Emmanuel Lenain on the India-France Strategic Partnership and G20

Interpreting India

Even though India and France have had a strategic partnership for twenty-five years now, the bilateral relationship between these countries has received substantial impetus recently. The relationship spans common interests in the Indian Ocean Region and the Indo-Pacific, a robust military and defense partnership, cooperation in high-tech areas such as space and nuclear, and, of course, a growing economic and trade relationship.

What lessons can both countries offer each other? And what are some of the commonalities and differences in the French and Indian approaches to global governance and global challenges such as climate change in a multipolar world? What are the challenges in taking this relationship to the next level?

In this episode of Interpreting India, Emmanuel Lenain joins Anirudh Suri to discuss these questions.

Episode Contributors

Emmanuel Lenain is the Ambassador of France to India. He began his diplomatic career in 1997, serving in the French Foreign Ministry’s United Nations Department, where he took part in peace negotiations on Kosovo. Since then, he has served in France’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations in New York, the Embassy of France in Beijing as the Prime Minister’s technical adviser on multilateral affairs, the French Embassy in Washington, DC, as Consul General of France in Shanghai, Director for the Asia-Pacific Division of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and as Diplomatic Adviser to the Prime Minister.

Anirudh Suri is a nonresident scholar with Carnegie India. His interests lie at the intersection of technology and geopolitics, climate, and strategic affairs. He is currently exploring how India is carving and cementing its role in the global tech ecosystem and the role climate technology can play in addressing the global climate challenge.