Many pieces declare France or the UK need to be involved in the Indo-Pacific without grappling with exactly how UK and France should get involved, where they should get involved in a dozen distinct areas each with own dynamics and how much power they have to shape outcomes there
Particularly with the UK, the Indo-Pacific as space for symbolic expression of great power status is typical of how debates about geopolitics and the future of the British state are often divorced from discussion about whether it still has the means to make a significant impact
France has to protect territory in the Indo-Pacific. But again rhetoric about how France is "destined" to play a role there doesn't grapple with whether it has the heft there to play a leading role rather than act as junior partner to bigger states there like US, India or Japan
However much France or UK have grand Indo-Pacific ambitions, most of their territory, trade and security pressures are in the EU neighbourhood. In a crisis in the Euro-Atlantic, Med, Sahel and MENA they would concentrate on their strategic centre of gravity over containing China
Just a plaidoyer to all the China realists for more realism about Europe's role in containing China
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