Europe’s Indo-Pacific Engagement at Shangri-La 2025: a Consistent and Growing Commitment

From President Macron to the defense ministers of France, Finland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, and Sweden, the chiefs of defense of Germany and the United Kingdom, and the vice president of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas, Europe was strongly represented at the 22nd Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, the main defense diplomacy summit in the Indo-Pacific region.

This European visibility at the Shangri La stood out all the more given the conspicuous absence of China’s defense minister, whose speeches since 2019 had typically commanded a large share of media and diplomatic attention.

European overstretch?

Yet Europe's ability to influence the region's security dynamics was a recurring theme throughout the summit. This issue surfaced repeatedly, from three angles: the expectations of the Indo-Pacific countries towards Europe; those of the US administration, voiced by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who delivered an important policy statement; and finally, the signals sent by the Europeans themselves regarding their intentions and level of commitment.

As Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilbert Teodoro noted in his address on the strategic agency of small states, “”the disengagement of any power from this region would have disastrous consequences." In this perspective, formulated in response to Beijing's persistent accusations that the Philippines is acting as a proxy for the United States in the South China Sea, Europe’s naval presence, in defense of a maritime order based on the international law of the sea, has stabilizing effects in the region.

The Philippines' position is not, of course, representative of ASEAN as a whole. European approaches continue to face criticism. Some believe that the regular naval presence of European countries contributes to regional tensions; others denounce in European statements the recurring analogies between Ukraine and Taiwan, which they see as a self-fulfilling prophecy that Asia would gladly do without. Amid these differing views, Singapore has emerged as a key diplomatic actor, actively fostering security cooperation with European partners.

As HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s flagship aircraft carrier, begins an eight-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific at the head of an international carrier strike group, the legitimacy of a European maritime presence in Asia resurfaced in Shangri-La discussions, this time through the lens of available resources.

In 2024–2025, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, and Italy will all have committed naval units to the region in the name of freedom of navigation as guaranteed by international law.

But does this strategic projection come at a cost to Europe's defense posture vis-à-vis Russia? Doesn't the intense pressure on the Eastern front, combined with the risk of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict escalating into a direct confrontation with NATO (a threat that General Carsten Breuer, Chief of Staff of the Bundeswehr, reiterated in Singapore), justify a total concentration of European military deployments in Europe?

To concerns over overstretching already European military capabilities, raised by multiple participants and prevalent in the strategic debate across Europe, British Chief of the Defence Staff Admiral Tony Radakin delivered the clearest answer.

The United Kingdom has “no plans to deploy aircraft carriers in the Russia-Ukraine conflict”; the marginal cost of deployment in the Indo-Pacific is estimated at only £75 million, compared to a total budget of £59.8 billion planned for 2025/2026 for British defense. Furthermore, if the presence of the naval aviation group were to become essential in the Atlantic or the Mediterranean, it would take less than six weeks to reach these theaters of operation.

In a much-anticipated address, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth delivered a speech centered on strategic reassurance to regional partners, with a strong message to Chinese leaders about President Trump as a “peace seeker”. He reaffirmed that the United States is a “nation of the Indo-Pacific” and intends to remain so “for generations to come.” Washington’s posture in the region, he emphasized, is above all aimed at “deterring Chinese aggression” through “common sense policies”, and an overall “peace through strength” approach.

The implication for Europeans was unambiguous: while reinforcing deterrence against Russia is the obvious strategic imperative, there is no suggestion, and certainly no demand, that they limit themselves to the European theater.

A “coalition of independents”?

But the conversation around Europe’s security engagement in the Indo-Pacific goes beyond naval deployments. French President Emmanuel Macron's speech sought to provide a comprehensive strategic response, structured around two key messages.

The first is a moral framing of the causes of war, centered on denouncing “double standards,” which he argued limit Western countries’ capacity to act. The most striking moment of the speech was this rhetorical question: “ if we consider that Russia could be allowed to take a part of the territory of Ukraine without any restriction, without any constraint, without any reaction of the global order, how would you phrase what could happen in Taiwan? What would you do the day something happened in the Philippines? ”

By explicitly naming China as the potential aggressor in Asia, the President opted for a clear-eyed analysis of regional security trends, an approach for which there is demand in the region, even if it meant drawing Chinese protests, which soon came, notably from the Chinese Embassy in Singapore. His message and that of Kaja Kallas, who emphasized international law (“If we don’t defend the law, we validate aggression”), were mutually reinforcing.

Despite this effort at clarity, the recalibrations in Macron’s speech, reaffirming that “you do not want to be confrontational with China,” which he called “a friend” (“and I do intend to remain so, loyally, with a demanding approach of our own interests”), left many delegates with the lingering déjà-vu impression of lasting French ambiguity toward Beijing.

While this stance, combining frank criticism and diplomatic caution, contrasts with the unequivocal approaches of the United States and the Philippines, it is also highly compatible with those adopted by partners such as Singapore and Indonesia, countries whose strategic importance for France has grown steadily in recent years. It also contrasts sharply with the strict neutrality espoused by Thai Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai.

In February 2022, Indonesia's order for 42 Rafale fighter jets had helped heal the wound left by the AUKUS affair and the cancellation of the “contract of the century” — the sale of diesel-powered submarines to Australia. In terms of arms cooperation, the letter of intent recently signed by Jakarta for the acquisition of additional Rafale fighter jets, Scorpène submarines, and Caesar cannons comes at another critical moment. It reinforces bilateral momentum in a context marked by Franco-Indian controversy over the causes of the probable loss of a Rafale fighter jet during recent Indian retaliatory operations against Pakistan, following the Pahalgam terror attacks in Kashmir last April.

While the concept of strategic autonomy is appealing to key strategic partners in Asia, it remains divisive within Europe, where some perceive it as a premature declaration of transatlantic emancipation, and others simply as an unrealistic vision. No European defense leader echoed President Macron’s statement in Singapore. Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu may have intended to acknowledge this reality when he pointed out in his speech that “we sometimes move faster with countries outside the EU than within the EU”.

Beyond strategic ideas and narratives, President Macron’s trip to Southeast Asia seems to have triggered in Paris a realization of the need to send a political signal on trade. In his speech, Macron explicitly referenced the CPTPP (Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership) as a potential horizon for deepening economic relations between Europe and ASEAN countries.

At a time when free trade is under repeated attack, and even as the European Union stands as one of its last great defenders, objections to European membership of the CPTPP appear mainly technical: complexity of rules of origin, overlap with existing bilateral Free Trade Afreements (Vietnam, Singapore, Japan), or incompatibilities with EU standards on labor rights, environmental protection, or data governance.

Though legitimate, these technical considerations weigh less than the strategic imperative of reinforcing Europe’s presence in Asia and capitalizing on opportunities created by US–China rivalry. Joining a framework like the CPTPP would give Europe an additional lever to meet Asian partners’ expectations while asserting a stronger role in the evolving Indo-Pacific economic architecture. The absence of any CPTPP reference in Kaja Kallas’s speech appears in this context as a missed opportunity for the European Union.

Conclusion

The 2025 Shangri-La Dialogue confirmed that Europe's presence in the Indo-Pacific has never been so visible, despite growing security tensions in the east of the continent. This presence meets an explicit demand from many regional states for strengthened partnerships and enhanced cooperation.

On security and defense issues several common priorities emerged: securing submarine cables and satellite networks (“In a network, we must defend the network as a team”, to quote Singapore’s Defense Minister Chan Chun Sing), sending tangible strategic signals through industrial cooperation on defense, cybersecurity (especially in the face of offensive activism by Russia, Belarus, China, and North Korea), and, finally, the need to send a clear and consistent message on the primacy of international law.

Copyright image : Ludovic MARIN / AFP
Emmanuel Macron au Shangri-La Dialogue de Singapour, le 30 mai 2025