France has stepped up its military presence in the Indian Ocean and Pacific waters in recent years, particularly in the South Pacific, where Australia and New Zealand are increasingly concerned about China’s geopolitical activities.
But despite its growing defense cooperation with Canberra and Wellington, Paris rejects the notion that French warships are deployed in the region to contain the Chinese navy.
“If you are asking if we do conduct joint patrols with the navies of Australia and New Zealand to contest China’s policy in the South Pacific region, the answer is no,” Rear Admiral Laurent Lebreton told Asia Times in his first interview as commander of French armed forces in Polynesia and commanding officer of the Pacific maritime area.
France is a Pacific actor by virtue of its New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis and Futuna dependencies, which have about 500,000 French citizens. Thanks to these territories, it also has an exclusive economic zone of 11.6 million square kilometers to defend, the second-largest of any country; this includes 7.3 million square kilometers in the South Pacific.
“The Indo-Pacific is a strategic region for France, depicted as such in the 2013 White Paper on Defense and the 2017 Strategic Defense and Security Review,” Lebreton said, noting that France was the only European power with a permanent military presence there. It has forces based in New Caledonia and French Polynesia.
Staying under the radar
On average the French navy conducts three missions/deployments in Southeast Asia each year, using frigates stationed in those two territories or units deployed from mainland France. In addition, the French navy undertakes the annual Jeanne d’Arc mission, a five-month deployment in Asia-Pacific, which this year included British marines and navy personnel.
The taskforce sailed through the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea in June and was reportedly shadowed by Chinese warships. Lebreton stressed that all French deployments were consistent with international law and freedom of navigation principles.
“By deploying on a regular basis its navy, France shows that the Indo-Pacific is a region that counts, both in terms of intelligence and capacity of intervention,” the rear admiral said. “French armed forces regularly deploy naval assets in the South Pacific region to assert their presence, improve knowledge and stay ready to prevent crises.”
During his visit to Australia in May, French President Emmanuel Macron said France and Australia should be at the heart of an Indo-Pacific axis with the United States, India and Japan. He also called on China to do more to preserve the rules-based order in the region and, in a veiled swipe at Beijing, said the region should be protected from hegemony.
Whether France could join the informal Quadrilateral forum of Washington, Tokyo, Canberra and Delhi is under discussion. Francois Godement, director of the Asia and China Program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said: “Macron’s Australia speech actually follows an increased involvement by France in the Indo-Pacific,” but noted that “the Indo-Pacific and Quad are concepts being filled with very diverse and often bilateral initiatives rather than any formal alliance.”
Cooperation will continue
Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, admitted that “there are obvious questions about how much strategic weight France can put into its Indo-Pacific commitments, and how much risk it is willing to incur in this region.” Nonetheless, he said France’s role should be taken seriously, including partnering with other democracies such as Australia and India.
Medcalf said Paris had a legitimate territorial presence in the Indo-Pacific and “much to offer as a strategic partner and defense supplier.” “Macron is one of the few leaders at present willing to take a stand on issues of rules and liberal values in the international system,” he said.
New Zealand, which has a limited military capability, also raised concerns about China’s attitude to maritime rules in the South China Sea in its recent Strategic Defence Policy Statement, but it is unlikely to take direct measures to counter Chinese military moves.
As observed by Robert Ayson, a strategic studies professor at Wellington’s Victoria University, “it is too much of a stretch to see New Zealand joining Australia and France and other democracies in some sort of anti-China axis.” In his opinion, “Wellington will still want to get alongside Beijing to encourage it to be as cooperative and sensitive as possible in the South Pacific region.”
Lebreton noted that French forces have regular interactions with their regional partners, and especially with Australia and New Zealand through the FRANZ agreement, a 1992 framework set up to coordinate assistance for Pacific nations during natural disasters. “As often as possible, we work together to improve our interoperability, conducting interactions at sea or participating in common training initiatives or exercises such as Croix du Sud or Kakadu,” he said.
French sticking to the rules
None of these initiatives is aimed at China, Lebreton insisted, noting that France has a principled position on regional territorial disputes. “Just as anywhere else in the world, the behavior of our warships reflects the French commitment to the lawful, free and unhampered use of all oceans, in accordance with the UN Convention on Law of the Sea,” he said.
Paris apparently has no intention of arguing with Beijing about competing claims in the South China Sea. Lebreton echoed comments at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore last June by Defense Minister Florence Parly, who said that France was not part of territorial disputes in the area, and nor would it be in the future.
Moreover, “the French government will insist on two tenets of the rules-based international order, that disputes should be resolved through legal means and negotiations, not by fait accompli, and freedom of navigation must be upheld”, he added.
For this reason, France fully supported the implementation of a code of conduct in the South China Sea that would be “legally binding, comprehensive, effective and consistent with international law”.
What is france doing a thousand miles from it’s shores ?
China has no rights to occupied other countries teritory.
France has no business in Pacific or Indian oceans. She never learns; as they say "Il ne faut pas peter plus haut que son cul".
France has always been a loser – for 1,000 years and counting. Despite endowed with Europe’s most coveted piece of real estate of high quality, warmer climate, strategic location, 3 times that of England, and until the 19th century 3 times the hands as well, France was the perpetual loser – in 100-years war, in 30-years war, in 7-years war, in Europe, in Americas, in India, against Russians, Germans, Turks, in WWI, WWII, then Viet-Namese, Algerians.
Waterloo and Dien-bien-phu are epithets of abject rout. The defeats of the English, if any, were minimal.
France did have 2 historic victories – in 732 AD against Umayyads, and Orleans where Joan of Arc routed the English in a rare defeat. Faith was the winner in both, and a woman in the second.
Still the French fail to fathom the twin sources of real strength of any society – faith and women. They were the first to dump Church rather than upgrade it as the English did where the Monarch, the Defender of the Faith, is still the titular head of the Church of England, combining church and state in one at the top without being a theocracy.
Successful religions are the most efficient socio-economic strategies, and women are more efficient then men as far as survival, growth, and evolution are concerned.
For a society to be efficient (i.e. successful) it must have faith, and also give women the status they deserve. England did so while France did not. Therefore, England triumphed where France languished.
The French never had a woman head of state, and are number 1 in exploitation of woman’s body in display. Who is the French equivalent of Elizabeth I, II and Victoria R.? Marie Antoinette? Margeret Thatcher was in, but was Segolene Royal spurned.
Rather than seek glory far away France better watch its own behind. As its whites are not having kids, soon the Muslims will outnumber them in a generation. Then all the white Frenchmen will do is sit on the sidewalk with a glass of wine and remember the "gloire" they never had.
Lawrence==China is the one warmongering and threatening the counties around them .America is under treaty to protect many of those country, so we well be in the scs , ecs , Indian ocean and the western Pacific .Since our great president Trump and republican are building up the military, you well be seeing a lot more of us.????????
Stanly==Chicoms murder their own people.
Good to see the French navy doing freedom of navigation exercises in the Western Pacific.
.
The French is full of sh*t. Period. Beijing should stop buying Airbus and support 100% AVIC’s C919…
.
Jeff Voeks
I wonder: who is the one with troops stationed all over the world and who is the one that indiscriminately launches airstrikes, at will at independent sovereign states the world over? It’s not “WAR MONGERING CHINA that’s fore. But, if one’s brain doesn’t operate on “LOGIC” then it’s the prerogative of their brains to want to be dumb if you will…
.
.
Reality check: How many of [ your own people ] have you [murdered]? Kids who would’ve been at Harvard, MIT, other colleges and universities building a future fir themselves but were instead used as canon fodders throughout the World? And hiw many people do you have in death row? Count your deads Man.
.
Jeff Voeks : China also murdered other nationals such as the ancestors of the surviving 55 native nations. In ancient history, China called them barbarian states, 蛮夷之邦, only fit for genocide=剿灭. One recent example is the Dzungar nation. Search it and you will know no Dzungar people survived today.
There were completely genocided,剿灭ed. Who knows how many other native nations were completely genocided (剿灭ed) in China’s long history?
Bonkers
They want to be seen as the most loyal poodle of the U.S!
France and other European conquered this part of Asia and exploited resources and people alike. Now they wanted locals to observed law and order in favor of what they have set up for other. Just like thief setting up laws to legitimized their earlier exploit. But wat can they do, don’t tell me they wanted to return all the loots.i