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Tilting on the edge? The future of Britain’s Indo-Pacific Strategy
- Gabriel Lane
- 6 hours ago
- 8 min read
Written by Gabriel Lane
Edited by Michael Hilliard
Two weeks after his landslide electoral victory, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced a new comprehensive review of the United Kingdom’s defence policy slated for publication in the spring of 2025. This announcement follows in the footsteps of the previous Conservative government’s Integrated Review, which aimed to recast Britain’s security posture toward the Indo-Pacific in 2021, as well as the subsequent 2023 Refresh that sought to refocus UK interests on Europe following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The 2025 review comes at a decisive moment for Britain with Starmer’s government navigating a multitude of foreign policy dilemmas including new U.S. antagonism, increasing Russian aggression, simmering unrest across the Middle East, and the threat of Chinese expansionism in East Asia in the coming years. To lay out a strategy to address these momentous challenges, the new government has turned to three external experts to write the 2025 review, these being former NATO Secretary General and former UK Defence Secretary Lord Robertson, former U.S. National Security Council official Dr. Fiona Hill, and former Deputy Chief of the Defence Staff General Sir Richard Barrons. While the final report is still months away, the composition of the review panel offers clear signals about the direction of Starmer’s defence and foreign policy agenda, with those familiar with their track records already discerning the broad contours of where Britain’s military strategy is likely headed.
Talking a Big Game
In much the same way that President Obama’s celebrated “Pivot to Asia” captured headlines a decade ago, so did Boris Johnson’s government in 2021 when London declared a renewed commitment to bolster the UK’s defence and foreign policy focus on the Indo-Pacific. The ambition being to augment Britain’s “East of Suez” heritage, arguably abandoned after 1968, with a new policy that balances the UK’s more historic Euro-Atlantic obligations with its more modern acknowledgment of a need for a robust presence in Asia. As a part of these efforts, London made some measurable strides in 2021 and 2022, joining the AUKUS security pact, becoming an ASEAN Dialogue Partner, deploying a Carrier Strike Group led by HMS Queen Elizabeth to the Indo-Pacific, and even co-launched the “Partners in the Blue Pacific” initiative.
However, in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Whitehall’s attention quickly snapped back toward Europe with the UK still weary of the crisis looming in Asia but forced to fight the fire much closer to home. It was in response to this newly transformed battlespace, that the Conservative government would release their 2023 Integrated Review Refresh. While this new review would very much place Russia as the central threat to Europe, it also made big position shifts on China as well. The 2023 review would update London’s view of the People’s Republic of China from “a systemic competitor” to an “epoch-defining challenge,” even going as far as to acknowledge that Chinese activity in the Indo-Pacific could have “greater global consequences than the conflict in Ukraine.”
Following the Refresh, Sunak’s government then leaned even further into the ‘tilt’; announcing a second Carrier Strike Group deployment, this time led by HMS Prince of Wales, in 2025 and securing accession to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) in 2024. By this point in time however, with polls indicating that a Labour government would almost certainly return to power in the upcoming General Election, many began to wonder if Starmer would continue to orientate the UK toward the far-east?
New government, new direction?
When Starmer took office in July 2024, the new administration described its approach to foreign affairs as one defined by ‘progressive realism’ where London would utilise realist strategies to achieve progressive results. Building on this outline, the new government, like its predecessor, has adopted a rhetorical approach towards China that is also reflective of existing U.S. policy with the UK’s ‘three C’s’ approach towards Beijing, ‘challenge, compete and cooperate’, drawing direct parallels to the Biden administration’s ‘compete, cooperate and confront’ strategy.Yet while the rhetoric seemed to indicate a much closer military partnership with Washington, it still remained somewhat unclear how these broad principles would actually manifest as tangible defence and security commitments in the Indo-Pacific. The signals from Whitehall had been decidedly mixed with the newly appointed Defence Secretary John Healey insisting on the one hand that his team is “determined to build on our Indo-Pacific commitments”, while simultaneously having previously argued that “Ukraine reminds us that our first obligations and our most acute threats lie in Europe” and also stating that the United Kingdom “cannot be a strong military force in the Indo-Pacific and Euro-Atlantic simultaneously.”
While this dichotomy in rhetoric undoubtedly sowed some doubts among UK defence analysts, the real concerns would arise later when the Republicans would win the 2024 elections, bringing a far more unpredictable government to power in the United States. Washington, for its part, has been less than encouraging for UK defence planners with U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth reportedly telling European allies that their priority should be “defending their own region” rather than expanding their operational presence in Asia. Hegseth would also go on to chastise London over its handling of the Chagos Island deal, where the UK’s efforts to settle a sovereignty dispute with Mauritius have cast uncertainty over the future of the Diego Garcia military facility, a critical UK-U.S. strategic outpost. Starmer had pushed to finalise a long-term agreement with the Chagossians, securing what he believed to be tacit approval from both the president of Mauritius, as well as President Trump during a Washington visit. Yet, as transatlantic relations continue to fray, the deal remains politically volatile at home and unresolved abroad; leaving Britain’s position in the Indo-Pacific even more complicated than before.
Resources matching reality?
Despite the ongoing academic debate over whether Johnson’s ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific has been achieved both in economic and security terms, the UK’s defence presence is at least commensurate with that of other European powers such as France, Italy, and Germany, all of which have dispatched naval task groups to Asia in recent years. For the UK, this presence includes the stationing of two River-class offshore patrol vessels, HMS Tamar and HMS Spey, in Southeast Asia, marking the first continuous Royal Navy deployment in the region in over a quarter-century, as well as the 2021 and planned 2025 carrier strike group tours. More enduring though, are the new defence partnerships that underpin Britain’s security strategy. Chief among them is AUKUS, the trilateral accord through which Australia is set to acquire conventionally armed nuclear-powered submarines with British and American support. This all then set to be followed up under AUKUS “Pillar Two” with the UK, Australia, and the United States cooperating on advanced military capabilities, joint technology development, and long-term intelligence sharing.
Another major undertaking by the UK here in the Pacific has been the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP), signed in 2022 between the UK, Italy and Japan. The aim of the GCAP being to independently produce a next-generation stealth fighter by 2035, something even more important now that Washington’s relationships with these countries appears to have somewhat soured. In addition to the GCAP, Britain also completed a Reciprocal Access Agreement with Tokyo in 2023, which paves the way for more integrated bilateral exercises, while continuing regular contributions to regional defence drills such as Exercise Pitch Black and the multilateral Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC). In Southeast Asia, the UK also chose to remain a participant in the Five Power Defence Arrangements (FPDA) with Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and Malaysia; reinforcing some of the UK’s long-term defence commitments to the region.
Yet all this activity does not mask the underlying constraints. As Healey acknowledged in 2023, London’s capabilities in the theatre are “modest in scale and range.” A House of Commons Committee Report that same year also bluntly concluded that “if we aspire to play any significant role in the Indo-Pacific, this would require a major commitment of cash, equipment, and personnel, or a rebalancing of existing resources.” Put simply, while Britain is happy to talk a big game about expanding its global commitments, the hard reality is that its resources to carry out such actions remain overstretched; raising serious questions about its ability to back rhetoric with sustained capability. To address these shortfalls, the former Conservative government had promised to raise defence spending from 2.3 percent to 2.5 percent of GDP by 2030 economic conditions permitting. Starmer, who also campaigned on this commitment, has doubled down on this approach with his administration pledging to hit that 2.5 percent mark by 2027, funded partly by reductions in overseas aid. Over the longer term, Labour has floated increasing defence outlays to 3 percent of GDP in the next parliament although senior military figures warn that even this uplift remains “far short of what is required to rebuild and transform the armed forces” from the state they have been left in over the last decade.
Whilst defence analysts have argued that these welcome increases must be quickly supplemented by even greater funding proposals, Britain’s fiscal woes continue to constrain the Starmer government’s defence ambitions with the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves recently cautioning that “difficult decisions” lie ahead on spending, taxation, and welfare. The Ministry of Defence are likely more than aware of these challenges with Healey announcing cuts in naval vessels, helicopters, and uncrewed systems worth £500 million in late 2024 as part of an effort to free up funds. The most notable of these cuts being the decommissioning of the amphibious assault ships HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark which erodes the Royal Navy’s amphibious warfare capacity, a capacity crucial to a number of key battle scenarios likely to unfold in the Indo-Pacific.
Countdown to the Review
With Russia’s war in Ukraine sapping resources and American policymakers openly questioning their commitments to NATO, it is unclear whether this government can, or will be able to, devote the resources necessary to sustain both a defence of Europe and an Indo-Pacific tilt at the same time. However, Starmer’s ongoing “diplomatic offensive” and talk of the UK potentially deploying ground forces to Ukraine underscores how the Euro-Atlantic theatre is likely to occupy centre stage for London.As the government grapples with these difficult decisions around budgets, strategy, and its relationship with Europe, China and Washington, Lord Robertson, Dr. Hill, and General Barrons have no shortage of issues to weigh in on for the 2025 Strategic Defence Review but from accounts are likely to try and prioritise issues closer to home.
For the panel, it seems that whether the UK can maintain a meaningful Indo-Pacific presence while simultaneously preparing for a European confrontation remains an open question, meaning that the next year will reveal whether Starmer’s administration is genuinely prepared to fund and field the capabilities that a true Indo-Pacific tilt requires, or whether the “tilt” will remain more rhetorical flourish than operational reality. In either case though, Britain finds itself, in essence, on the edge of a strategic recalibration with no guarantee that its ambitions in the Indo-Pacific can be squared with the demands of a volatile continent and a plethora of tough choices both at home and abroad.
Gabriel Lane is a researcher and writer at The Red Line, holding a history degree from Durham University and a masters degree in international relations from the LSE, and specialises in UK and Southeast Asian geopolitics.
