Time for a new normal – enhancing Europe’s military profile in the Indo-Pacific in 2025

2024 witnessed a notable stepping up of Europe’s military profile in the Indo-Pacific. Building on these developments, 2025 should be a year of continuation, bringing even more defence engagement of European states with their Indo-Pacific partners. 

For some time now, European states have been dispatching their armed forces to the Indo-Pacific region for missions, sending warships and aircraft for patrols and joint exercises with like-minded countries from the region. However, until recently these deployments were limited, with France and the United Kingdom being the most active. Naturally, the key interests and priorities of European countries lie within the European continent and they did not see the rationale for presence in distant regions. It is only in the last few years that there has been a stronger will to engage in the Indo-Pacific. For example, in 2021 Germany dispatched a frigate to the Indo-Pacific for the first time in 20 years.

However, 2024 was a milestone, with a significant number of European deployments, including some historic ones. Starting with the Netherlands, the Dutch government sent a frigate HNLMS Tromp as part of a 2022 commitment to deploy a frigate every two years. In July, the Italian Navy’s Carrier Strike Group (CSG), with its primary asset the aircraft carrier ITS Cavour, set off on a five-month deployment to the Indo-Pacific, marking the first-ever presence of an Italian CSG in the region. Germany also deployed two vessels (the frigate FGS Baden-Wuerttemberg and the replenishment ship FGS Frankfurt am Main). This deployment proved important as the ships sailed through the Taiwan Strait on their way from South Korea to Indonesia – with this transit constituting the first appearance of German warships in the strait between China and Taiwan since 2002. British and French warships were also operating in the waters of the Indo-Pacific in 2024 – their presence is always partially conditioned by their colonial legacy and global power ambitions.

Having a presence is one thing, but cooperation with partners and demonstrations of unity and strength constitute another. Apart from port visits and independent missions, European navies collaborated with their regional counterparts, holding joint drills and patrols in the waters of the Indo-Pacific. In August, for instance, the Japanese, Australian, French, German and Italian navies participated in a multilateral exercise, Noble Raven 24-3, while earlier in June and July seven European nations – Belgium, Italy, Netherlands, Germany, France, the UK and Denmark – took part in the 2024 iteration of the US-led world’s largest international maritime exercise – the Rim of the Pacific Exercise (RIMPAC). European navies also joined the US Pacific Fleet and other navies on their freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea and North Korean sanctions monitoring patrols. A substantial European presence also stood out in the air domain, with quite significant (relative to their capacity) contingents from France, Germany, Italy and Spain deployed for several military exercises such as Pacific Skies 24, Nippon Skies 2024 or Pitch Black 2024. Nippon Skies 2024 provided a platform for German and Japanese aircraft to train together in Japanese airspace for the first time.

European states’ efforts to assert their Indo-Pacific footprint more clearly have been driven by rising regional tensions and a perceived gradual intertwining of European and Indo-Pacific security dynamics. Chinese coercive actions in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, which Beijing has considerably intensified over the past few years, pose a threat to political and economic stability in Asia as well as for Europe. Given the fact that 40% of the European Union’s foreign trade passes through the South China Sea, any potential supply chain disruptions represent a risk that EU member states cannot afford to disregard. Additionally, any conflict in the Indo-Pacific initiated by China, be it in the Taiwan Strait or in the South China Sea, would have a destabilising effect on the security situation in other regions, potentially encouraging other authoritarian and revisionist states to further pursue their territorial ambitions.

Recent closer collaboration between North Korea and Russia, including Pyongyang’s direct involvement in Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, has demonstrated to Europeans (and others) the interconnectedness between the security of two far-flung regions, as it was underscored by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken in his latest Financial Times interview. Chinese and North Korean actions erode the rules-based international order, which the UK and the EU regard as the foundation of the world’s functioning.

The deteriorating global and regional security environment has been driving European countries to step up their Indo-Pacific defence engagement and toughen their positions, at least to a certain extent, vis-à-vis China. A good example pertains to Germany, which, although performing a balancing act to maintain good relations with Beijing and secure its economic interests, has been gradually undertaking more concrete actions to contribute to Indo-Pacific security. Through deploying military assets in the Indo-Pacific European states are showing a commitment to the peace and stability of the region. Just as NATO’s Indo-Pacific partners (IP4: Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea) are contributing in various ways to Ukraine’s war effort, European countries are manifesting political will to cooperate on matters of security in the Indo-Pacific. Demonstrating unity and capability to work together on the military level through joint drills reinforces the deterrence effect against any potential Chinese escalation or aggression.

Against this backdrop, European commitment to Indo-Pacific security constitutes a reassurance from the IP4 countries’ vantage point that they can count on their European partners. Though European powers’ reaction to a potential war in the Indo-Pacific is a big unknown, their presence serves the purpose of deterrence so that their readiness to fight does not ever need to be tested. Stepped-up engagement of Asian allies of the US with the European states allows the diversification of security ties, and gives some level of confidence of not being left alone should Donald Trump downgrade the US commitment to its allies’ security.

2025 heralds continuation of European deployments to the Indo-Pacific. At the end of November 2024 the French aircraft carrier FS Charles de Gaulle (the only nuclear-powered one in the world beside the US aircraft carriers), together with her CSG, embarked on the CLEMENCEAU 25 mission. French warships, first deployed to the Mediterranean, will then operate in the Indo-Pacific. Another significant deployment may come as part of the annual French JEANNE D’ARC mission, which usually involves the participation of a Mistral-class amphibious assault ship and a La Fayette-class frigate. Moreover, this year will also see the deployment of the British aircraft carrier HMS Prince of Wales to the region (in 2021 her sister ship HMS Queen Elizabeth was sent to the Indo-Pacific) as well as the first edition of a regular trilateral military exercise involving the UK, the US and Japan.

Nonetheless, there are some challenges related to European engagement in the Indo-Pacific that need to be addressed. Only two European nations have a permanent military presence in the region, namely France and the UK. Others, for example the Netherlands, either send their military vessels regularly but just for a short period of time, or irregularly when they have available assets like Italy. Germany and Italy may have made historic deployments to the Indo-Pacific in 2024, but whether they will be able to consistently dispatch their armed forces will be determined by security conditions around Europe.

Chief of the German Navy Vice Admiral Jan Christian Kaack told USNI News in 2024 that Germany would send forces to the Indo-Pacific every year, but the deployments will be conditioned by future circumstances. European states have limited naval assets and thus capacity for overseas deployment, and their Indo-Pacific engagement potential is further constrained by the unstable security environment around them. The conflict in the Middle East, the Houthi Red Sea attacks, the war in Ukraine and the recent surge of energy infrastructure sabotage in the Baltic Sea necessitate focusing attention and resources closer to home.

Notwithstanding those proximate challenges, Europe needs not only to sustain but to ramp up its Indo-Pacific defence engagement. For that to happen, more European countries would have to recognise the reality and growing interdependence of European and Indo-Pacific security. If smaller countries, even symbolically, joined the European missions to the region and the deployments were coordinated at the EU or NATO level, then achieving permanence and regularity of a European presence on a larger scale could become achievable.

First, however, deeper policy alignment and a united European front with regard to Indo-Pacific challenges, primarily Chinese aggressive and assertive behaviour, would have to be advanced (at least among the states already somewhat committed to Indo-Pacific security as reaching full consensus among all EU member states seems unrealistic given the lack of such agreement even in the case of supporting Ukraine). 2024 unveiled the potential for more effective European military engagement in the Indo-Pacific. 2025 should build on this momentum and bring an even more enhanced defence presence of European states in the Indo-Pacific.

Jakub Witczak Koordynator Projektów w Instytucie Boyma. Student stosunków międzynarodowych na Uniwersytecie Warszawskim. Członek Forum Młodych Dyplomatów oraz założyciel koła naukowego Koło Państw Obszaru Pacyficznego. Zainteresowania badawcze obejmują bezpieczeństwo transatlantyckie, bezpieczeństwo międzynarodowe na Indo-Pacyfiku, międzynarodowe stosunki wojskowe, politykę bezpieczeństwa Japonii, Tajwan, relacje chińsko-amerykańskie oraz historię stosunków międzynarodowych w Azji i Pacyfiku.