‘Tilting’ the balance? An evaluation of Britain’s strategic approach to the Indo-Pacific

Abstract

Notwithstanding its exit from the European Union itself, the United Kingdom still remains an influential European power with significant interests and equities in the Indo-Pacific region. This article probes the substance of London’s engagement with the region through a distillation of relevant policy documents/statements appertaining to the Indo-Pacific. It reconciles this material within a three-tiered analytical framework that encompasses British ‘aims’; the ‘assets’ it holds; and then ‘assesses’ its performance and prospects. Like the other European actors considered in this Symposium, it reveals the strong confluence of economic, security and normative elements that define its regional strategic outlook. While there are many synergies with the approaches of the other European powers, what makes the United Kingdom case distinctive is a more prolific set of regional partnerships alongside multilateral engagement (‘networks and grids’), and a greater accent on hard power capabilities. The latter however are placed in service of the former – Britain has no aspirations to shift the regional balance of power independently.

Defining Britain’s strategic approach to the Indo-Pacific

Britain may have departed from the European Union (EU) in 2020, but this does not imply that it has ceased to be a major ‘European power’ by virtue of its geography, and its deep embeddedness in continental trading and security ecosystems. However, Brexit did bring about a seismic shift in how Britain reconceived of its place in the world under the political mantra of ‘Global Britain’ – presupposing that, liberated from the institutional fetters of the EU, the country could stake out a more independent role across the globe.

While ‘Global Britain’ – a slogan since quietly dropped from official discourse – connoted a holistic international approach, despite the conflagration in Ukraine, the dynamic Indo-Pacific region promptly became a major focus of attention – ‘a shift in emphasis’ – according to Breslin and Burnham (2023: 9). Until recently the United Kingdom, like many other European powers, had perceived the region essentially through the lens of economic opportunity, seeking to profit from the rise of China. During the so-called ‘golden age’ of Sino-British relations in the 2010s, little introspection appears to have occurred as to how China’s newfound prominence would affect the regional (and global) security order. The mainstream narrative has thus sought to depict Britain as ‘naïve’ and ‘slow’ in coming to a realisation of the extent the challenge the rise of China posed, like Germany (see Rafał Ulatowski’s article in this Symposium) (Interview with British Official, 2022). Yet the past few years, according to McLaughlin (2021: 2), have witnessed a ‘radical shift in Britain’s vision and strategy’. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak now identifies China as an ‘epoch-defining challenge’ to international order due to its ‘aggressive stance’ and ‘its willingness to use all levers of state power to achieve a dominant role in global affairs’ (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 1–2). Like Germany, the United Kingdom Government has now abandoned its earlier hopes of effecting ‘change through trade’ and increasingly shares concerns about China’s rise with both its Indo-Pacific allies and partners, as well as its European counterparts. While its invigorated approach to the Indo-Pacific is not solely about China, the country looms large on its strategic policy horizons.

The confluence of internal push factors (Brexit/Global Britain) and external pull factors (economic, security and normative concerns) explains why Britain, like the other European powers, has felt compelled to formulate a more proactive strategic policy approach toward the region. Unlike several European powers, no dedicated ‘Indo-Pacific strategy’ or ‘Guidelines’ documents have been released yet. Instead, to properly identify and delineate Britain’s strategic approach to the region, we need to reconcile various disparate sources to render a cohesive presentation of what this entails. The process began with the creation of a strategic narrative with which to frame consequent policies. The 2021 announcement that Britain would ‘Tilt’ it’s attention toward the Indo-Pacific fulfilled this purpose by underlining ‘the strategic importance’ that the UK placed upon the region – one ‘critical to our economy, to our security and to our ambition to support open societies’ (Cleverly, 2022). Thus, the Tilt narrative explicitly set the stage for British engagement across the economic, security and normative domains. But Bland (in Hellyer et al., 2022: emphasis added) points out that ‘[t]ilting is a motion, but tilting is not a strategy’. In other words, rhetorical visions without policy substance do not amount to a plausible strategic approach.

The policy substance to the Tilt is therefore derived from a series of official policy documents – The Integrated Review: Global Britain in a Competitive Age (IR) and the Defence Command Paper (DCP) in 2021, followed by the Integrated Review Refresh: Responding to a More Contested and Volatile World (IRR) in 2023. These contain sections on the Indo-Pacific, housed within a more comprehensive mandate. By extracting the applicable Indo-Pacific-related material from these sources (and the various ‘sub-strategies’ they contain), and Parliamentary Testimonies that supported them, supplemented by author interviews/discussions and other secondary academic and think tank sources, it is possible to formulate a decipherable picture of British strategic approach to the region, that could be considered tantamount to an informal Indo-Pacific strategy, thus analogous to the other European powers considered in the Symposium.

In order to address the symposium’s guiding questions, this article sets forth a strategic appraisal of Britain’s engagement in the Indo-Pacific through a three-stage analytical process which captures its strategic approach. The first section – aims – speaks to why and how London will engage with the region, by indicating the economic, security and normative concerns that animate its strategic policy and what outcomes it seeks to achieve. The second section – assets – continues to unpack how it will seek to implement its objectives with the resources and capabilities at its disposal. The third section – assessments – determines what impact and significance the United Kingdom approach will hold for the future. It concludes that, contrary to some misperceptions, Britain’s approach, with a greater accent on ‘hard power’ than the other European powers, has no ambition to independently shift the regional balance of power, but seeks to contribute to its maintenance by supporting regional allies and partners in their own efforts.

Britain’s strategic approach to the Indo-Pacific: An analytical framework

The task of this article is to assemble a cohesive picture of what Britain’s strategic approach to the Indo-Pacific involves in order to understand and appraise its content in a structured manner. Informed by the principles of strategic policy-making – setting objectives and matching ‘ways’ to ‘ends’ – the article proposes a three-tiered analytical framework in the following sequence: (a) Aims; (b) Assets; and (c) Assessments.

Aims

With the Tilt providing the requisite strategic narrative to justify why the region matters to the United Kingdom, this subsection distils the applicable material from relevant documents and official statements to outline its objectives (‘ends’) across the Symposium’s three rubrics of economic, security and normative concerns.

Economic objectives

The economies of the Indo-Pacific are vital to Britain’s trade outlook. Large rising powers, such as China and India, established economies such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, and several other Southeast Asian states – particularly Vietnam and Indonesia – are growing markets and lucrative opportunities for the United Kingdom. British trade with the region currently amounts to 17.5% of its total trade and 10% of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 66). To secure economic prosperity at home, Britain seeks to expand engagement with these economic powerhouses and pitch itself as a liberal and open trading partner to the region, just like Italy, Germany and the EU itself. To effect this, Britain seeks to increase trade and both inward and outward FDI and it aspires to deepening economic relationships with key partners in science, technology and data, through new free-trade agreements (FTAs) (now it is outside the EU). The Indo-Pacific is also the arena in which ground-breaking multilateral trade agreements such as the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement to Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) are being made, and Britain is avidly seeking membership of this forum.

Like other European powers, the United Kingdom is seeking to diversify its trade and supply-chains (to the extent possible) away from over-dependency on China and manage Beijing’s tendency to use coercive practices, through a ‘de-risking’ approach. It is also moving to make its own economic, financial and information infrastructure more ‘resilient’ to malevolent actions by hostile powers. Furthermore, Britain places consistent emphasis on maintaining and expanding its science and technology advantages in the realm of game-changing technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing and associated military applications, such as hypersonics, to ensure it can keep pace across all dimensions of economic and strategic competition. In this respect it aims to contribute to setting global standards for digital frameworks and green technology (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 66).

Security objectives

The Indo-Pacific region itself is a highly combustible mix of historical and territorial disputes, including potential ‘flashpoints’ in the South and East China Seas, the Taiwan Strait and Korean Peninsula. Though geographically distant (but with some regional footholds), Britain’s security role in the Indo-Pacific is closely tied to its allies and partners, some of whom face direct military threats to their national security as strategic competition accelerates. Britain naturally feels a degree of obligation towards its partners in a region where military spending and military modernisation are proceeding apace. Government documents (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 62) identify China as the second most important security threat (including economic security), after Russia. It is at this point that economic security concerns intersect with strategic competition − 60% of shipborne trade passes through the Indo-Pacific Sea Lanes of Communication (SLOC) including energy supplies that fuel economic growth. As a maritime trading nation Britain cannot be indifferent to interdiction of these SLOC routes, through the South China Sea, for example.

To counter these challenges, London aims to support its United States ally, which is engaged in intense strategic rivalry with China, including through the Australia–United Kingdom–United States (AUKUS) arrangement to provide nuclear-powered submarine and other advanced technologies to Canberra (Wilkins, 2022). There is none of the hesitancy seen in the German approach to alignment with Washington. Furthermore, the DCP (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021a: 32) indicates that the United Kingdom will ‘Deepen and expand defence industrial relationships in the region, including with Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea and India, underpinned by co-operation on science and technology’. This includes not only AUKUS, but the provision of Type 26/Hunter warships to Australia, and Eurofighter Typhoons to Oman, among other major arms transfers (these are naturally economic objectives also). This reflects long-standing efforts to enhance arms sales.

Additionally, Britain aims at deepening its engagement with the region’s multilateral security architecture, particularly the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF). In these fora, Britain will aim to contribute to key areas such as international law, nuclear proliferation and freedom of navigation, which are vital to national interests. The United Kingdom will also play an active role through defence diplomacy, including port visits, joint training and regional deployments with its allies and partners (including France, Italy and Germany, see the articles by Gabriele Abbondanza and Rafał Ulatowski in this Symposium). The United Kingdom will also be active on areas of non-traditional security, through cooperation and capacity-building with regional partners to tackle international terrorism, transnational crime and assist in mitigating the effects of climate change, which are of particular concern in South East Asia and the South Pacific.

Normative objectives

As part of its self-declared role to be a ‘force for good’ in the world, Britain aims to uphold democratic values in a region where these are increasingly challenged, paralleling the approach of the EU (see Gorana Grgić’s article in this Symposium). The IR (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 66) states that Britain will ‘promote open societies and to uphold the international rules and norms that underpin free trade, security and stability’. Britain will continue to vocalise its support for democracy and human rights under threat in places such as Myanmar, Xinjiang and Hong Kong. As Beijing seeks to export its authoritarian model of governance or otherwise undermine fragile democratic regimes in the region (e.g. the Solomon Islands), Britain will seek to offer support and alternatives to such a path, contributing to the preservation of democratic governance and norms overseas (mirrored in the broader European approach).

This ‘values-based diplomacy extends to emphatic British support for the prevailing liberal international order (anchored in United States primacy) chiming with the approaches evidenced by Germany, Italy and the EU. Britain, like other European powers and the EU, has identified China as a ‘systemic challenger’ to the desired rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific, and globally. As House of Commons Defence Committee Member John Spellar (cited in Hellyer et al., 2022) asserts – an ‘alliance of democracies is necessary to counter the clearly growing alliance of autocracies in the world’. More broadly, Britain will leverage its substantial Official Development Assistance (ODA) to tackle poverty, girl’s education and other (Human Security) issues that plague under-developed parts of the region. In sum, ‘The UK will also work with allies, like-minded partners and civil society worldwide to protect democratic values, as part of our force for good agenda’ (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 47). This is an important ‘soft power’ part of retaining local influence in regional countries, commonly applied by other European actors.

Assets

No aims or ‘ends’ either broadly or narrowly defined can effectively be attained without the ‘ways’ to achieve them. It is therefore requisite to examine the tools of statecraft that Britain has at its disposal – the ‘building blocks of strategic advantage’ (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 53) – that can translate its strengths ‘into real-world effect’ (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 56). In terms of ‘hard power’, with a gross domestic product (GDP) of USD $3.13 trillion and defence budget of USD $68 billion (to be raised to 2.5% of GDP, comporting with planned increases by the other European powers, such as Germany), nuclear armed and with advanced and expeditionary conventional forces with global reach, the United Kingdom remains close to the top of the global power hierarchy. It retains a substantial technological and defence industrial base and is a leader in advanced technologies, with ambitious plans to become a science and technology (S & T) ‘superpower’ by 2030 based upon considerable investments in research and development (up to 2.7% of GDP by 2027) mandated by the government.

Additionally, its diplomatic and intelligence networks are among the world’s best (including the Five Eyes). Britain is a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council and member of virtually every multilateral organisation of note, including the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). It is also ranked as a formidable ‘soft power’ (2nd globally: Global Soft Power Index, 2022) and this is particularly apparent in the region, as discussed below. The Integrated Operating Concept (United Kingdom Ministry of Defence, 2021) speaks of the ‘integration’ of hard and soft power assets (sometimes dubbed ‘smart power’), also seen in the EU approach (see Gorana Grgić’s article).

In the context of its aggregate power resources, capabilities and related instruments (especially defence networks) can be applied to the Indo-Pacific region in service of the aims described above in various ways. Firstly, as government documents repeatedly testify, and much like the other European powers included in this Symposium, Britain has no pretensions of an independent role in the Indo-Pacific region. According to the IR (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 19) ‘The UK will not be able to achieve these objectives working alone: collective action and co-creation with our allies and partners will be vitally important in the decade ahead.’ One of its greatest assets is its formidable array of defence partnerships and networks in the region (what Secretary of State for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) Cleverly (2022) calls ‘networks and grids’). The United Kingdom is closely aligned to the United States both in Europe, through NATO, and globally. In the IRR (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 20), the United States is identified as the ‘UK’s most important ally and partner, and our revitalised Atlantic Charter reflects the breadth and depth of our shared global vision’. The United Kingdom and United States have a long and deep track record on security cooperation globally, and the AUKUS partnership with Australia manifests this prominently in the Indo-Pacific.

Next to the long-standing security partnership with Australia (and New Zealand), is the augmentation of bilateral security ties with Japan. In 2017 they announced a Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation and have since deepened the relationship through logistical agreements, joint exercises, and plans to collaborate in the production of a sixth-generation combat aircraft alongside Italy, which further cements European and Indo-Pacific cooperation. Hemmings (2018: 22) argues that ‘Japan could become an anchor for British policy in northeast Asia’, implying that the new Reciprocal Access Agreement, will facilitate port access for the Royal Navy, and potentially more regular joint military exercises. The United Kingdom has also enhanced ties with India through a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership (including annual joint exercises). In other words, Britain has powerful friends and allies in the region, mirroring those of Italy, Germany and the EU, and often of greater depth. The DCP (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021a: 12) recognises that ‘Our allies and partners give us strategic advantage, sharing the responsibilities of security and providing a force multiplication effect’.

Second, Britain has a long-established presence in South East Asia, particularly in Singapore, where the British Defence Singapore Support Unit is stationed. This relationship is enclosed in the minilateral Five Power Defence Arrangement (FPDA) with the addition of Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand, which gives the United Kingdom a strategic foothold in this pivotal sub-region (Pek, 2017). Britain’s ability to provide capacity-building through joint training and regional exchanges gives it an important platform for interaction. When the Indian Ocean region, as part of the Indo-Pacific, is factored in (including the British Indian Ocean Territory), Britain also counts on deep connections with several of the Gulf States and in East Africa. The United Kingdom is also developing ‘strategic hubs’ in Oman and Kenya, allowing for basing or port access for regional deployments.

Third, the government recognises that its diplomatic Tilt will only be as effective as the tangible steps it makes to demonstrate its purpose and resolve, as per Gabriele Abbondanza’s comparable argument concerning Italy in this Symposium. As the IR (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 17) states ‘Our diplomacy will be underwritten by the credibility of our deterrent and our ability to project power’. Britain is well equipped to employ the instruments of sea power projection, including presence, defence diplomacy, joint exercises, upholding maritime security, and in extremis, engaging in combat operations. Britain’s carrier fleet and submarine flotilla are important assets in this respect and can be used symbolically and as a means of assuring regional partners of its commitment to regional stability.

Fourth, Britain’s diplomatic influence goes beyond individual bilateral and minilateral partnerships to participation in broader multilateral regional fora. This adherence to multilateralism and multiple presence of partnerships chimes with the emphasis this is accorded by the EU, Italy and Germany. It engages with ASEAN (Dialogue Partner), PIF (Partner), Partnership for the Blue Pacific, the Asian Development Bank and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and hosts the International Institute for Strategic Studies Shangri-La Dialogue as well as participating in the Asia-Europe Meeting. When all of Britain’s global multilateral memberships (noted above) are factored into the background, it is clear that Britain plays an outsized role in multilateralism. Moreover, Britain’s diplomatic capacity has been strengthened in the region by the appointment of a dedicated Ambassador to ASEAN in 2019 and a new FCDO Director General, responsible for the Indo-Pacific in 2020, to capitalise on the impressive array of diplomatic personnel already allocated to the region.

Neither is Britain’s’ economic presence or influence insignificant. Britain provides £6.9 billion outbound FDI in ASEAN countries and now uses Singapore as the British International Investment, as the United Kingdom’s development finance arm (with an additional £500 million allocated to investment in the region over the next five years). It has signed FTAs with Singapore, Vietnam, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Australia and New Zealand, with one with India under negotiation. Britain provides substantial ODA to the region – $1.77bn (13% of total) in 2019 (Calleja et al. 2021: 7).

Assessments

When assessing Britain’s Tilt to the Indo-Pacific, it must be remembered that it remains a work in progress. Nevertheless, British officials have been emphatic that the Tilt towards the Indo-Pacific is a ‘permanent’ policy shift. Official pronouncements have been (predictably) bullish, with Cleverly (2022) declaring ‘we are well on our way to becoming the European partner with the broadest, most integrated presence in the Indo-Pacific’. In this subsection it is appropriate to cast a critical eye over Britain’s performance and assess its future prospects.

The British approach has manifested a greater emphasis on hard power compared to its European partners. Perhaps the most visible evidence of Britain’s attempt to show a commitment to demonstrate its capability in the region has been the much-heralded deployment of a Carrier Strike Group led by the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth in 2021 (Operation Fortis). It operated with Dutch and United States vessels, demonstrating European and United States interoperability, and made a wide range of port visits, joint exercises (including Konkan with India), but notably did not conduct freedom of navigation operations. Though this was a temporary deployment, there are plans for a repetition in 2025, and the IRR (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 13) signals the intention ‘to establish a permeant European maritime presence, through coordinated carrier deployments’ with France.

In a more modest development, Britain has begun a sustained contribution to regional maritime security through the stationing of River-class Batch II offshore patrol vessels (OPVs) – HMS Spey and HMS Tamar in the region. As Bradford (2021) indicates ‘The OPVs are also well suited for defence diplomacy and to foster working-level relationships in the region’. The United Kingdom also has plans for deployment of amphibious assault ships to the region, likely from Oman; the Littoral Response Group. The House of Commons Committee on International Relations and Defence (2021) has already identified an urgent need for naval expansion to meet strategic imperatives. If Britain maintains its capacity to operate regularly in the Indo-Pacific – including with European powers – it will contribute to maritime security in support of its allies and partners. Nevertheless, it is important to realise the limitations of British defence assets in the Tilt. Hellyer et al. (2022) reminds us that ‘UK military assets are not really going to change the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific’ (alone).

But the projection of naval power is part of what Britain dubs an ‘integrated approach’, that seeks to deftly match all the levers of British power and influence (indicated above) to achieve its strategic objectives (‘smart power’). This integration is nowhere more apparent than Britain’s prolific interaction with regional allies and partners. AUKUS is a key element to this, with Medcalf (in Hellyer et al., 2022) asserting that ‘AUKUS makes a significant difference in the balance of power in the long term’ (by augmenting and integrating with Australian/United States capabilities). This, and other defence contacts such as the Hunter-class Frigate, demonstrate major support for Australia, but also reflect British industry’s persistent mandate to achieve export orders. On the other hand, despite its efforts to engage with South East Asia, the FPDA does not feature heavily in the British approach, and appears somewhat neglected. This is a strange oversight given the priority of engaging with trusted defence partners and the unique opportunities the FPDA affords.

Notwithstanding, British policy-makers are particularly keen to enhance engagement with ASEAN because of its ‘centrality’ to the region’s institutional architecture. Heritage (2022) argues – ‘The UK’s accession to ASEAN Dialogue partner status is typically seen as the first step towards deeper integration into regional mechanisms’, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum, which London is now applying to join. Likewise, there have been suggestions that Britain seek membership of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (a strategic security dialogue between Australia, India, Japan and the United States). Nevertheless, to avoid aggravating ‘neo-colonial’ sensitivities in the region, the IRR (Her majesty’s Government, 2023: 13) affirms that it will be ‘guided by regional perspectives’. In particular, ASEAN countries are typically far more interested in the prospects for economic cooperation than joining ‘sides’ in the Sino-United States contest for influence and values. AUKUS has ruffled feathers in South East Asia due to proliferation concerns, with Heritage (2022) arguing that it ‘potentially undermines the UK’s diplomatic efforts in the region’. As Edwards et al. (2022) caution: ‘Ignoring the region’s priorities would be a significant flaw to the tilt because these relationships are of primary significance – any tilt without a solid support basis risks toppling’.

It is widely acknowledged among the strategic community that Britain alone has neither the intent nor the capabilities to decisively shift the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region independently, where the contest will primarily be between China versus the United States, Japan and India (what Rafał Ulatowski dubs ‘buck-catchers’). However, the weight that Britain adds to the scales on terms of the ‘balance of power that favours freedom’ – to appropriate Condoleezza Rice’s phrase – is a welcome addition. The IR (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 11) seeks to emphasise that ‘There are few more reliable and credible allies around the world than the UK’. Britain’s contribution to upholding the ‘Free and Open Indo Pacific’ closely supports the efforts of its democratic regional allies and partners. But as the IR (Her Majesty’s Government, 2021b: 14) affirms ‘As we engage more in the Indo- Pacific. . .we will adapt to the regional balance of power and respect the interests of others’. This means that, while the strong ‘values’ element of the strategic approach as it pertains to democracy, liberalism and human rights is naturally welcome among partners such as Japan, Australia and the United States, a more nuanced and measured attitude may be necessary in attempts to court ASEAN countries, many of whom have less-liberal regimes. The same applies to other European powers.

In terms of economic engagement, much will rest on London’s application to join the CPTPP. This major trading block accounts for 13% of global GDP and will be crucial in fulfilling Britain’s ambition to be involved in setting global standards and accessing growth markets for its goods and services exports to enhance domestic prosperity. As indicated earlier, the United Kingdom’s national aspirations for S & T will receive a boost from participation in the CPTPP. It will also contribute to economic security through enforcement of free and fair trading practices and resistance to economic coercion (Gov.uk, 2023).

The future trajectory of the Tilt will also be defined by extraneous domestic and regional factors at home and in Europe itself. In the first instance, the proclivities of the political leadership are likely to shape the scale and tempo of the Tilt moving forward. While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and his Minister for State Security, Tom Tugendhat, have previously taken rather ‘hawkish’ stances toward China (Allegretti and Ni, 2022; Patrikarakos, 2021), they must walk a tightrope between ‘Pushing-back’ on Beijing’s behaviour on the security/normative front and the inescapable economic interdependence with China. It is the United Kingdom’s fourth largest trading partner (Department for Business & Trade, 2023). Yet concomitantly, there is recognition that economic engagement with China now poses security risks in itself – Britain’s very openness to international technological, economic and financial cooperation has created security vulnerabilities that China has sought to exploit (Interview with British Official, 2022). Allowing Chinese access to advanced research in graphene, is now viewed as a serious error (Jolly, 2021), and Britain has now sought to protect its critical national infrastructure by excluding (and removing) Chinese telecommunications equipment from its 5th generation mobile network (i.e. Huawei). Despite these countermeasures the IRR (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 43) recognises ‘the importance of dialogue and diplomacy’ and maintains a willingness to ‘engage where it is consistent with our interests’ in its policy towards China. Aside from this, the poor state of the British economy at this time, may circumscribe its attractiveness of as a trading partner (outside of the EU), and undermine the resources it can allocate to the Indo-Pacific.

Finally, Russian resurgence in Europe, including its invasion of Ukraine (with Britain supporting Kyiv militarily), and a slew of aggressive activities in cyber space, ensure that the primary focus must remain on the United Kingdom’s ‘No.1’ threat, as in the other case studies. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak affirms that ‘The security and prosperity of the Euro-Atlantic will remain our core priority’ (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 2). Indeed, the emphasis and resources available to support the Tilt going forward will be dependent on the security situation in Europe and the United Kingdom’s commitment to NATO. This may raise questions of British ‘staying power’ in the region, despite the claims that the Tilt is a ‘permanent’ factor.

Conclusions

This article has drawn together diffuse elements of British policy to render a composite picture of its strategic engagement with the Indo-Pacific region, based around the economic, security and normative concerns that the Symposium identifies as the broad drivers of the European approach. Like other case studies in the Symposium, Britain has harnessed both its ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ power levers of statecraft in an ‘integrated’ approach. The British case is somewhat distinguished from other actors by its emphasis on hard power/security concerns, as exemplified by carrier deployments, AUKUS, and official jargon, which are intended to show a material commitment to the region’s security and assure allies and partners of its presence. As indicated above (INSERT PAGE NO), perhaps normative agendas are only ‘persuasive’ when backed by material strength. Britain clearly has the intent and capabilities to make a meaningful contribution jointly with European partners to magnify its impact. Indeed, Medcalf (in Hellyer et al., 2022) affirms that ‘the maximum convergence between the UK and EU objectives in this region is eminently desirable’. However, the problem remains as to how to prioritise the three economic, security and normative aspects of the British approach, since as the ‘assessments’ subsection has pointed out, there are many contradictions between them in practice.

Yet, in the absence of clear and specific guidelines – an official ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ document – a degree of incoherence and inconsistency is inevitable. This is also apparent in the strategic messaging, with the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak declaring that ‘The UK has delivered on the IR 2021 ambition for a tilt; the target we now have is to make this increased engagement stronger and enduring, and a permanent pillar of the UK’s international policy’ (His Majesty’s Government, 2023: 13). This implies that the ‘Tilt’ was a policy approach that has now been concluded, while at the same time continuing on a permanent basis. As far as policy to date is concerned, Britain’s approach potentially appears to be yielding some dividends such as its integration into additional multilateral frameworks, and the progress of AUKUS, but realising its grand ambitions for the region will be highly dependent on domestic economic conditions and the European security situation.