While the American fleet is called upon to increase its deployments in the Pacific theater, French Admiral Pierre Vandier, Chief of Staff of the National Navy, called on the European fleets to replace their ally to fill the spaces vacated by the United States.
As we know, Chinese shipyards launch, each year, nearly a dozen destroyers and frigates, as well as many other ships, including the most imposing and modern, intended to come and swell the fleet of the People's Liberation Army. .
To deal with it, the US Navy can still rely on the mass and efficiency that its fleet gives it, as well as on the renewed means of its regional allies such as Australia, Japan or South Korea.
However, in the years to come, and despite the increase in US naval production, Washington will have to concentrate ever more of its resources in the Pacific to deal with the rise in power of the PLA, thereby reducing its presence in other theatres, no less exposed.
It is precisely to anticipate this irremediable American swing against China that the'Admiral Pierre Vandier, Chief of Staff of the French Navy, called on the European Marines to organize themselves to come and fill the spaces vacated by the US Navy, on the occasion of the First Sea Lord's Seapower Conference 2023 held at Lancaster House on May 16th and 17th.
For the French admiral, it is not only essential that the European navies increase their presence in the Mediterranean as in the North Atlantic, their traditional theaters of operation, but also in the Persian Gulf and in the northern Indian Ocean, precisely to allow a disengagement of the US Navy while maintaining a significant and dissuasive presence on these critical theaters for the supply of Europeans, in particular in hydrocarbons.
Beyond the deployments themselves, Admiral Pierre Vandier also called for increasing and strengthening the interoperability of European fleets, both technologically and operationally, so that a European multinational fleet can act as a unified fleet.
By improving this interoperability and this common experience, European deployments will therefore be much more effective and dissuasive, by acting as a unified naval force so as to deprive a potential adversary of any opportunity that could convince him to take action.
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