Pacific & Indo-Pacific advisory
Three territories almost no one reads. Everyone's Pacific strategy runs through them.
Weekly intelligence and advisory support for governments engaging the Pacific, from someone who has worked inside it, in French and in English.
New Caledonia, French Polynesia and Wallis & Futuna: France's entire Indo-Pacific anchor, two of them full members of the Pacific Islands Forum. They publish in French.
The French Pacific
France's entire Indo-Pacific anchor sits here: the region's largest nickel reserves in New Caledonia, and in French Polynesia the largest exclusive economic zone in the Pacific, 4.8 million square kilometres. No commercial English-language synthesis of this press exists. Few missions covering the region, typically two or three diplomats in Canberra or Wellington, have the capacity to follow it daily. Capitals see less. Translation software will render an article; it will not tell you which of a dozen outlets to watch, why a particular omission matters, or why a single walkout mattered more than anything else that week.
Subscription service
The French Pacific Monitor
A subscription service. Each week you receive an English-language synthesis of the French Pacific press and major regional developments, closing each issue with an assessment written for your government specifically. Published from September 2026, opening with a full read-out of the 55th Pacific Islands Forum Leaders' Meeting.
Request the prospectus and pricingThe weekly issue, with a tailored “what it means for you” assessment.
Everything in Monitor, plus two bespoke notes each month, one political and one economic, on Pacific countries you choose.
Everything above, with the bespoke note weekly, plus four hours of direct discussion each month. Coverage priorities set together at a quarterly review. Six subscribers maximum.
Billed quarterly in advance. Every issue is original synthesis with source attributions, drawn entirely from the public record: French- and English-language press, official publications, and regional institutions. Tailored assessments are written for one subscriber and are not shared. Priced in euro; another currency can be fixed at signature.
Advisory
Consulting services for governments engaging the Pacific
Formal Pacific Islands Forum access is currently constrained: new Dialogue Partner applications are on hold pending the Review of the Regional Architecture. Aspirant partners therefore need bilateral and sub-regional pathways instead, which is where most external strategies are thinnest. Five engagements are offered below, each quoted individually.
Enquire about an engagementHow the Blue Pacific works
A briefing for your mission or capital desk: Forum decision culture, what the architecture review means in practice, the Pacific Community's technical entry points, sub-regional politics, and the missteps external partners most commonly make.
Engagement landscape and entry pathways
A written assessment of where your government realistically enters the region, which channels are open, who matters, and how the Francophone Pacific fits, with a ninety-day engagement calendar.
Indo-Pacific strategy input
A drafted Pacific chapter or engagement framework feeding your own strategy process, with a workshop for the team writing it.
Standing counsel
Introductions, engagement strategy, delegation and mission support in the region, and direct access between formal engagements.
Foreign information manipulation in the Pacific
How influence operations work in small polities: election cycles, contested-sovereignty settings, thin media markets. Read through the region's best-documented case, the operations targeting New Caledonia recorded by VIGINUM, DFRLab and the European Parliament. Briefings and assessments for governments watching the same techniques arrive elsewhere in the Pacific.
Advisory engagements are quoted individually. Fees are fixed, not hourly, and priced in euro; another currency can be fixed at signature.
Background
About Patrick Maillet
Patrick Maillet advises governments on Pacific and Indo-Pacific engagement, from Noumea.
Inside the institutions. Until July 2026, he directed New Caledonia's international and regional relations from inside the President's office. New Caledonia is a full member of the Pacific Islands Forum.
A network built in the room. He has negotiated with Australian federal ministers and departmental executives through the PALM talks in Canberra, and built working relationships with counterpart offices across Pacific administrations.
Analysis a ministry can act on. For five years, he produced New Zealand's weekly political and economic reporting on the French Pacific.
The language advantage. He reads the region's French-language press and France's own Indo-Pacific posture in the original, with the legal training to parse their institutions.
Contact
Subscriptions, briefings and enquiries
Tell me which tier interests you, or what your mission is trying to work out. A prospectus, a sample issue, and a short scope note follow by return.