Britain’s Surprisingly Enduring Tilt to Asia

Three years after leaving the European Union, Britain has joined the best-available face-saving alternative. Last month, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak signed on to the 11-nation Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a trade pact whose members span the Indo-Pacific and account for about one-tenth of global GDP. The deal’s economic impact is modest, adding less than 0.1 percent to British GDP over the next decade. Yet Britain self-evidently lies nowhere near the Pacific Ocean, so its CPTPP entry underlines a more intriguing fact: the unexpected success of what is sometimes called London’s “tilt” to the Indo-Pacific.

Pioneered by then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson in 2021, the tilt aimed to reposition a post-EU Britain for an era in which global economic and political gravity moved east. More recently, however, the forces arrayed against the tilt had begun to look formidable. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine focused minds on geopolitics closer to home. Britain’s dire public finances, exacerbated by the short but catastrophic tenure of Prime Minister Liz Truss, limited options for distant defense and security forays. Both Johnson and Truss were Indo-Pacific enthusiasts and viewed the rise of China in hawkish, ideological terms. But Sunak seemed more circumspect on Asia and less doctrinaire on cutting ties with Beijing. Meanwhile, Britain’s Labour Party, which polls suggest will take power in 2025, remains deeply suspicious of the tilt in general, which many on the British left view as a neoimperial fantasy that should simply be junked.

Yet rather than disappearing in the face of resource constraints and competing priorities, big British Indo-Pacific initiatives are in fact proliferating. CPTPP is the most recent, making Britain the only nonregional nation granted entry. Last month saw the announcement of the second stage of the Australia-United Kingdom-United States security pact (known as AUKUS), which aims to push back against China by supplying nuclear submarines to Australia over the coming debates. In December, London also moved ahead with its new Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), an initiative with Japan and Italy to develop a sixth-generation fighter jet at a cost of at least $30 billion over the next 10 years. Together, these grand projects represent a trio of strategic anchors that will keep Britain focused on the Indo-Pacific region for decades to come.

Three reasons explain the tilt’s surprising endurance. The first is the underlying logic of Britain’s growing core interests in the Indo-Pacific, as outlined in its 2021 national security integrated review. Under the post-Brexit rubric of “global Britain,” the review emphasized future economic growth in the region, while also announcing the first deployment of a new Royal Navy carrier strike group to East Asia. But in truth, the tilt’s diplomatic and military commitments were modest at first, from stationing two small ships in the region to signing up to become a mere “dialogue partner” of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the 2021 strategy made clear that Europe remained Britain’s primary focus. It took the trio of major projects—AUKUS, CPTPP, and GCAP—to make the tilt a substantial policy shift.

Sunak’s first big foreign-policy speech last November might have dropped the word “tilt,” but it still made deepening Indo-Pacific ties one of three major foreign priorities. Last month’s “refresh” of the integrated review mentioned the tilt only a handful of times. Nonetheless, it also reiterated the policy’s thrust: “[T]he target we now have is to make this increased [Indo-Pacific] engagement stronger and enduring, and a permanent pillar of the UK’s international policy.” Over recent decades, Britain’s military and economic objectives have rarely been closely linked to each other, with a strategic focus on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an economic focus on building trade with Europe. But post-Brexit, London’s Indo-Pacific policy aligns its tools of economic tradecraft more clearly with its strategic priorities, not least managing the global challenge of China.

The second reason for the tilt’s success is the outcome of a fierce intellectual battle fought over Britain’s military role in the world, in which the arguments made by some tilt critics fell short. Such critics tend to view Britain as a regional middle power, whose overstretched and underfinanced military needs to focus only on Europe. The hot threat from Russia hardened this view. Jack Watling, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute, wrote a stinging critique of the tilt last year, speaking for many in the British armed forces who want a greater focus on land power in Europe. “[B]ending the force out of shape to service new missions in the Indo-Pacific risks the worst of both worlds: failing to deliver on commitments in Europe while being unable to force generate anything militarily useful for Indo-Pacific partners,” Watling wrote.

Others disagree, however, arguing for a more global outlook with a return to the country’s traditional focus on naval power. Crucial among these voices is Adm. Sir Tony Radakin, the head of Britain’s armed forces. “Britain is an expeditionary rather than a continental power,” he argued in a thoughtful speech in 2022, noting that Britain did not “have the luxury of a simple choice over whether to double down on the security of the Euro-Atlantic or see through our tilt to the Indo-Pacific.” Over the last two years, after much internal debate, those who think like Radakin have largely prevailed. Their argument has been helped along by a somewhat expanded military budget that, despite commitments to Ukraine, has not yet forced a sharp trade-off between the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific theaters. In launching the recent refresh document, Sunak bulked up defense spending by around 5 billion pounds over the next two years, for instance, while pledging to increase the annual defense budget to 2.5 percent of GDP. That’s up from around 2.2 percent today, according to International Institute for Strategic Studies data.

Finally, and most importantly, the tilt has succeeded because of widespread cross-party support for Britain’s trio of major Indo-Pacific anchor initiatives. Joining CPTPP was sensible not just because of the lack of alternative trade groups, but also because it deepened strategic economic ties with important partners, from Australia and Japan to Malaysia and Singapore. AUKUS, the most important of the three initiatives, allowed London to cement its critical relationship with Washington in particular, where the British often fret about losing relevance. Indeed, retaining influence with the United States remains an important underlying strategic aim of British Indo-Pacific policy, given a rising U.S. focus on the region in general and China in particular. AUKUS also held out the promise of developing British submarine-building capabilities and employment. The same is true of GCAP, which not only builds ties with Japan, arguably Britain’s most important partner in Asia, but promises more jobs, too.

The tilt’s three anchor projects have also proved important in bringing the Labour Party around to the idea of a greater focus on the Indo-Pacific. Instinctively, much of the British left views the tilt as a dubious retrograde adventure, wrapped in Union Jack flags and the folly of Brexit. In this reading, the very idea of “global Britain” was a kind of post-Brexit confidence trick, promoted by leaders such as Johnson and Truss suffering from post-imperial delusions. Labour Party leader Keir Starmer has lately been attempting to regain his party’s reputation as a serious player on defense and security, in the process undoing the terrible mess left behind by his far-left predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn. Public statements about the need to focus on European defense, support Ukraine, and back NATO are all helpful in telegraphing this intent. In the same vein, Paul Mason, a left-wing journalist and aspirant Labour parliamentarian, spoke for many in his party recently when he described the tilt as an “ill-timed piece of hubris.” The entire idea, he argued, “has to be scrapped … as language, concept and practical priority.”

Yet for all this anti-tilt rhetoric, Labour’s developing foreign and defense policy is actually sticking pretty firmly to the tilt’s central projects. Earlier this month, shadow foreign secretary David Lammy wrote a wide-ranging pamphlet for the Fabian Society, a left-wing think tank, which laid out Labour’s early foreign policy platform. Lammy took a number of opportunistic jabs at the tilt, but his main criticisms actually highlighted London’s reduced diplomatic presence in the region and too few ministerial visits—implying that Britain was, in fact, not tilting enough. More importantly, he supported both AUKUS and CPTPP. “Maintaining serious, long-term strategic approaches to the Indo-Pacific, through arrangements like AUKUS, is an essential response to the shifting centre of gravity in world affairs,” he wrote. John Healey, Labour’s hardheaded shadow defense secretary, has been sharply critical of tilt, too. But like Lammy, he has also been careful to telegraph Labour’s full support for the tilt’s most important initiatives, including both AUKUS and GCAP.

Leadership transitions have always represented the greatest threat to sustained British Indo-Pacific engagement. New prime ministers all too often junk their predecessor’s ideas. Yet judged this way, the tilt now looks remarkably durable. It has survived, in all but name, the transitions from Johnson to Truss to Sunak. And it will now all but certainly survive the potential power shift to Starmer, too. If and when Labour takes power, it will of course find ways to reframe Indo-Pacific policy. Much the same was true for the Australian Labor Party when it took power in Canberra last year. But just like under Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, British foreign policy continuity in the region will be much more likely than change.

This is not to suggest that London’s Indo-Pacific ambitions are without problems. Britain has no hope of being a strategically significant player in Asia. With the potential exception of AUKUS, none of its activities will materially alter the military balance with respect to China. London is unlikely to be directly involved militarily in a crisis over Taiwan, for instance. Each anchor project also comes with individual challenges. CPTPP’s benefits are a rounding error when compared to the huge economic losses incurred by leaving the EU. Delivering AUKUS is a massive and complex undertaking, requiring vast investment in Britain’s submarine-building capabilities. Many analysts think the program will end up badly delayed and far over budget. The advanced fighter jet project with Japan and Italy comes with similar risks—and in any case, it may very well end up merging with a similar Franco-German plan.

Nor have Indo-Pacific enthusiasts won a decisive, all-out victory. Indeed, there were plenty of intriguing ideas floated during the recent strategy refresh to further expand Britain’s role in the region. One involved a greater role for the British Army in Asia; another involved greater deployment of British naval assets. Radakin—who is sometimes known as “Radical Radakin” for his enthusiasm for big ideas—has long floated basing one of Britain’s two aircraft carriers permanently in the Indo-Pacific, most likely in Japan. Radakin is also far from alone in being fond of what is often known as “presence,” meaning the deployment of military assets, from aircraft carriers to frigates, around the world as a show of strength. Yet these and other ideas to bolster the tilt were considered in Whitehall and rejected on grounds of cost or competing priorities. Other less expensive plans included in the refresh, such as Britain’s ambition to become an observer at ASEAN defense minister meetings, will likely take many years to come to fruition.

At base, Britain’s unexpectedly successful tilt suggests that tensions between its position as a European power and its Indo-Pacific ambitions remain fundamentally unresolved. Indeed, this tension now looks to be an enduring and messy feature of post-Brexit foreign policy. It would have been conceptually neater for London to embrace its fate as a regional middle power, pull back from the Indo-Pacific, and focus its limited resources on Europe. But the logic of Britain’s economic and security interests in Asia suggests that such a pullback would hardly have been sensible, not least given the need to find an answer to the questions posed by China’s rising sway. Viewed from the region itself, many countries in the Indo-Pacific had cautiously welcomed greater British and European interest, only to fear that the war in Ukraine would put an end to their ambitions. That risk now looks less likely. Britain no longer has anything close to the geopolitical and military weight needed to alter the Indo-Pacific’s balance of power. But somewhat against the odds, it is now likely to become a gradually more significant presence in the region’s network of economic and military relationships over the decades to come.