Sea Control - Sea Control 358 - Information Fusion Center Singapore with Cdr Jeremy Bachelier (French Version)

Episode Date: June 30, 2022

L'animatrice, rédactrice et productrice Alexia Bouallagui s'entretient avec le Commandant Jeremy Bachelier, Officier de Liaison français au Centre de Fusion de l’Information (IFC) à Singapour. Ils discutent des missions du centre et de la contribution de l'IFC à la sécurité maritime du point de vue d'un Officier de Liaison français. Ils abordent également les défis actuels et futurs de la sécurité maritime dans la région Indo-Pacifique ainsi que l'évolution des menaces pour la sécurité maritime et les outils à la disposition de la communauté locale et internationale.

Hey folks, it's Jared. Alexia Boulaghi is back at Xeros this week for a dual French-English podcast. You are listening to the French version of that podcast, so everything after my opening spiel here will be in French. Her guest is Commander Jeremy Bachelier of the French Navy, and they'll be discussing the Information Fusion Center in Singapore. Alexia also edited and produced this episode. I'd like to pause here to highlight our local chapters, whether you're in Singapore, Lagos, Nigeria, Germany, the UK, Yokosuka, Japan, Chicago, or Newport, Rhode Island, chances are there's a SimSec local chapter near you. You can find a full listing of their chapters and contact information on the website at simsec.org, so if you're interested, please reach out. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, The Village Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drack, and a pot of iron brew bottles wherever you download our podcasts.

With that, Kim Bruceman. You're listening to Sea Control, posted by the Center for International and Maritime Security. Salut à tous, allois camarades de bord, et bienvenue à bord de Sea Control. Aujourd'hui, je suis rejoint par le commandant Jérémy Bachelier, et nous allons discuter des défis de la sécurité maritime dans le Pacifique, de la contribution du Centre de fusion de l'information et de la contribution de la France à ce centre. Commandant Jérémy Bachelier, bienvenue à vous. Pourriez-vous tout d'abord vous présenter à notre public et nous en dire un peu plus sur votre parcours ?

Bonjour Alexia, tout d'abord je voulais vous remercier de cette opportunité qui m'est donnée aujourd'hui, c'est évidemment très apprécié. Je suis officier de marine depuis maintenant 23 ans. J'ai un passif qui est essentiellement opérationnel puisque j'ai été amené embarqué durant 14 années sur huit bâtiments de combat différents. Je suis aujourd'hui à Singapour en tant qu'officier de liaison. D'abord, en tant que représentant d'Alpacy, qui est l'amiral en charge des opérations aéromaritaines en Asie-Pacifique.

Je suis également le représentant régional d'un centre nommé le MICA Center, qui est un centre de sécurité maritime de la Marine nationale. Je suis également officier de liaison dans trois organismes et centres ici à Singapour. D'abord, la Task Force 73 américaine, which is in charge of logistics for the 7th fleet in the Asian region. I am also also in contact with the IFC, the Information Fusion Center, which is a maritime security center here in Singapore

and which gathers 19 countries, which are all represented by liaison offices which are inserted within this center. And then I am also in contact with the RHCC, which is the Humanitarian Aid and Rescue Center in case of catastrophe here in Singapore and which has a regional vocation on the entire Southeast Asian area.

Thank you very much. And as a reminder, all the opinions expressed belong to us and are not representative of any institution to which we could be otherwise associated. Precisely, can you tell us about your position and your role within the Information Fusion Center, the IFC? What is the role of a liaison officer? L'IFC, Information Information Center, c'est un centre régional de sécurité maritime que je dirais plutôt d'ailleurs orienté sur le maritime domain awareness, si on utilise le jargon habituel qui est le nôtre dans le domaine de la sécurité maritime. L'objectif premier de ce centre, c'est d'abord d'obtenir une vue globale de l'ensemble des faits maritimes, ceci afin d'en tirer des éléments d'analyse, des conclusions sur les principales tendances qui sont observées dans cette région s'agissant du fait maritime, qu'il s'agisse des types d'activités illégales qui sont réalisées et observées, qu'il s'agisse des modes opératoires qui sont adoptés, qu'il s'agisse de la fréquence de ce type d'événements, qu'il s'agisse de la localisation, to talk about it, since, obviously, localization evolves

in function of the vectors that are put into practice by all the countries of Southeast Asia, and that the brigands, the legal activities, adapt, finally, to the presence of these vectors. So, this allows us to sensitize, but also to orient, finally, at best, all the agencies in charge of maritime security, so that they can be as efficient as possible in their territorial zones, but also in their exclusive economic zones.

This is in order, as I said, to orient the sensors, the vectors, in the best possible conditions. It is also to ensure that the maritime industry, with which we work very closely, is itself able, in the end, to take internal protection measures that are as suitable as possible for the zones that are crossed. I would like to underline, perhaps, before continuing on other subjects, that the French liaison officer of the IFC is the first to join the IFC in 2009. quelques semaines seulement après le lancement effectif de l'IFC d'ailleurs. Cela démontre à mon sens deux choses.

D'abord, les liens parfaitement étroits et de confiance qui unissent Singapour et la France dans l'ensemble du spectre, mais en particulier dans le domaine de la sécurité maritime. Et puis également l'importance accordée par la France finalement aux enjeux de sécurité maritime en Indo-Pacifique. Les 19 officialisations que j'ai mentionnées apportent avec eux des expériences opérationnelles et professionnelles qui sont uniques et surtout apporte une compréhension des enjeux, des sensibilités qui sont les leurs dans leurs propres eaux, ce qui permet forcément d'enrichir sensiblement la qualité des produits

et puis la justesse des analyses qui sont produites par l'IFC. Alors, dans le domaine de la sécurité maritime, il y a un besoin croissant d'action collective en réponse à des problèmes collectifs et l'Indo-Pacifique est un terrain particulier pour cela. Pourquoi l'IFC a-t-il été créé et comment fonctionne-t-il et quels sont ses objectifs, si vous pouviez en dire un petit mot pour nos auditeurs ? C'est une vaste question, mais déjà, première des choses, pour assurer la sécurité maritime aujourd'hui, dans le monde globalisé qu'est le nôtre, le partage d'informations entre l'ensemble des agences, l'ensemble des pays, se révèle essentiel.

Car dans les faits, bien évidemment, aucune agence ne dispose à elle seule de l'ensemble des informations qui permettent d'avoir cette compréhension exhaustive de l'ensemble des faits maritimes, des enjeux, des menaces qui sont les nôtres. So the creation of the IFC finally in 2009 was the epilogue of a quest that was ultimately looking to better counter the activities of brigandage that were legion, I was going to say, in the Detroit of Malacca, in the Detroit of Singapore, since the brigandage has made a fairly tonic-truant return from the end of the 90s, with important peaks, as was the case in 2003. So we had to react. There were different initiatives. First, the establishment of the Malacca Strait Patrols, with all the coastal countries of the Malacca Strait and Singapore, since 2004.

There were then coordinated patrols that were set up by the implementation of the different buildings of these navy, of these Malaysian, Indonesian and Singaporean marines. There were coordinated patrols, since they are not joint, to put it that way. There was then the establishment of what we call the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery, also known as RECAP, in 2006. It's an organization that some countries did not want to join,

such as Indonesia and Malaysia, for example, which are still important countries in this region. And then finally, the IFC was born a few years later, in 2009, on the impetus of the Singaporean Navy. So, as for the question of the internal functioning of the IFC, as I said, the first objective is first to merge the information. So, information that comes from both liaison offices, which are stakeholders of the IFC, but also from information that is accessible in open source, since, of course, according to the countries, they are more or less prolix or prolific on this aspect of maritime security. So we can find a lot of information in this area in the open source, sometimes not in English.

This is also the reason for the official relations that can prove these information in the language that is theirs, in the press that is theirs. It is also obviously the maritime industry that provides us with information. Hence the importance, obviously, of having a great connectivity, a great trust with all these maritime actors. And the ultimate objective is obviously then to share all this information and the analyses that it will underline in the regional context that is ours, towards the actors who have, they have capacities, aerial or maritime capacities, in such a way that they can provide an operational response,

finally, to all of these problems. So in Singapore, the IFC works very closely, as far as the Strait of Singapore is concerned, with the MPA, which is the Maritime Authority and Port of Singapore. We also work closely for the operational response, with the Singaporean Coast Guard, but in the same way, launching the liaison officers,

connections with their marines, with their respective Coast Guards, so that they can keep informed of their major states of the evolution that is observed in the case of our analysis on the illegal activities plan. Each liaison officer,

to conclude on this, participates in the search for information par les différents biais et liens que j'ai évoqués. Ensuite, participe à l'analyse qui va en être faite. Évidemment, avec des analyses qui ne sont pas forcément toujours collectivement agréées par tout un chacun. On a forcément des lectures possiblement différentes des faits et des tendances.

Mais l'objectif, c'est bien là, c'est de trouver une forme de consensus qui puisse donner du sens, finalement, à notre action. Et puis, enfin, de retransmettre, évidemment, l'ensemble de ces travaux vers l'industrie maritime, comme je le disais, avec des recommandations autant que possible, so that they know exactly what the level of threat is, how they can respond to it and how they can protect themselves, and that they can above all know who to correspond to

according to the areas they have crossed. And then, from a more practical point of view, we produce a lot of things. First, daily reports, weekly, monthly, semester and annual reports, which are obviously with an increasingly increased rate of analysis when we have a long-term reading of events.

On organise également des réunions quadrimestrielles avec la communauté maritime dans un événement qu'on appelle le Shared Awareness Meeting, SAM, auquel le MICA Center, d'ailleurs auquel j'appartiens, comme je l'évoquais dans le préambule, est associé pour pouvoir présenter la situation dans le globe de Guinée. On met en œuvre également des exercices biannuels qui sont nommés Maritime Information Sharing Exercise, autrement appelés MARICS. Le dernier aura eu lieu en 2021, donc le prochain aura lieu en 2023. There were 37 countries that participated in this exercise, with 172 participants,

which makes it an event of growing magnitude for the IFC. And then we have seminars of reflection, but also of acculturation for the officers who assume new responsibilities in the region, whether they are from the region we are talking about, or who gravitate in the region due to their positioning. And we do this together, so every year we organize this seminar, together with a think tank called the RSIS, which is a Singaporean think tank,

in such a way that we can acculturate them on the regional maritime issues. The seminar in question is called the Regional Maritime Practitioner Program, RMPP, and it is an event co-organized by the IFC and the RSCS each year. To continue on this subject, what are the challenges that can be encountered when we gather a large number of international liaison officers? Can there be any communication problems? Thank you very much. and that more and more discussions are being started with new countries

or with other internal organizations in countries already present within the IFC. Typically, it is essentially the naval officers who are currently evolving within the IFC, but there are more and more Coast Guard officers who are interested in it. We have in particular three Coast Guard officers who have been announced in the next few months from countries that are already a part of the IFC, and negotiations, discussions are in progress so that there are other countries, sometimes well beyond the South-East Asia, to be able to have an expertise a little more pushed on the maritime domain.

Regarding the difficulties to work on such a center, I would answer that there are in this center all the classic, usual difficulties that we can have in a so-called multinational center. With 20 countries, there are necessarily disagreements, analyses, as I said, that can be divergent. But it is also the interest of all of us around the table, to be able to put on the table all of these problems, to discuss them and to find consensus. The fact is that there are officers who have experience in cooperation, in diplomatic matters, who may have more ease to work in a centre like this one.

D'autres sont de total béotien en la matière, donc ont plus de difficultés à travailler dans un centre comme celui-ci. Le fait est qu'il y a aussi certains qui, possiblement du fait de leur jeune âge, du fait des restrictions qui sont mises en place par leurs états majeurs respectifs, ont peut-être plus de difficultés aussi à pouvoir s'exprimer librement et à pouvoir concrètement partager tout ce qu'ils souhaiteraient partager.

Et puis, plus rarement, j'allais dire, il y a aussi des différences de grade qui peuvent s'ajouter aussi à des difficultés linguistiques culture, which sometimes can obviously create misunderstandings, misunderstandings that arise over time, but which can be a part of everyday life. The last point I wanted to mention on this subject is that there are obviously passing quarrels in the country, sometimes divergent diplomatic lines on maritime issues or different perceptions, as I mentioned, of illegal fishing activities or smuggling, and that all this sometimes involves difficulties

to have, as I said, a common understanding of the problems we are faced with. Two examples, perhaps, the Rohingya, the Rohingya flow coming from the camps of Bangladesh, of Germany, towards the Malacca Detroit, Malaysia, Indonesia. These are analyzes regarding the Rohingyas, which can be necessarily very divergent from one country to another. The second example is illegal fishing, since according to the contention and according to the revendications des uns des autres. Une pêche qualifiée légale par un pays ne le sera pas forcément par l'autre donc on a des difficultés parfois à savoir concrètement quelle est la vérité des prix. Donc tout ça fait partie on va dire du quotidien et c'est aussi la raison d'être

et l'intérêt d'un centre comme celui-ci c'est de pouvoir mettre sur table finalement l'ensemble des analyses et des perceptions. Merci à vous commandant. Alors nous allons maintenant passer to a part more analysis on the issues that are present in this region. What is your evaluation of the region? What are the main threats to maritime security in the Pacific Ocean and more precisely in relation to your role, your perception since the IFC? As a preamble, I think it is important to have it in mind. It is interesting to remind that the increase in maritime traffic in the world over the last 20 years has been drawn by only Asia. The transatlantic flow, on the other hand, remained stable during

the last 20 years, while the transpacific flow and the Europe-Asia flow finally increased in a fairly significant way. So the Asian maritime space is finally an area of growing interest today, which obviously promotes international trade in the globalized world, which is ours, but at the same time promotes legal activities such as piracy, they steal, cyber risk, maritime terrorism or drug trafficking, since obviously their wealth calls for convoys. World maritime transport is obviously also vulnerable to trans-frontal threats since, whether it be brigandage in the Singapore Strait, whether it be incidents of

construction removal in the Seulwit and Celeb seas, there are necessarily activities that are carried out in areas where it is difficult to know who is responsible for what, hence the need for cooperation from one to the other so that we can have as little uncertainty as possible regarding the response that may be brought by the different actors who are in charge of a region xy. I would also add on this point that the threats finally do not limit themselves to the maritime domain, since as we saw during the Bombay attack in 2008, terrorists then infiltrated from the sea to carry out terrestrial attacks. So it Il va de soi qu'il faut avoir une forme de compréhension globale

puisque le monde terrestre, le monde maritime est fongible et que la menace terrestre vient également du maritime. Il est essentiel d'avoir une connexion entre acteurs du maritime mais plus largement finalement entre les acteurs du maritime et ceux qui s'assurent de la protection des territoires au plus près des mers. Les pays riverains se disputent évidemment, en particulier en Asie, les ressources halieutiques, les ressources énergétiques And at the same time, everyone, it's quite obvious and it's quite natural,

tries to protect their own resources and to protect their maritime routes. So, the security in the maritime domain in this region, it's a lot of things. First, I think illegal fishing, which is, in my opinion, the main plague of this region, and the one that has the most potential in terms of instability in the region, is to come. The second is certainly drug trafficking, since we have drug flows that are quite important, which come from Afghanistan for what they treat heroin, which come from Latin America for what they treat cocaine, and then methamphetamine, which is obviously a major phlebo in this region,

which is produced in the Golden Triangle and which then discharges all of Asia and much more broadly the whole world. So these are three flows of drugs that are now quite significant, growing in volume, also growing in the number of vectors used and which must, I think, stop us. And then the third is obviously brigandage. I was not talking about piracy, since there is no proper talk of high seas in Asia. We are essentially on brigandage activities and therefore in territorial waters. But yet, the rate of brigandage remains quite high in Asia, even though in other parts of the world the number of piracy activities

decreases. In Asia, it is relatively stable, with a slight increase even in 2021. Two things to say about piracy. First, the Singapore Strait, of course, which is roughly half of all the piracy activities in the Asian region, and then all the port sites of interest such as Jakarta, such as Belawan, such as Dumai, if we talk about such as Mani, Batangas, or General Santos, to speak of the Philippines, or such as Chittagong in Bangladesh. These are points of interest where there is regular, I was going to say, act of brigandage.

Obviously, the nature and the operating mode that are adopted correspond mainly to that of the small crime. There is no big violence, there is no kidnapping, there is no particular hostage taking, unlike what we have seen in the Indian Ocean. Il y a cela encore quelques années, ou même dans le Guadeloupe de Guinée. En revanche, le volume reste assez important. Je voulais revenir peut-être, puisque c'est l'essentiel, sur la pêche illégale.

Puisque, je disais, selon moi, le principal risque pour la stabilité de la région, c'est bien la pêche illégale en mer de Chimie régionale, dans le détroit de Malacca, mais également, finalement, dans plein d'autres zones, au large de Sabah, pour ce qui traite de la Malaisie, dans les eaux coréennes, avec l'activité chinoise qui s'intensifie, but more broadly everywhere where the exclusive economic zones of the different countries are contested. The consequence, of course, is that illegal fishing puts in danger, progressively, the food security of entire communities in this region.

This contributes to the exhaustion of biotech resources. And it often pushes the fishing community to turn to other activities, sometimes criminal. So it is essential to understand this problem well, to know how to master it, to know how to juggle it, so that other legal activities can progressively work. Could you please tell us about the answer to that and give us some concrete examples of how the IFC has contributed more broadly to regional maritime security? Of course.

The fact is that thanks to this cooperation between the maritime actors that the IFC has wanted to establish for 13 years now, we have been able to obtain some beautiful operational successes. and I will simply mention two, which are, in my opinion, emblematic of the work that was carried out on a daily basis by the IFC. First, a first example, which dates from May 2016, I was not yet there, the oil company Aisun 12, which was therefore worn out after its armament had lost all contact for almost 24 hours, finally approached the Indonesian authorities of the IFC. The fact is that, given the very high value that was that of the cargo,

the IFC knew that the insurance companies would demand that the owner of the ship install a secondary GPS tracker on board the IS-112, which was the case. And so we then convinced the owner of the ship to give us access to the secondary tracker, which allowed the IFC to locate the ship and then alert the Indonesian navy, which finally managed, after less than eight hours, to board and apprehend the whole gang that had detoured the ship. This is an example of success that has allowed to put in relation both the owner of the cargo ship, the ship's operator, the Indonesian Navy and therefore the IFC, so that there is a real operational success. The second example I wanted to give you is that of the capture that was successful in April 2018 on a fishing vessel called the STS-50, which was a vessel that was sought after by many countries as well as by Interpol due to its illegal fishing activities. And it is thanks to the information provided by the French Liaison Office that we managed to locate the ship in question. We managed to follow it day by day while it was transiting in the Indian Ocean towards Asia.

And it is the Indonesian Liaison Office which then, on the basis of the information provided by the French Liaison Office at the IFC, which has managed to provide regular updates towards the Indonesian Navy, and the Indonesian Navy was able to intervene to capture this ship. Là aussi, il y a un exemple de relation entre différents outils de liaison pour une finalité qui est celle d'intercepter une activité illégale en mer. Où pensez-vous, commandant, que des progrès peuvent être encore réalisés pour disposer d'outils plus efficaces et pour faire face à des nouveaux défis qui sont croissants dans cette région pour la sécurité maritime ? Je pense que c'est évidemment d'abord dans le domaine satellitaire que l'on trouvera des solutions à certains de nos problèmes, because obviously there are a lot of activities that are not done with AIS emissions. I remind you that it is a system that allows ships to identify and geolocalize

and that it is therefore essential to have tools such as Unseen Labs, for example, which is a French company that allows us to locate and follow a ship by relying on passive emissions emitted by this ship and not on AIS, which allows us to see what AIS, when it is not emitted, does not allow us to see. However, in the Meridional Sea of China in particular, a very large number of ships do not put an IES. This obviously leaves a lot of things in the shadows. And when we do not put an IES, of course, sometimes we have things to reproach. So that's the first thing. I think it's obviously the future.

The future is also, in my opinion, the use of artificial intelligence, since it would possibly allow us to analyze ship behaviors and thus allow us to anticipate, in the end, a behavior that could underline a legal activity. We already have predictive artificial intelligence tools that are being used, I am thinking of Singapore, in the Singapore Maritime Crisis Centre, SMCC, and I think that this is something that will be developed in the next few years in an extremely important way. I would add, since obviously technology will not do everything, and I think that the human network of trust, which is the one we have tried to put in place progressively within the IFC,

je pense que ce type de réseau va prendre de l'ampleur et je pense que on ne peut pas finalement à la fin des fins parvenir à comprendre les enjeux, les menaces et à les mettre en contexte si on n'a pas ce rapport à l'humain entre l'ensemble des sachants

des différents pays, puisque d'avoir de la donnée c'est une chose, de savoir la mettre en perspective, de la mettre en contexte c'est autre chose. Donc on a tous une part de cette connaissance, comme je l'évoquais l'objectif maintenant c'est de le partager and to share it in confidence. So it's a real work of SAP for this confidence to be obtained.

It's what I'm trying to modestly at my level to achieve on a daily basis. But obviously, it's a long-term work. And it's obviously a collective work of all the countries that count in this region so that we can, at the end of the day, count on each other to regulate the different frills that are ours in terms of maritime security in the region. So, Commander, France is a key power in the region and perhaps the podcast could have started there. Could you tell us about the particularity of the French approach in the Indo-Pacific?

First of all, as a resident nation of the Indo-Pacific, France necessarily has a duty to its sovereign territories, to its citizens, since we must protect these French territories in the Outer Mer which are divided into the entire Indo-Pacific area, from the French Polynesia which borders the eastern part of the Pacific to Mayotte, La Réunion, for the western part of the Indian Ocean. So we have an extremely large zone with the territories of the other seas which are very significant since they cover 9 million square kilometers

of exclusive economic zone, which makes it the first maritime domain of the Indo-Pacific, and we have close to 2 million citizens who evolve, who work, who live in this Indo-Pacific zone. So it is essential, obviously, to be aware of it to understand all the activities that are carried out by the French armed forces in this region. The second thing I wanted to mention is that thanks to the pre-positioned forces that we have put into practice in our territories of other seas, but also in Abu Dhabi or Djibouti,

France has a permanent presence of more than 7,000 soldiers and a capacity to deploy these same military means, these naval units, to patrol and intervene, if necessary, in support or in cooperation with a third country, with this desire to always be in the panorama, in the main lines of communication, which are ours, that is to say, in the north of the Indian East, in the Gulf of Aden, but also in the Meridional Sea of China, in the East Sea, since these are areas, of course, where world trade, and therefore French trade in particular, is important and considerable and must be preserved.

And so it is essential to be there. We had seven deployment of combat buildings in 2021, including a task group in Philly with the Jeanne d'Arc mission, and then a submarine that was deployed for many months in China in this single year. So we are present and we show the French pavilion as much as we can. I also wanted to mention that France has a strategy that clearly puts maritime security as a priority in the Indo-Pacific. This is also the reason why we actively support all the IFCs in the Indo-Pacific region,

since I am here in Singapore, but I also have homologues in India, Madagascar and Seychelles. We are also working more and more with the IFC of Peru, where I went two months ago to be able to work together in an increased way in the coming years. And the objective is, of course, to have the widest possible coverage in this Indo-Pacific area with all of these IFCs, since they all have a part of the truth, and the objective is to be able to associate them to have a transverse view of the entire Indo-Pacific region. France contributes, I mentioned it in the context of my responsibilities,

it also contributes to this understanding of the issues of maritime security through its own center, which is the MICA Center. The MICA is a fairly important network, since we have both the commander-in-chief of the different major states that I mentioned, We also have the IFC offices that I mentioned, which participate in the understanding of maritime security in the Pacific. We have white-shipping agreements with a number of partners and countries in the region that allow us to feed our regional knowledge in terms of maritime security. We also have protocols that we have put in place.

We are the only ones to do it, to be precise, with armateurs, operators, and freighters. More than 50 protocols have been passed, whether French or foreign, since since 2019, it has been allowed to have partnerships with armateurs, operators, or foreign freighters. And so we have this virtuous exchange of the day-to-day, I was going to say, with both the security officers of these companies, and then at the same time with the boat commanders, who are obviously legions in the region of Asia. So it allows us, in the broad sense of the word, to have a fine, increased knowledge of the challenges of this region, in order to be able to always respond as thoroughly as possible to the expectations of this same maritime industry.

France also strives to maintain cooperation in maritime security through multiple regional or international centers. First of all, it is the presidency of the Indian Ocean Commission 2021-2022. c'est aussi la présidence du Symposium Naval de l'Océan Indien, IONS, 2021-2023. C'est également le récent ralliement de l'Indian Ocean Rim Association, IORA. Nous sommes également un membre très actif depuis la genèse de WPNS, Western Pacific Naval Symposium. On a également cette volonté de jouer un rôle encore plus important, évidemment, dans les enceintes régionales de l'Asie.

Je pense évidemment, avant toute chose, au groupe de travaux de l'ADMM+, which is something that I think we could completely consider in the coming years, in particular for what concerns maritime security. But also, we obviously aspire to be a member of RECAP, which is the organization that I mentioned in terms of maritime security here in Singapore. So the objective is really to participate in all of these institutions, these forums, these seminars, to be able to obviously bring our useful contribution in terms of maritime security. A recent article by Geoffrey Thiel in the Naval Institute says that the seas are in a state of crisis and that humanity has a very short time to deal with them.

I would like to hear your opinion on this. Commander, what do you think? So, first of all, I wanted to mention that it is always very instructive to read Geoffrey Thiel. He is undoubtedly already very well known here in the Asian region and then a reference as soon as we talk about the maritime domain. and I must say that for me it was also a source of inspiration since I was brought to do personal university work in the field of maritime security in the Indo-Pacific in Sorbonne and that I was obviously inspired by these works to be able to realize mine. So it's someone I appreciate, that I respect a lot and I think you have to read these analyzes with a lot of humility

and since it is often very fair. I think he is right to say that the sea is a an area of permanent crisis, because everyone knows that from the sea can come the salvation, in particular when we talk about food and energy security, since the situation is the one we know from around the world, and that the increase in the population will continue in the next decades. I mentioned the difficulties of illegal fishing, of overfishing in the hands of the Meridional. All this means that, together with the increase in the population, more and more people

vont rechercher à se nourrir en mer, à rechercher des énergies ou des terres rares en mer, et qu'il est essentiel, je pense, que dès aujourd'hui, on puisse être en mesure finalement de réguler les accès aux ressources halieutiques et énergétiques, puisque les difficultés qui sont déjà observées en mer de Chine méridionale vont nécessairement s'accroître dans les prochaines décennies, considérant l'épuisement de certaines ressources, considérant l'augmentation des populations côtières. Et donc, je pense qu'il faut l'anticiper avant d'être face à une véritable instabilité structurel. Cette question des crises d'ailleurs me rappelle le plan d'action récemment lancé par

le ministère des armées français pour les grands fonds marins puisque les fonds marins sont encore largement méconnus et pourtant sont riches d'opportunités et de perspectives en particulier pour un pays tel que la France qui possède la deuxième zone économique exclusive mondiale et donc il faut prendre cette problématique à bras de corps. Je crois sincèrement que l'enjeu de will first reside in the seabed and that the future crises of the next decades will increasingly revolve around marine resources because they are difficult to monitor. Seabeds are necessarily an area where the security and defense of our states can be put at risk. It is therefore, in my opinion, really essential to have an

ambitious strategy in this area and to be able to embrace our responsibilities before others for us. Submarine caps, for example, play an obviously essential role around the world. They represent, as you know, 98% of all global communications and therefore their integrity is paramount for the stability of our countries, in particular Western countries. So we have to be able to understand, to master marine funds, since I think that future crises will pass more and more around these underwater There are plenty of fascinating topics that we would like to explore with you, Commander. We have very little time left, so could I ask you one last question?

As far as the level of volatility and tension in the region is concerned, do you think that the challenges we will have to face in the years to come will be the same as those we are facing today? And will we always be able to protect international freedom at sea? So, in my opinion, a global threat to this profile, which will very certainly put the maritime sector in danger, is obviously climate change. I think it will first affect the seas and biodiversity. What I see here in Singapore, as far as Asia is concerned, is that human activities in the sea have already led to acidification and to a drop in oxygen levels, ce qui implique que les concentrations de poissons de plus en plus se déplacent vers la haute mer,

privent de fait des communautés côtières de ressources halieutiques, d'emplois, et puis vont progressivement engendrer des problématiques d'accès à la nourriture. Cela va forcément engendrer une concurrence encore plus importante pour l'accès aux ressources halieutiques, alors même que cette région est déjà l'objet de nombreuses tensions autour de la pêche, en particulier lorsqu'on parle de la mer de Chine méridionale. and I think that the natural disasters that, in parallel with that, accumulate, I think of the typhoon, the tsunami, as we have seen in Tonga recently,

their frequency is more and more important, their gravity is also more and more important. I think that the Marines, the Coast Guards, will have to play a necessarily growing role to be able to finally respond to the needs of their society and this in a very, very important way in the next decades. Je pense qu'ils seront de plus en plus mobilisés pour venir en aide aux sinistrés, pour éviter que les catastrophes ne se transforment en crise majeure.

Et donc, il va falloir repenser, finalement, le rôle de nos marines, de nos gardes-côtes, à l'aune de ce changement climatique, vis-à-vis de ces problématiques de ressources biotiques que j'ai évoquées, mais également vis-à-vis des désastres qui sont de plus en plus fréquents. Alors, je terminerai peut-être là-dessus, parce que le temps passe fétablement vite. but the marines and the coast guards will also have to manage more and more the protected marine areas, which are crucial to protect a form of biodiversity in the world. I will just refer to the Paris Forum on Peace, which took place in autumn last year. The French Minister of the Armies, Florence Parly, was then engaged, with many other partners,

to better prepare our armies to face the challenges of climate change that await us, since it will obviously change a lot of things in our way of working. C'est d'ailleurs sur cette même perspective, si je puis dire, et thématique de la sécurité environnementale que la France a présidé le dernier symposium IONS que j'ai évoqué. Et je pense, ce sera ma dernière phrase, que le seul moyen de lutter efficacement vis-à-vis de ce changement climatique, ce sera là aussi la coopération, la coordination internationale. So, if we are not able to cooperate and find solutions for the blue economy to a certain number of problems, there will be tensions that will unfortunately only increase. That's all the time we have today. I would like to thank my guest, Commander Jérémy Bachelier.

Commander, where can we find you online and what are you working on next? I am joinable on my official Twitter account, at France Marsec. So you are obviously all welcome if you want to follow me and exchange. For my part, I was going to say, unfortunately, I will be brought to leave Singapore in a few months for new responsibilities on Paris. I will obviously be replaced, so there will be a continuity on the Twitter account. And I will be brought to work within a think tank called IFRI, a detached mine officer, and I will be attached to the political strategy office of the chief of staff of the mine. un grand merci Alexia pour ce temps

et j'espère que ça aura été utile merci à vous et pour nos auditeurs merci d'avoir été à l'écoute et à la prochaine Thank you. Oh, no.