France’s Overseas Territories and Their Use in Maritime Strategy

The Geopolitical Observatory of the Indo-Pacific recently published a paper by Captain (R) Sarbjeet Parmar on the underlying strategic issues at the heart of the discussions between the British and Mauritian governments concerning the retrocession of the Chagos Islands in the Indian Ocean. Namely, the future of the Diego Garcia military base and the pre-positioning of American forces at the heart of this key geopolitical region. As we know, the question of maintaining the American military presence refers to the broader issue of power competition within the China-India-United States triangle, which weighs on all coastal and island states and shapes regional power relations. 

But the Chagos Islands and the future of Diego Garcia – which seems to be a major concern for the new US administration – also raise the question of the role of islands and the specific nature of insularity in the Indo-Pacific region. 

Has France paid sufficient attention to the uniqueness of its island territory in formulating its Indo-Pacific strategy? Probably not. Its overseas departments, regions and communities have enabled it to develop a narrative of maritime power and to promote a status of quasi-thalassocracy based on the world’s second largest maritime area, covering approximately 11 million km2, most of which is located overseas. 

This dominant vision of the island as a strategic resource and marker of sovereignty has been received in different ways in Reunion, Nouméa and Papeete. This is because it refers to a colonial past that is still very much present in memories and identities. Time has passed and France’s relationship with its overseas territories, these “strange peripheries” according to the deliberately provocative phrase of geographer Jean-Christophe Gay, has changed profoundly. As Georg Peppert’s paper points out, the French communities from the Atlantic to the Indo-Pacific are largely integrated. For example, French Polynesia and New Caledonia have a degree of autonomy that is broad enough to enable them to conduct their foreign relations, whether with China or the United States, without necessarily involving the central government. 

This means that these territories have developed their own regional integration strategies and their own geopolitical narrative. This can be very different from the concept of the Indo-Pacific, if we refer to that of “Indian Oceania” which links the islands of the southwestern Indian Ocean, or the reference to the “Blue Pacific” which marks belonging to the Pacific family in the Oceanian space. This means that the vision of France as an archipelago remains fragile and that the Indo-Pacific nomenclature, without being totally refuted, can be considered artificial and not corresponding to the local realities of overseas environments. In any case, it demonstrates the difficulty the French have in accepting to move to a level of discourse that must project France from a continental power into an insular, fragmented and vulnerable France. 

Foreword by Marianne Péron-Doise, Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Geopolitical Observatory of the Indo-Pacific, IRIS