National Interest

by Azeem Ibrahim

    The UK is a natural maritime, not land, power. Its grand strategy should reflect that.

    President Donald Trump is doing what US presidents have threatened to do since the turn of the new millennium. He is pivoting the United States conclusively from Europe to the Indo-Pacific theatre.

    The headline-grabbing moments over the last 12 months, however, particularly on Greenland, betray a more careful and strategic dialogue across the Atlantic.

    This week, two key NATO bases, including one in Norfolk, Virginia, were handed over to European commanders. While there is no denying that the United States will play a smaller role in the defense of Europe this century, this move, which includes transferring the Atlantic Command Headquarters to British leadership, indicates that the United States is serious about building European capacity. The handover of joint force commands at the operational level means that remaining US troops on joint deployments will report to a chain of command led by British and European personnel.

    There is a tendency to focus on the wrecking-ball politics, played partly to a domestic audience and miss the vote of confidence in Europe in general and the UK in particular. In response to US pressure, Europe has started investing more seriously, though not yet seriously enough, in its own defence. Reducing European dependence on US planning and command-and-control systems is necessary to build capacity and enable the United States to focus on China.

    The United States retains the post of Supreme Allied Commander and has assumed leadership of NATO’s maritime forces based in the UK, reflecting its growing concern about Russian maritime incursions into the Arctic. Taken together, the changes will strengthen Europe’s militaries and their ability to coordinate while ensuring the alliance delivers on American priorities as well. That mutually beneficial arrangements like this can still be made demonstrates that the alliance continues to provide irreplaceable value to all nations involved.

    The United Kingdom, in particular, as these appointments show, will play an ever more crucial role as the US stance in Europe shifts from the deployment of hard military assets and operational leadership toward the more specialized and expert role only it can play. The United States’ only bomber forward operating location in Europe is located in the UK. The now US-controlled naval base in Northwood will play a key role in Arctic security. These bases form some of the key pillars of a smaller but more specialized American presence in Europe, while larger European standing armies provide the conventional force.

    While the Anglo-American “special relationship” and its military components have become a cliché in strategic circles, it is not just bases that make Great Britain pivotal to US strategy. The next factor is diplomatic trust. That British leadership is being installed at a base on US soil speaks volumes. Britain plays an essential role as the only viable interlocutor between the two largest European armies—the Germans and the Poles—and the United States.

    The bonds of language, law, kinship and history and of deep mutual cultural understanding, are simply irreplaceable. This is why Britain is the only European power involved in AUKUS (a treaty arguably created at France’s expense), which aims to contain Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. Britain is the only European partner with the reach, deployability and specialist capabilities to play a role on both continents simultaneously.

    It is that trust and proximity that have enabled the UK’s most integral role: the almost total integration of military and intelligence at the highest possible level with the United States. No other US relationship functions similarly. With this implicit trust, Britain has continued to play a role that no other ally could.

    Above that, British intelligence continues to prove resourceful and indispensable. Britain’s independence from EU institutions also enables it to pursue closer economic and regulatory integration with the United States, which may represent another step toward deeper integration of the two nations’ military-industrial supply chains. The United States needs a bridge to Europe as it pivots and the early signs suggest that the UK will be that bridge.

    A separate question can only be answered by the British. Should the UK follow the United States to the Pacific  That question goes to the heart of a wider debate about Britain’s strategic identity. In A Greater Britain: Rethinking UK Grand Strategy and Statecraft, I argue that the UK can no longer rely on inherited assumptions about its global role and must align its ambition with its capabilities in a far more disciplined manner. For instance, Britain lacks the land capabilities to meaningfully supplement the likes of the Polish Army in Eastern Europe.

    Arguably, a naval deployment to the Far East plays much better to the UK’s strengths. Two brand-new Royal Navy aircraft carriers equipped with US-made fighters, a fleet of nuclear submarines and advanced reconnaissance capabilities are better suited to joining a deterrent force against China, alongside the AUKUS alliance, rather than to a land deployment in the flat expanses of Eastern Europe.

    While the United States and the UK must attend to their own fundamental interests, it is clear that there is significant affinity in their goals and capabilities and that, for both, their paths to influence and prosperity are linked. The US pivot away from Europe may, ironically, rejuvenate the special relationship across the Atlantic and in the Pacific.