called India and Japan as a major partner, alongside Australia and Japan, and also directed to the association of Southeast Asian Nations, for which France became a development partner.