Organized Tuesday 22 February under the auspices of France, the Forum for Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific was to “strengthen the European partnership” with the nations of a crucial economic and strategic zone. Objective not admitted: constitute an alternative to Chinese commitment.
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Two countries shone by their absence at the first ministerial forum for cooperation in the Indo-Pacific, organized Tuesday, February 22 in Paris, by France, on behalf of the European Union, which it provides the rotating chairmanship: The United States and China. The reason is simple: they had not been invited. China because it is now considered a “systemic rival” by Europeans; The United States, because their presence without China would have been considered by the latter as a provocation somewhat unlikely.
This forum, which brought together 60 foreign ministers of certain countries in Asia, Africa and the European Union (EU), was intended, according to the words of welcome by the head of French diplomacy, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to “decline the strengthening of the partnership [of the twenty-seven with the Indo-Pacific Zone] by concrete projects in the fields of security, defense, connectivity and digital”. Three round tables around these themes aimed to identify the future orientations of the EU in a crucial economic and strategic region: 60% of the world’s wealth and three-fifths of the population are concentrated in this area formerly called ” Asia-Pacific “.
But this brief mini-summit held at the level of foreign affairs of countries as diverse as Japan, India, Indonesia, New Zealand, Cambodia, Bangladesh, SRI Lanka, Le Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines, Laos, the Comorres, or Maurice, was perhaps more important by what he left in the shadows than by what he hears officially put forward: the The very concept of Indo-Pacific, concept prepared by the former Japanese Prime Minister Sinzo ABE, shows the painting of a group of worried nations in filigree, to varying degrees, the consequences of the rise of China. .
CAUTION REMAINS MESSAGE
“China has not been invited to this forum, even though the European Union ensures that it does not want to confront with Beijing,” says Philip the Corre, researcher at Harvard Kennedy School in a tribune Posted by the Nikkei Asia Review: “Yet the EU has begun to pivot towards Asia.” “The European Union Investment Project in Indo-Pacific is an answer to the project of the” New Silk Roads “Chinese”, blows a European diplomat, who asks to keep anonymous.
In some of the countries concerned by the European economic and strategic commitment in Indo-Pacific, caution, however, remains to be required: no question of shaking the red cloth in front of China that already agitates the initiative of the EU. “I think the Indo-Pacific, like concept, is no longer the consequence of a world now” post-American “that a response [to the rise] of China: the US footprint is done Lighter today and the Americans themselves realized that a separate Pacific Ocean and an Indian Ocean are notions that no longer work, “says the Indian Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The latter was, with Japan, the representative at the Forum of one of the two guests who have a strategic partnership with the EU.
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