India’s Growing Partnership With France And Italy Is Good News For The Indian Ocean Region – OpEd
Indian Ocean politics is undergoing a major strategic churn, underpinned by China’s growing footprint, a receding US influence, and the Indian Ocean littoral states’ exposure to conflicts in the neighbouring Middle East, which has clearly demonstrated to the littoral states, including India, why security in the Indian Ocean must move to the forefront of strategic calculations.
Amid multiple ongoing conflicts and renewed international attention on the Middle East and Europe, the Indo-Pacific is already witnessing a relative decline in strategic focus. At the same time, questions about the US’s long-term credibility and commitment continue to shape strategic calculations across Asia. In this environment, the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) is rapidly emerging as one of the most consequential arenas of geopolitical competition.
In this context, India’s longstanding strategy of multi-alignment and issue-based coalitions works to its advantage. Rather than relying on rigid alliance structures, New Delhi has cultivated flexible strategic partnerships with countries that share concerns over maritime security, regional stability, and freedom of navigation. Among these partners, France has emerged as one of India’s most consequential and reliable strategic partner.
France is not merely an external actor in the Indo-Pacific; it is a resident power with sovereign territories, Exclusive Economic Zones, and permanent military deployments in the Indian Ocean. French territories such as Réunion Island and Mayotte provide Paris with enduring strategic interests in the region. Consequently, France views the stability of the Indian Ocean not as a distant geopolitical issue, but as a direct national security concern.
This strategic convergence has significantly strengthened India-France cooperation in recent years. President Emmanuel Macron’s visit to India earlier this year further reinforced the growing alignment between New Delhi and Paris on Indo-Pacific security, maritime governance, Maritime Domain Awareness, and defence cooperation. Both countries increasingly recognise that preserving stability in the Indian Ocean requires sustained naval coordination, strategic interoperability, and long-term defence collaboration.
India and France have progressively deepened naval interoperability through joint exercises such as Varuna, expanded maritime surveillance cooperation, strengthened logistics-sharing arrangements, and advanced collaboration in defence technology and maritime domain awareness. More recently, both sides have also intensified discussions on coordinated threat assessments and maritime monitoring across the Indian Ocean, reflecting a growing recognition of shared strategic vulnerabilities.
Alongside France, Italy is also emerging as an increasingly important European partner for India in the IOR. While Italy has traditionally played a more limited role in Indo-Pacific security discussions, recent geopolitical shifts have encouraged Rome to adopt a more active strategic outlook toward the region. Italy’s commitment to work more closely with the Indian Ocean Rim Association (IORA) provides it with an institutional anchor to engage the region, alongside its work with India.
The elevation of India-Italy ties into a strategic partnership during Indian PM Modi’s just-concluded visit to Italy has created new opportunities for maritime and defence cooperation. Italy’s growing engagement with the Indo-Pacific is closely tied to concerns surrounding maritime trade security, supply chain resilience, energy connectivity, and the protection of critical sea lanes linking Europe with Asia.
This is particularly significant in the context of the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC), which aims to connect India to Europe via the Middle East and the Mediterranean. As one of the key European stakeholders in IMEC, Italy increasingly recognises that the security of maritime routes in the Arabian Sea and the wider Indian Ocean is directly linked to Europe’s long-term economic and strategic interests.
Italy’s participation in EU-led maritime security initiatives, including anti-piracy operations and naval deployments in the western Indian Ocean, has also created greater strategic overlap with India’s regional objectives. Cooperation between India and Italy in areas such as maritime security, naval diplomacy, defence manufacturing, and connectivity infrastructure is therefore likely to expand further in the coming years.
The IOR is becoming more contested than ever. China continues to expand its strategic footprint through deepening military cooperation with Pakistan, Bangladesh, and countries of the Western Indian Ocean and a steadily growing maritime presence across the Indian Ocean. The recent delivery of a Hangor-class conventionally powered submarine to Pakistan highlights the accelerating pace of this strategic partnership. Equipped with advanced air-independent propulsion (AIP) technology and constructed in China, these submarines are expected to significantly enhance Pakistan’s undersea warfare capabilities while deepening Islamabad’s long-term dependence on Chinese military infrastructure, training, maintenance, and technological support. As additional Hangor-class submarines enter service, the strategic balance beneath the waters of the Indian Ocean is likely to shift considerably.
At the same time, minilateral frameworks such as the Quad and AUKUS appear to be losing momentum amid competing global crises and shifting US priorities. This relative slowdown creates additional strategic space for Beijing to consolidate its military reach and political influence across the region.
Crisis Also Presents Opportunity
Yet this evolving landscape also presents important opportunities for India and its partners. India has consistently prioritised the IOR and invested heavily in strengthening its naval capabilities. Its role as a Net Security Provider in the region is well established and increasingly viewed as an effective counterbalance to China’s expanding influence in both the Indo-Pacific and the Indian Ocean.
The emerging partnerships between India, France, and Italy are not solely about balancing China’s expanding footprint in the Indian Ocean. They are equally about shaping a stable regional order capable of preserving strategic equilibrium, securing maritime routes, and preventing coercive dominance by any single power.
China’s growing alignment with Pakistan reflects a broader effort to expand its influence through a network of strategically dependent states across the Indian Ocean. While India remains the principal target of this strategy, its implications extend far beyond the Indian Subcontinent. Asia. Increased Chinese military access, expanding naval deployments, dual-use infrastructure projects, and growing regional dependence on Chinese defence systems could gradually alter the security architecture of the IOR in ways that concern not only India, but also France, Italy, the United States, Japan, Australia, and several Gulf and African states that rely heavily on the region for trade and energy flows.
This is precisely why developments in the Indian Ocean can no longer be viewed through a narrow regional lens. The IOR has become central to the future balance of power across the wider Indo-Pacific and Eurasian geopolitical landscape.
India, France, and Italy also share a broader strategic outlook centred on multipolarity, strategic autonomy, and the protection of open maritime commons. This allows them to cooperate closely without the constraints of formal alliance politics. Their partnership reflects an emerging model of pragmatic strategic cooperation designed to preserve stability while avoiding rigid bloc confrontation.
Ultimately, a stronger Indian role in the IOR — supported by deeper partnerships with France and Italy — is not about making the region more confrontational. On the contrary, such cooperation is increasingly necessary to preserve regional stability, secure maritime trade routes, strengthen deterrence, and protect the broader strategic interests of all three countries amid intensifying geopolitical competition.
