What should Europe’s future defence posture in the Indo-Pacific look like?
The Big Ask | No. 48.2025
At the beginning of December, the United Kingdom (UK)-led Carrier Strike Group 2025 (CSG2025) returned to home waters. Similar to Carrier Strike Group 2021, which included a Dutch frigate, CSG2025 included Norwegian and Spanish vessels travelling alongside the Royal Navy to the Indo-Pacific, demonstrating both a British and a broader European commitment to the region.
Between these major operations, several other European navies have deployed to the region, with many transiting the Taiwan Strait. However, these exercises come as defence budgets are being stretched, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine continues and Washington insists that its European allies focus on European security. Given these challenges, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked five experts: What should Europe’s future defence posture in the Indo-Pacific look like?
Independent analyst
Europe’s future defence posture in the Indo-Pacific should be concise, yet impactful, sustainable and maritime-focused.
The region is indispensable to European economic and technological security. Around 40% of European external trade and a large share of global high-value production depend on Indo-Pacific sea lanes and supply chains. Supporting a stable, rules-based maritime order and helping to deter coercive behaviour are therefore clearly in European interests, central to protecting prosperity and technological resilience.
A credible posture for the United Kingdom (UK) and its European allies and partners begins with strengthened, coordinated naval engagement. Regular, rotational deployments to international waters under pressure, namely the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait, would signal a collective European commitment to freedom of navigation and regional stability.
Such deployments would also reassure partners facing persistent sub-threshold activities and assertive maritime claims. Beyond presence operations, European nations should deepen cooperation with Indo-Pacific partners on shared maritime security challenges, including maritime domain awareness, coast guard capacity building and undersea infrastructure protection. Over time, these initiatives could reinforce European nations’ own security and support the pursuit of strategic autonomy.
The assumption that Indo-Pacific engagement constitutes strategic overstretch or diverts resources from pressing challenges in Europe should also be abandoned. South Korea, Japan and Taiwan are critical partners in defence-industrial collaboration and technological innovation, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), is home to essential resources, and represents a rising economic bloc with growing relevance for European supply-chain security.
As the American-Chinese rivalry intensifies, many regional states, particularly in Southeast Asia, are seeking more diversified diplomatic relationships. This presents an opportunity for European nations to act as a stabilising, rules-based alternative. Britain, collaborating with its European allies and partners, is well positioned to shape this engagement.
PhD Researcher, Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Brussels School of Governance (VUB)
It is no exaggeration to say that in recent years, Italy has emerged as one of the most active European players in Indo-Pacific security engagement.
Since 2023, the Italian Navy has deployed at least one vessel to the region each year, with its Carrier Strike Group 2024, centred around the Cavour, as a noteworthy case. In terms of defence-industrial cooperation, Rome, London and Tokyo have established the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet, and Italian defence companies, such as Fincantieri and Leonardo, have been expanding their reach into the Indo-Pacific. Finally, in September 2025, the Italian Parliament greenlit a new defence cooperation agreement with India.
So far, however, Italy’s newfound security activism in the region has not been undergirded by a fully articulated strategy. As recommended by the first comprehensive analysis on the Indo-Pacific, released in March by the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Italian Chamber of Deputies, it would be advisable in the near future to draft such a strategic document, setting objectives and outlining a clear operational framework.
This would help to ensure coherence in Italy’s actions and maximise impact on the ground. It would also signal strategic clarity both to European and Indo-Pacific partners, and identify avenues for future cooperative initiatives in sectoral domains. Lastly, at a grand strategic level, it would serve to elucidate how the Italian Government intends to balance competing security commitments on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastern flank, the Mediterranean and the Indo-Pacific, providing necessary credibility to underpin any future long-term engagement in the region.
Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy
While the primary focus of European powers should be security in their own region – especially as they play geopolitical catch-up following too many years of underinvesting in defence alongside a presumed American retrenchment of military assets from Europe – this does not mean that continued military presence in the Indo-Pacific is not still both desirable and possible.
Given the geopolitical and geoeconomic shocks which would be felt in the Euro-Atlantic were open conflict involving major powers in the Indo-Pacific to be initiated, European powers should do what they can to secure their interests in the region. The value of continued European military presence in the Indo-Pacific should not be underestimated. The presence of multiple actors complicates the decision-making of aggressive states, and the cross-pollination of military forces with local partners is extremely useful for a number of reasons.
Ultimately the answer is not about an ‘either/or’, but rather where maximum strategic effect can be attained for a reasonable allocation of military force; an allocation which does not leave deterrence in the Euro-Atlantic weakened to the extent that it encourages further Russian aggression.
In general, more persistent presence by naval forces – especially those not considered top-tier assets – as well as more regular but less large-scale pulsed deployments of naval and air forces should be the guiding principles. It is also worth remembering that strategic mobility is a key aspect of naval and air assets, meaning that in an emergency, they can always be recalled relatively quickly.
Research Fellow and Head of Taiwan Programme, Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique (FRS)
As an Indo-Pacific power, France holds a singular position among European nations. It maintains nearly 7,000 permanent military personnel deployed across five commands to protect its vast Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and seven overseas territories.
Paris pursues continuous engagement through frequent joint exercises, deployments, and French Navy-led freedom of navigation operations, including biannual transits of the Taiwan Strait. A distinctive legal framework known as ‘action de l’État en mer’ (‘state action at sea’) also enables French navy ships to conduct policing missions in sovereign waters – as well as those of partner countries, such as Fiji and Vanuatu – helping to reinforce local sovereignty and maritime governance.
In 2025, France signalled a renewed focus on the Indo-Pacific. In addition to deepening defence cooperation with Indonesia and the Philippines, it sent its carrier strike group on an unprecedented five-month mission, reaching the East Philippine Sea, and released an updated Indo-Pacific strategy. The document built on the tour of Emmanuel Macron, President of France, to Southeast Asia and his Shangri-La Dialogue address, where he emphasised ‘strategic autonomy’ and flexible coalitions.
Despite these efforts, France lacks the bandwidth and resources to expand its presence significantly amid more pressing geopolitical issues and domestic political instability. For France – and Europe more broadly – the priority is not scaling up military engagement, but to remain consistent, credible and constructive.
Rather than militarising the Indo-Pacific, European nations should focus on ‘securitising’ it: strengthening cooperation against organised crime and ‘hybrid’ threats, protecting critical infrastructure and safeguarding supply chains in face of emerging spheres of coercion.
Associate Professor, Norwegian Institute for Defence Studies, Norwegian Defence University College
The planning for CSG2025 began before the current political situation took shape. Had it been proposed today, with American pressure on its European allies and partners to prioritise their own defence and the conflict in Ukraine consuming resources on the continent, it is highly unlikely that it would have gone ahead.
However, considering the enormous costs a peer conflict in the Taiwan Strait would inflict on European nations, maintaining a presence in the Indo-Pacific is likely worthwhile. This does not mean going all out or spending too many resources that far away from home, but rather selective and timely participation in exercises, port calls or deployments with allies and partners would be a net benefit.
While free and open European nations should not overestimate the very limited military effect they could create in the Indo-Pacific in the case of a contingency, it does not mean that they should abandon any attempt at playing a role, however minor, in maintaining stability in the region. After all, it plays a considerable economic role for Europe as a whole.
If you enjoyed this Big Ask, please subscribe or pledge your support!
What do you think about the perspectives put forward in this Big Ask? Why not leave a comment below?
Brillaint roundup of perspectives here. The piece really nails how Europe's Indo-Pacific engagement isnt about overstretch but about protecting thier own economic interests. I think Freer's point about "where maximum strategic effect can be attained" is key here, because even smaller, persistent naval presense can complicate adversary calculus without drawing down critical Euro-Atlantic assets. The France example shows how even a middle power can maintain meaningful influence through consistency rather than scale.
It's all well and good to hypothesise what the UK could, or should, provide in maritime assets, alas we have too little. The lack of trained and experienced people, with too few maritime platforms that are deployable is a clear defect. Politicians have not provided any serious improvements to the RN, let alone the Armed Forces for far too many years. The evidence of threats and the need for more defence has been absolutely clear but still huge sums of money are given to curry favour rather than for national needs.