On 27th May, the United Kingdom (UK) and Poland signed the bilateral ‘Northolt Treaty’ on a ‘Security and Defence Partnership’. Recognising the increasingly volatile state of geopolitics – particularly in Eastern Europe, where the systemic threat of Russia looms large – the treaty reaffirmed the centrality of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) to both countries’ security and collective defence in the Euro-Atlantic, and the importance of advancing European security and prosperity.

This is the third such treaty Britain has signed with its major European allies in the past year, following the Northwood Declaration with France and the Kensington Treaty with Germany, both signed in July 2025. Being an important step taken in the development of the UK-Poland relationship, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked four experts, as well as Gemini, Google’s Large Language Model (LLM): What is the significance of the new treaty between Britain and Poland?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Lecturer, SGH Warsaw School of Economics, and Senior Research Fellow, EU Programme, Polish Institute of Foreign Affairs (PISM)

The significance of the Northolt Treaty lies less in specific military provisions than in broader political and strategic spheres. Signed in the context of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine and a rapidly shifting European security environment, it signals the consolidation of a bilateral partnership that is becoming central to Europe’s defence architecture.

Building on the 2017 Treaty on Defence and Security Cooperation, and UK-Poland 2030 Strategic Partnership Joint Declaration, the new treaty’s importance lies in further deepening of convergence of threat perceptions and strategic cultures. Both states explicitly identify Russia as the principal long-term threat and reaffirm NATO as the foundation of collective defence. However, the treaty also reflects an understanding that NATO frameworks alone may be too slow or insufficiently agile, hence the growing role of bilateral mechanisms for faster coordination and response.

Crucially, the agreement highlights Poland’s rising strategic weight. As NATO’s key eastern flank state and a rapidly expanding land power, Poland is an increasingly indispensable provider of regional deterrence. The treaty acknowledges this shift by embedding cooperation across multiple domains – military, industrial, cyber, and resilience – where Poland’s rapidly growing armed forces and cyber capabilities, as well as frontline position are essential.

For the UK, the partnership serves as a vehicle for re-engagement in European security after Brexit; for Poland, it anchors its role as a central node in a North and North-Eastern European security network. In this sense, the treaty is as much about shaping the future geography of European defence as it is about managing current threats.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

The Northolt Treaty brings together European NATO’s two most significant military powers. Poland is fast becoming, and in fact probably already is, Europe’s premier land power. Within a few years, the Polish Army will field 24 combat brigades – more than Britain, France, and Germany combined. While there will be teething problems from such an extensive expansion over so short a time, it is a remarkable and commendable feat.

The UK, despite being in a capability trough, is in the process of modernising its forces and remains a nuclear power with impressive capabilities across a wide spectrum, especially in the air and maritime domains. As two of Europe’s most significant military powers, and with a track record of political and military leadership that takes the Russia threat seriously, the partnership could well come to define a future ‘Europeanised’ NATO. The Northolt Treaty helps provide the framework and signposts for what the next few years of deepening UK-Poland cooperation will look like.

With that said, it must also be recognised that the treaty is another in a string of bilateral treaties signed between the UK and European allies that have been signed more for their symbolism than their content. As important as symbolism is on the international stage, it is evident that answering the question of where and how the UK should cooperate more deeply with countries such as Poland, France, and Germany is still yet to be fully fleshed out.

Gemini

Council on Geostrategy staff have prompted Gemini, Google’s LLM, to reflect on this week’s Big Ask.

Signed by Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, and Donald Tusk, Prime Minister of Poland, the Northolt Treaty represents a landmark deepening of defence and security ties between the UK and Poland. Hailed as the most significant bilateral agreement between the two nations in a generation, the pact carries profound geopolitical and strategic weight. At its core, the treaty addresses escalating security concerns in Europe, driven primarily by the threat of Russian aggression and hybrid warfare. It establishes extensive industrial cooperation, focusing on the joint development and manufacture of weapons, most notably a next-generation medium-range air defence missile.

By integrating defence supply chains and prioritising interoperability, the two nations aim to enhance the resilience of their defence industries and fortify NATO’s eastern flank through large-scale joint exercises in electronic, counter-drone, and land warfare. The treaty also serves as a strategic hedge against transatlantic uncertainty, offering a unified European response amidst shifting United States (US) foreign policy dynamics.

For the UK, the pact aligns with a broader post-Brexit diplomatic strategy to reset relations with European allies and stay embedded in the continent’s rearmament efforts. For Poland – NATO’s highest defence spender relative to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) – the treaty supports its ambition to expand domestic arms manufacturing through technology transfer. Beyond conventional military defence, the treaty incorporates a Joint Action Plan on irregular migration, economic resilience, and cyber defence coordination to counteract hostile state espionage and sabotage.

James Rogers

Co-President (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The Northolt Treaty is significant for four key reasons:

1. Both countries have committed, through Article 5 of the Northolt Treaty, to defend one another, and to provide military assistance, in the event of an armed attack on either nation. This is particularly important for Poland, because the UK, as a nuclear power, has agreed to provide an additional defence guarantee beyond NATO.

2. As with previous bilateral treaties, including those with France and Germany, as well as Norway, Estonia, and Ukraine, Britain can use its nuclear, intelligence, and defence-industrial heft to bypass the European Union (EU) as a security actor. As the UK entangles itself deeper into the geopolitics of Europe, it makes itself strategically indispensable.

3. Poland has proven that it now dances with the big powers of Europe. In the past, the UK has favoured the so-called ‘E3’ cosy with France and Germany. Yet, Polish power and influence have grown over the past ten years, especially as the Polish military buildup has got under way, to the extent that Britain now sees it as an equal of the other two.

4. The two allies have used potent discourse in the treaty to exert narrative control. They identify Russia as ‘the most important long-term threat’ to Euro-Atlantic security, which will throw down the gauntlet to those governments that may be contemplating a softening of sanctions and the reopening of dialogue.

In short, the Northolt Treaty confirms the growing strength of British-Polish relations, as well as how the two countries, with similar geopolitical interests, can work together and use their growing weight to shape European security.

Professor Mark Webber

Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham, and Non-resident Senior Fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome

The treaty reflects a spirited effort by the UK to engage with European states in an area (defence) where it has a lasting reputation. That reputation has been dented in recent years by the erosion of British military capability, but the UK is still one of NATO Europe’s foremost military powers. As well as Poland, Britain has bilateral defence agreements with France, Germany, Ukraine, and Romania. Specific arrangements (defence ‘roadmaps’, joint declarations, partnerships, and so on) exist with several other European states.

The UK is not unique in pursuing such cooperation. Defence bilateralism across Europe has been an accelerating trend during the 2020s, spurred by concerns over Russian belligerence and America’s increasingly conditional support of NATO. France and Germany have signed as many bilateral deals as Britain. The very same day the UK-Poland treaty was signed, Norway reached agreement with France on a comprehensive defence partnership. And unlike the UK, France is actively leveraging its nuclear capability. Nine states (Britain included) are pursuing bilateral dialogue with Paris as part of France’s ‘forward nuclear deterrence’ initiative.

Bilateralism of this sort adds to the complexity of Europe’s defence provision. Three tiers are now evident – the multilateral (involving NATO and increasingly the EU), the regional (with initiatives such as the British-led Joint Expeditionary Force), and the bilateral. These trends add up to a Europeanisation of defence – even within NATO, where the United States is stepping back. This is complexity without coordination and reflects a certain political and commercial jockeying for position among not just Europe’s traditional big three (France, Germany, and the UK), but also its rising military powers – Poland, Sweden, and Ukraine.

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The European Three (E3) is an informal grouping of the United Kingdom (UK), France, and Germany – arguably the three most powerful countries in the European continent. Having convened for the first time in 2003 in the wake of the United States (US)-led invasion of Iraq, it seeks collaboration on common foreign and defence policy between the three nations.

Despite its turbulent relationship with European nations following Brexit, the UK maintains security ties with France and Germany through membership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), bilateral agreements signed with each country, and shared security interests. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: How can Britain work more effectively within the E3 to advance its national security objectives?

Dr Henning Hoff

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Executive Editor, Internationale Politik Quarterly and Internationale Politik

Originally formed in 2003 to negotiate a nuclear agreement with Iran, the E3 laid somewhat dormant after the Brexit vote, but emerged recently as Europe’s most effective troubleshooting grouping, especially with a view to Ukraine. That Ukraine’s future is now again being discussed not in a triangle (US-Ukraine-Russia), but in a quartet with Europeans included, is one of the recent achievements of the E3 that is highly regarded by Germany.

However, the E3 could be much more, including a vehicle for the UK to advance national security objectives. This is particularly true in two respects: forging greater strategic alignment on – and organising – a future European deterrence and defence that will likely have to make do with a much-reduced American contribution; and coordinating much more closely on European strategic engagement in the Indo-Pacific.

For that to happen, the E3 needs to hold regular meetings at the top level. That changes at the presidential and head-of-government level are afoot in France (April 2027), possibly in Britain, and perhaps even in Germany (Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, faced headlines speculating about his future this week), only reinforces the point: an effective E3 needs a meeting of minds at the top. To function well, effectively, and long-term, however, the E3 will need to set up permanent working groups and institutionalise the format in various other ways. This requires diplomatic capital that would be well spent on such an endeavour.

Dr Catarina Liberato

Research Fellow, School of Economics, Politics, and International Relations, University of Kent

Six years after the withdrawal of the UK from the EU, the E3 remains the most accessible vehicle through which Britain can shape European security deliberations without sitting at the EU table. Its value lies not in institutional weight, but in precisely the opposite: a format informal enough to survive Brexit, flexible enough to move faster than EU machinery, and intimate enough to align positions before they harden. Yet, the UK has too often engaged reactively – a pattern that successive strategy documents have failed to correct.

The current moment demands a different approach. With US-led mediation on Ukraine stalled and Berlin explicitly naming the E3 as Europe’s renewed diplomatic instrument, Britain can advance three concrete national security objectives: shaping peace settlement terms before they are fixed by others; ensuring Ukraine’s security guarantees reflect UK commitments rather than being subcontracted to EU mechanisms excluding London; and anchoring NATO cohesion amid transatlantic uncertainty.

The E3 is also the most credible channel through which Britain can influence the EU’s emerging European Security Strategy – as an indispensable partner whose positions Paris and Berlin carry inward – while proving the Labour Party’s reset delivers strategic value, not goodwill alone.

The UK’s nuclear status, expeditionary credibility, and intelligence relationships confer a standing neither France nor Germany can replicate. The architecture is there; now His Majesty’s (HM) Government just needs the political will to use it.

Etienne Marcuz

Senior Analyst, Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS)

The July 2025 Northwood Declaration paved the way for political, technological, and above all operational coordination between Britain and France in the nuclear domain. At the same time, both countries have each initiated in-depth strategic bilateral dialogues with Germany, reinforcing the E3 as the core of Europe’s future security and defence architecture. While Paris and Berlin vie for European leadership, London occupies a unique position within the Atlantic alliance: it is an autonomous nuclear power independent of the US, yet also a participant in NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG).

Although France’s forward deterrence initiative has been positively received by both European allies and the American partner, the country’s absence from the NPG could create a risk of confusion in the event of a parallel escalation of both nuclear postures. The UK could therefore serve as a bridge between extended deterrence and forward deterrence.

Moreover, while nuclear deterrence will play a central role in continental security, it cannot stand alone. It must be supported by robust conventional capabilities, particularly for deep strike operations, which will be critical in managing escalation. The strong bilateral relations between Britain and its two partners – especially at times when relations between France and Germany are turbulent – could also enable better political and operational coordination among the three powers.

Thus, the UK could be entrusted with a genuine pivotal role within the E3, facilitating relations between its two partners as they each compete for leadership in shaping the future of European defence.

Dr Julian Pawlak

Research Associate, German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP)

Britain should collaborate with France and Germany to establish the E3 as the fundamental means by which European nations can assume greater responsibility within NATO. The two European nuclear powers, together with Germany’s military and economic potential, represent the large part of the core of any serious European effort, and as such should take on that responsibility sooner rather than later.

The underlying question is whether free and open European nations are able to deter Russia, and, if necessary, defend themselves against it. Building that capacity is a European task, and the E3 should lead the way once the three nations have agreed to this necessity and made it a reality. Ideally, this would automatically include – and also represent the interests of – European partners, in the light of the Russian threat, particularly the Northern and Baltic flank states as well as Ukraine.

For the UK, this would mean treating the format as a structural commitment that would also support an often slower-acting Germany in taking on this trilateral responsibility within NATO. The E3 should become the anchor for Europe within the alliance; the core around which a more capable, self-reliant European contribution is organised, and through which London, Paris, and Berlin can align their planning, capabilities, and political weight behind the common deterrent of NATO.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

For Britain, minilateral groupings, alongside enhanced bilateral arrangements, and NATO, are the future of European security. The question is how to coordinate them all to the extent that the UK is strategically indispensable and NATO remains primus inter pares. HM Government’s ultimate objective should be simple: no country or institution in Europe should be able to take any geopolitical decisions without British consent.

However, the E3 is a cosy creation from an earlier era. It is no longer fit for the new age of geopolitics in Europe, where Poland and Romania – and Ukraine – are central to the eastern flank of NATO, and where Italy, Turkey, and the Nordic states – especially Norway – are critical to its southern and northern flanks.

Besides, the balance of power in Europe is changing quickly. Due to Russia’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine, and Poland’s dramatic military modernisation programme, power has shifted eastwards. At the very least, the E3 should be enlarged to include Poland, which is often close to British perspectives and is amassing economic and military power that cannot be ignored. Including Poland would help to balance France and Germany, especially if Russia-friendly governments re-enter office in Berlin and Paris in the future.

The UK should then see this consequent E4 as the centrepiece of European security, and the pillar from which a more Europeanised NATO can be built. Additional minilaterals, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force and Weimar+ should then be positioned to intersect with the E4, making Britain even more pivotal. The E4 could then be used to create additional minilaterals to cover the Mediterranean, with Italy, and the Black Sea, with Romania and Ukraine, further centralising the UK in the geopolitical landscape of contemporary Europe.

Christina Venard

Head of Strategic Studies, Defence Department, Embassy of France in the United Kingdom

In the current, quickly evolving strategic environment, at a time when European allies are taking further primary responsibility for their defence, the E3 format provides a relevant and coherent format to take forward European security interests.

The close coordination between Paris, London, and Berlin, in the field of defence within this format, based on the robustness and vitality of the respective bilateral partnerships, remains essential to advancing jointly along the path towards a more European-led NATO as the core of a rebalanced and mutually beneficial transatlantic bond.

At the strategic level, high level consultations within the E3, and through close complementarity with Poland and Italy with the E5 format, contribute to the development of a shared assessment of the Russian threat for European security and to the definition of how European countries intend to address it at the operational, capability, and political levels.

In the run up to the NATO Ankara Summit, this E3 structure, as it gathers allies which are both able and willing to bear a greater responsibility for the security of the European continent, has the ability to mobilise European allies further for the preservation of NATO’s unity, which remains a major prerequisite for its military credibility, making the alliance even more resilient.

Finally, the signing of the Northwood Declaration by France and the UK in July 2025, alongside the development of the forward deterrence framework including Germany, demonstrates the depth of strategic cooperation and mutual commitment that characterise the bilateral relationships within the E3.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

Britain should use its position within the E3 to champion the creation of a European Security Council. Comprising three significant European defence and diplomatic powers, the E3 is uniquely positioned to act as a vanguard for this idea – collectively marshalling the political weight, institutional experience, and cross-European relationships needed to bring such a body into existence.

The UK should use its position within the E3 to acknowledge the grouping’s limitations, and lead its transformation into something more fit for purpose. The E3 was conceived for a different era. Bringing together Britain, France, and Germany, it made sense as a diplomatic vehicle for issues such as Iran’s nuclear programme. However, the defining security challenge of our time is Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and for that challenge, the E3 is the wrong configuration.

Any coalition serious about European security must have Ukraine at its centre, as the frontline state whose resilience determines the broader security of the continent. A grouping that excludes Ukraine – and that lacks the Nordic, Baltic, and Central European states most acutely exposed to Russian aggression – cannot credibly claim to speak for European security interests.

This is precisely why the E3’s defining purpose should become the genesis of a European Security Council – a wider, more representative body that includes Ukraine, the Nordic and Baltic states, and Poland, alongside the major Western European powers. Since Russia’s invasion began, the UK has demonstrated the leadership necessary to build such coalitions. It should now direct that energy toward making the E3 the launchpad for a more ambitious and durable European security architecture.

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In January 2026, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, announced her proposal for a ‘new European Security Strategy’ to encompass the entirety of the European Union (EU). She elaborated that the strategy would aim to collate defence and security knowledge from EU member states, and ensure that geopolitical challenges are addressed appropriately as and when they may arise.

With Brexit now having occurred ten years ago, the United Kingdom (UK) has a complex relationship with the EU. However, as a custodian of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), and one of the two European nuclear powers, it nevertheless has interests in terms of upholding continental security. With this in mind, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked four experts: How should Britain engage with the new European Security Strategy?

Prof. Basil Germond

Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre

The UK should treat the forthcoming European Security Strategy as an opportunity to build structured naval cooperation around shared interests in the maritime domain: defence of the continent, stability of the global maritime supply chain, and protection of critical maritime infrastructure, especially undersea cables and other maritime assets essential to economic and national security.

Building on the EU’s revised Maritime Security Strategy of 2023, which explicitly targets sub-threshold and cyber threats to maritime infrastructure and seeks stronger coordinated presence, exercises, and naval operations, Britain should pursue a pragmatic, mission‑led partnership that complements NATO through targeted cooperation where it adds operational value – particularly in infrastructure protection.

Von der Leyen has stressed that security in the High North is ‘first and foremost’ a NATO responsibility. Here, the UK can add value and increase European credibility by using the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) and bilateral cooperation with Norway to help integrate EU member states’ efforts in maritime situational awareness, Anti-Submarine Warfare (ASW), undersea cable protection, and resilience planning, while strengthening links to Baltic and North Atlantic priorities.

Britain should position the EU as a partner of choice for undersea cable security. This can be achieved through the alignment of EU regulatory and coordination tools with the UK’s operational capabilities, intelligence, and rapid response capacity. This would be especially prudent as EU doctrine increasingly emphasises safeguarding undersea infrastructure and maritime domain awareness in the Baltic, North, and Mediterranean seas and Atlantic approaches.

Finally, as the current situation in the Strait of Hormuz underlines, if Britain desires credibility as a defender of a rules‑based maritime order, it needs reliable partners for sustained presence and freedom of navigation missions and for rapid coalition responses to coercion below the threshold of war. This is clearly an area where UK-EU cooperation can multiply effect.

Della Heptinstall

Associate, Walker Morris LLP

The new European Security Strategy reflects an overdue recognition that the EU should assume greater responsibility for its own security. Yet, while the strategy emphasises ‘independence’ and industrial self-reliance, it risks overlooking an essential truth: European security cannot be delivered by the EU alone.

Britain remains central to any credible European defence architecture. A decade after Brexit, the UK and EU are strategically aligned but institutionally distant. This matters. The new strategy’s focus on strengthening defence industrial capacity, accelerating procurement, and scaling innovation depends on capabilities that are already deeply integrated across European supply chains.

Britain is a major contributor across all three dimensions: a leading defence industrial base, a nuclear power, and a cornerstone of NATO. Excluding it from the new European Security Strategy’s industrial and capability building mechanisms would not enhance European autonomy; it would fragment it. Duplication of effort, reduced economies of scale, and weaker interoperability would follow. The EU’s ambition to act more decisively in a more hostile security environment would, paradoxically, be undermined.

Strategic autonomy should not be confused with strategic isolation. If the new European Security Strategy is to deliver meaningful deterrence, it should be built around a broader ‘European-plus’ framework which recognises the UK not as a third country, but as a critical partner. For Britain, engagement should therefore be proactive and structured, ensuring that it helps to shape, rather than react to, the continent’s evolving security architecture.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Having decided to leave the EU, the UK can, at best, play an indirect role in the formulation of the new European Security Strategy. Nevertheless, it has now been a year since Britain and the EU signed their security and defence partnership. That framework document outlined multiple issue areas where the two sides could develop their cooperation.

The UK shares many common interests with the EU in terms of defending critical infrastructure, repelling foreign interference, and building capacity so that NATO allies can use EU funds to reach their capability targets. These common interests allow for the EU and NATO to build complementarity at a time when continental security is under significant geopolitical duress.

Yet, military mobility is the element that deserves special attention, not least since Britain has been invited to participate in the Permanent Structured Cooperation project in 2022. Despite much ink spilled on the subject in the last decade, significant logistical and regulatory barriers remain in place across the EU, which would hamper the flow of military personnel and equipment in the event of an acute security crisis.

Military mobility thus matters for ensuring that European nations can both defend themselves and support their own sustainment, especially when the UK and the United States (US) are positioned along NATO’s eastern flank. Britain should join PESCO to advance shared goals in improving military mobility across the continent.

As the European Commission drafts its new Security Strategy, the UK can do something militarily advantageous on the continent that still respects its decision to withdraw from the EU.

Melania Parzonka

Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs

The political alignment on security between Britain and the EU already exists: willingness to support Ukraine, recognition of Russia as a direct threat, and the urgency of rearmament.

Yet, after Brexit, the UK has been left out of seismic developments happening in EU security planning, such as rethinking of the mutual security clause (as an alternative to NATO) or joint borrowing to fund rearmament. With ongoing debates about sources of funding to deliver the aims of the Strategic Defence Review, the latter option especially would be hugely beneficial to a fiscally constrained Britain.

There are, however, other avenues for cooperation. The niche that the EU has carved out for itself on military and defence topics is in the industrial sphere. It has positioned itself to oversee and accelerate European rearmament, as well as foster cooperation between national defence industries. Hence, industry is the area where the UK can prove itself indispensable to the EU.

It is crucial that Britain’s industry can supply armaments to Ukraine under the newly approved €90 billion (£77.8 billion) Ukraine Support Loan. This will anchor the UK in EU-coordinated procurement frameworks and give a precedent for closer cooperation in future programmes. Furthermore, Britain should seek joint industrial projects with like-minded EU member states – for example, NATO eastern flank states, currently the biggest spenders in the alliance on defence as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

The UK has already made a step in this direction with the upcoming British-Polish defence treaty – the third agreement of this kind after ones signed with Germany and France in 2025.

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Last week’s local election results showed a sharp change in British politics. The two-party dominance of Labour and Conservative was shaken, with major gains being made by both the Greens and Reform UK – parties described as ‘populist’ within British media, as well as by politicians.

This is not a phenomenon unique to the United Kingdom (UK). Across Europe, populist parties have seen a surge in support, such as Alternative for Germany (Alternative für Deutschland; AfD), Brothers of Italy (Fratelli d’Italia; FdI), and Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość; PiS) in Poland. While not a unanimous shift, as demonstrated by the April 2026 election of Péter Magyar as Prime Minister of Hungary, the continental trend towards populism nevertheless remains clear. This forms the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked seven experts: How should Britain respond to rising European populism?

Prof. Amelia Hadfield

Founding Director, Centre for Britain and Europe; and Head, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Surrey

The scale of Reform UK’s victory is stunning. The party gained more than 1,400 council seats and control of 14 councils in England in the local elections, with a performance equivalent to 26% of the national vote share. Were a general election to be held now on those trends, Reform would win the largest share of the vote, with the Greens second on 18%, and Labour and Conservative each on 17%.

These results are not an isolated phenomenon. The conditions underpinning populism – economic malaise, regional asymmetries, the disruptive effects of social media and Artificial Intelligence (AI), and deep dissatisfaction with mainstream parties – are more profound than a decade ago. Several potential responses emerge as a result.

Firstly, Labour’s leadership question: over 90 Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) have called on Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, to resign or set a timetable for his departure in order to regain voter confidence and thus actively confront the challenge of the right-wing populist Reform. Beyond this, Labour leadership requires enhanced credibility in the economic and business sphere to win back market and commercial confidence.

Secondly, a new centrist ascendancy: the point is less that populism needs to fail, but that other parties must succeed – not simply by endlessly criticising populists, but by delivering more credible governance on precisely the issues driving voters away, such as immigration, economic security, living standards, employment, and so on.

Lastly, electoral reform: the first-past-the-post system is a potential area of structural vulnerability, amplifying populist gains disproportionately. Changes in this area are overdue for any number of reasons, but last week’s local elections provide the most urgent reason of all.

In short, a response requires both institutional reform to reduce the distorting effects of the current electoral system, and a substantive political proposition from mainstream parties that can genuinely address the grievances fuelling the populist wave.

Sir Paul Lever KCMG

Former Chairman, Joint Intelligence Committee, and former Ambassador of the United Kingdom to Germany (1997-2003)

So-called populist parties thrive because they represent the concerns of significant parts of the electorate. In Germany and France, they have been demonised and excluded from power because of the baggage of their perceived political inheritances: national socialism in the case of AfD, East German communism in the case of Die Linke, and the Vichy regime in the case of the National Rally (Rassemblement National; RN).

Reform UK and the Greens in Britain do not suffer from this problem, and it would be a mistake to characterise them as extremist or beyond the political pale. Their policies should be challenged where appropriate, but other parties should be prepared to cooperate with them where there is common ground.

If Reform is the biggest party in the House of Commons after the next general election, Nigel Farage should be given the chance to form a government. Otherwise Britain risks ending up like Germany; with a succession of unnatural and potentially unstable political coalitions that do not properly reflect the popular mood.

However, the most urgent requirement is to change the UK’s electoral system, which in an age of multi-party politics is no longer fit for purpose. To be credible, a government needs to be based on the support of a majority of those who vote.

Ed Owen

Director of Political Strategy, ThinkLabour, and Non-Resident Fellow, Atlantic Council

Reform’s success in the local elections was the clearest sign yet of the threat it poses to Labour and to wider mainstream politics at the next general election.

In an increasingly fragmented electoral environment, Reform won support across Britain and has, for many voters, become the vehicle of widespread disillusionment with the political system. Its access to significant financial support from big donors like Christopher Harborne, a cryptocurrency billionaire living in Thailand, and wider ideological backing from an American administration determined to sow political division across Europe, gives it hope that it can seize national power.

Yet, while Reform won almost 1,500 English council seats and is now the second largest party in the devolved parliaments of Scotland and Wales, its vote share across the country was down compared to this time last year. The party is now coming under greater scrutiny from the media and others, and does appear – for the moment, at least – to have peaked in popular support at around 25%, both in last week’s elections and in national opinion polls.

To counter Reform, it will be vital for the Labour administration, first and foremost, to show delivery on the issues that feed support to Reform – the cost of living crisis, irregular migration across the English Channel, and poor public services. Alongside this, it also needs to demonstrate a clear values-driven approach that can mobilise anti-Reform support. Labour has lost more support to the Greens than to Farage, and this needs to be won back if the party is to see off the populist wave at the next general election.

The current upheaval in the Labour Party that has followed the local elections demonstrates that the party has woken up to the real threat posed by Reform: it has less than three years to prevent a Farage-led government in Westminster.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

‘Populism’ is often conflated with the political extremes, or parties or political forces that promise to deliver a better society, but lack any concrete or funded policies. Citizens in European countries, including Britain, appear to be voting for these parties more forcefully. Even in highly established, organic democracies, such as the UK, Sweden, or the Netherlands, populist forces appear to be in the ascendancy. Britain’s recent local elections only confirm this point, where the established parties did not perform well.

Populism is not organic. It is a symptom of the failure of established political parties to improve the lives of the citizens of their respective countries. It is also a response to globalisation, open borders, and the broader political orthodoxy of the past 30 years, which never recovered from the dislocation of the financial crisis of 2007-2008. If these problems are not addressed, populists will gain further traction in the UK and in parts of Europe, potentially becoming more extreme with every passing year.

At home, Britain should react to populist forces by overcoming the grievances that give rise to them. It should lead the reform of outmoded treaties (or withdraw from them if they no longer work), do far more to stymie undocumented migration, and put cheaper and sovereign energy, and economic growth – especially in poorer regions – at the forefront of the national enterprise.

In Europe, the UK needs a new political vision for the continent, which it projects throughout European nations. This vision should offer concrete solutions to the economic and geopolitical realities of the age.

Clinging tenaciously to the established order in Europe, as it faces stagnation, as well as dislocation from within and without, will no longer work. It is time to be bolder.

Dr Michael Toomey

Lecturer in International Relations, University of Glasgow

Reform UK has achieved overwhelming back-to-back victories in British local elections in 2025 and 2026. It is not surprising that there may be a sense that Britain is about to embrace a broader trend in European politics of far-right populist parties knocking on the doors of governmental power. However, appearances may be deceptive.

Firstly, a Reform government in 2029 is not a foregone conclusion. Its 2026 results reflected a 4% drop in its vote share from the year before, and its opinion polling shows a trend of decline. Throughout the local elections campaign, Reform candidates were curiously absent in terms of their public presence, suggesting that voters were casting a vote for Farage himself rather than an actual candidate – an inherently more difficult phenomenon to replicate in the higher profile atmosphere of a general election.

Secondly, Reform is not a new phenomenon in British politics. Farage himself has been an elected representative since 1999. Many of the most high-profile members of the party are cast-offs from a Conservative Party that seems to be in almost terminal decline. Indeed, Reform UK seems to be largely absorbing the Conservatives, with its populism reflecting a hardening of pre-existing Conservative policy and rhetoric rather than a sea change in British politics. This might place a ceiling on its potential for growth.

Finally, the idea that Reform is part of a European populist far-right juggernaut poised for political power does not hold up to scrutiny. In only a handful of cases have populist far-right parties managed to form governments, often with slim or fleeting majorities. In other cases, such as in France and Germany, far-right parties lead in opinion polls but remain unlikely to take power due to their polarising nature.

Instead, in the UK, the remainder of 2026 is more likely to be a harbinger of the adoption of a different European trend: fragmentation. With seven viable political parties, this could portend a razor-thin Reform landslide in 2029 (à la Labour in 2024), or a gridlocked and unstable Westminster.

Prof. Simon Usherwood

Professor of Politics and International Studies, The Open University; and Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Britain and Europe, University of Surrey

There is a domestic and an external dimension to the rise of populism. At home, political parties across the ideological spectrum need to recognise that populists have been very effective at tapping into people’s feelings of disengagement and disempowerment in politics. Populists offer simple solutions to complex problems, aided by the apparent inability of the political ‘elite’ to make complex solutions produce clear effects.

Since politics is not going to get any easier, the response has to be one of drawing people into the process and encouraging them to see that solutions are not like online shopping – i.e., one click and it is done – but require a deep and persistent grasp of the issues. Giving people a stake and a role in politics will help to re-base expectations and to leverage the wider impact of social changes to affect desirable outcomes.

However, this cannot be a national endeavour: it should also have a collaborative international part. Supporting and strengthening democratic processes across national borders will be essential in limiting the erosion of norms and practices that has been seen in recent years. Being vocal about core British values of rule of law, human rights, and liberal democratic process should be matched by action to encourage allies and to sanction challenges to these ideals.

Prof. Stefan Wolff

Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham; Senior Research Fellow, The Foreign Policy Centre; and Co-founder, Navigating the Vortex

The rise of populism in Europe takes different forms and presents different challenges for the UK. For example, sovereigntist-nationalist parties like AfD are broadly Eurosceptic, ‘Make America Great Again’ (MAGA)-aligned, Kremlin-leaning, and inclined to fracture European Union (EU) cohesion, including on Ukraine.

Illiberal conservatives like PiS are also Eurosceptic and MAGA-aligned, but have a hardline stance on Russia and have adopted a more Atlanticist tradition – but with support for Ukraine more qualified and conditional. Nativist statists like the RN in France have tried to distance themselves from MAGA, but cannot be relied upon when it comes to an enduring commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and support for Ukraine. And these are just the populists on the right wing…

None of these parties are in power yet, but with a presidential ballot in France and parliamentary elections in Poland (where a PiS-supported candidate won the presidency last year) both scheduled for next year, there is a chance that this might change. Germany’s fragile coalition government might also collapse before its full term is up in 2029.

This suggests both opportunities and vulnerabilities for Britain. The opportunities include more flexible security partnerships based on the logic of a ‘coalition of the willing’. There is already a proliferation of different, more-or-less permanent minilateral formats serving distinct but overlapping purposes and cutting across the traditional NATO and EU structures. The UK leads the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), co-leads the ‘Coalition of the Willing’ future Ukraine-based reassurance force, and is part of the European Three (E3) and the Ukraine Defence Contract Group (the Ramstein Group).

This is a sensible approach that plays to British military and diplomatic strengths and mitigates the consequences of both Brexit and the second Trump administration. However, this is just mitigation, not elimination, and additional vulnerabilities remain. Among them is the buildup of right-wing populist momentum across the continent that could add to the seeming inevitability of a Reform government. Even without this, the UK might find itself with a shrinking number of credible and capable security partners in the future.

Preparing for such an eventuality will require doubling down on the Strategic Defence Review, as well as investing more in the resilience of Britain’s own democratic processes and institutions so that the country remains a dependable ally for its remaining partners on the continent.

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The royal state visit of His Majesty King Charles III to the United States (US) has drawn substantial media attention, both during and after the four-day tour. Much has been made of His Majesty’s speech to Congress in particular, with multiple outlets praising it as a ‘masterclass’ in diplomacy – including ones outside of the United Kingdom (UK).

At a time when the US under the Trump administration is expecting its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies to increase defence spending and assume greater burden sharing, hard power has been positioned as the most important factor in British foreign policy. However, His Majesty’s visit has reignited discussion on the benefits of soft power. This provides the basis for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked six experts: Did the King’s visit to America reaffirm the importance of soft power?

Evie Aspinall

Director, British Foreign Policy Group

In an increasingly volatile global environment, it can be easy to focus purely on the need to strengthen hard power – how much ammunition, how many troops, and how equipped is the UK to be able to deter an enemy? These are critical questions, but they often ignore the fact that much of Britain’s standing and influence in the world stems from its soft power: from the fondness leaders derive from their time spent studying in the UK, from its reputation for upholding international law, and from the global intrigue and prestige that follows the Royal Family.

State visits then are an excellent diplomatic tool for Britain, creating powerful symbolic moments that help build a sense of warmth, humanness, and depth to bilateral relationships. This has helped to shape the UK’s position in the world throughout history, from King George VI’s visit to the US prior to the Second World War to the Royals’ embrace of a post-apartheid South Africa.

All that said, has His Majesty’s visit to the US saved the ‘special relationship? No. But that is as much about Donald Trump, President of the US, as it is about the soft power of the Royal Family. Where leaders are traditionally won over by alliances and friendship, Trump has shown a blatant disregard for the traditional rules of the international order, and for American allies and partners.

His Majesty’s visit will have temporarily softened relations, buying Britain a reprieve from Trump, but it will not have changed his long-term calculus when it comes to the UK and Europe. However, that does not mean that soft power does not work, and the value of a light reprieve in the current circumstances should not be underestimated. What it does mean is that soft power, including that of the royals, should be recognised as a key part of the full British diplomatic toolkit, which should be utilised alongside a wide range of other levers in order to support the UK’s security and prosperity in a fast-changing world.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

His Majesty’s visit to the US was an unqualified logistics and presentational success. It was a masterstroke of pomp and circumstance, pitch-perfect messaging (and cheeky humour), and a rare and exceedingly fleeting moment in Washington where everyone came together to celebrate something objectively good.

Most importantly, it pleased Trump. He is nothing if not attracted to the trappings of power, holds a special place in his heart for the Royal Family, and has a nostalgic view of the UK. His Majesty’s visit, therefore, ticked every presidential box.

As much of an objective win as the visit was, whether it counts as a soft power success is ultimately determined by what happens next in British-American relations. It is worth stating that too much emphasis is placed on soft power; states act out of national self-interest (even the US, and well before Trump became President), not simply because they like a counterpart. Likeability, even among allies as close as the UK and US, does nonetheless make relations easier.

Trump has (for now, at least) toned down his rhetorical attacks against Britain and the state of its armed forces, which had reached such levels that Buckingham Palace and 10 Downing Street were considering postponing the visit. If His Majesty’s trip tamps down the rhetoric against the UK and – more importantly – helps to course-correct the seeming downward direction of the special relationship, then the high-risk gamble of using the Crown in a febrile political environment will have paid off. If it only buys a few weeks of quiet on social media, the investment may well not have been worth the gain.

The herculean efforts of Whitehall and the Embassy team in Washington, who worked so diligently to ensure the visit happened as smoothly as it did, should nonetheless be followed by concerted policy action if His Majesty’s (HM) Government hopes to leverage the visit to maximum effect – well beyond the shortened attention span of Washington’s policymakers and (social) media pundits.

Dr Vincent Keating

Associate Professor, Centre for War Studies, University of Southern Denmark

Many commentators have argued that His Majesty’s visit was a masterclass in diplomacy that reinforced shared historical values between the two states, even drawing praise from Trump. But does this diplomatic success actually reaffirm the importance of soft power?

Firstly, the ability of cultural or ideological content to generate soft power depends heavily on its resonance within other states. In this regard, the visit played to multiple audiences. Conservatives appeared to admire King Charles’ status as a monarch and his references to Christian values, while liberals appreciated his remarks to Congress regarding the limits of executive power. His Majesty successfully provided ideological resonance across the political spectrum, which is beneficial to the cultivation of soft power.

Secondly, soft power is not merely a popularity contest. Fundamentally, it is the capacity to influence another state’s foreign policy. Therefore, to claim that the visit enhanced British soft power, the US, or at least key constituencies within it, must become more aligned with the foreign policy objectives of the UK. Whether a single visit by a prominent figure can move this needle and permanently transform American perceptions or whether pre-existing transatlantic ideological divides will cause a rapid return to the historical baseline remains highly uncertain.

Therefore, while the visit illustrates that projecting soft power remains feasible despite increasing global ideological polarisation, the conversion of this resonance into the tangible desired foreign policy alignment likely requires a sophisticated and sustained diplomatic effort.

Dr Ksenia Kirkham

Senior Lecturer in Economic Warfare Education, King’s College London

Framed as ceremonial diplomacy, this off-protocol visit by His Majesty to the US was indeed an exercise in last-resort British soft power.

King Charles broke from established neutrality to deliver a political signal. His message was implicitly directed toward a Democrat audience, effectively lobbying against Trump’s security and foreign policy agenda. However, what appears as an exercise in damage limitation rather than diplomatic confidence will only have limited impact as geoeconomic realities kick in.

From a geoeconomic perspective, the symbolic soft power performance contrasts with prospective decline for both states. For the UK, its ever-growing sanctions regime has realigned energy and financial markets in ways that gradually erode British competitiveness while offering few compensating gains.

The UK’s economy is dangerously exposed to higher energy prices from the disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, and will remain so for as long as HM Government remains committed to a policy of managed decline of North Sea oil and gas production. By contrast, the US, despite its disastrous Iran strategy, remains in a comparatively stronger position, both as a key exporter of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) and by virtue of its geographic distance from the primary zones of escalation.

Overall, while ceremony and warmth may ease friction in the short term, soft power is unlikely to correct the structural imbalance between the two countries. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) will be the key variable in this equation. Britain should avoid being drawn into another conflict (potentially more devastating than previous wars) and instead pursue a more balanced set of relations, rather than further entrenching its subordinate position within the intensifying American-Chinese geoeconomic rivalry.

Thomas Nurcombe

Research Manager, Coalition for Global Prosperity

His Majesty’s visit to the US came after months of tension between the White House and 10 Downing Street. Indeed, three weeks before King Charles landed in America, Trump compared Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, to Neville Chamberlain.

The visit provided a brief respite from the transatlantic strain. Trump declared that the US has ‘no closer friends’ than the UK, while His Majesty emphasised the importance of British-American cooperation, with AUKUS featuring prominently. Trump is evidently receptive to the Royal Family’s soft power, and this has helped to paper over current political frictions.

Nevertheless, the challenges facing the special relationship run far deeper than tensions between political leaders. The partnership rests less on sentimentalism than on the UK’s ability to advance shared interests through intelligence cooperation, military capability, and global influence.

This is increasingly under pressure. The Ministry of Defence’s £28 billion shortfall, a reluctance to designate the PRC as a threat, and Britain’s waning international influence – often allowing the rise of Russian and Chinese influence – are all weakening the foundations of the relationship.

A stronger British defence posture, particularly in the High North, will be key to preserving the relationship over the long term. The UK should also align its wider foreign policy tools more closely with the strategic competition against Russia and the PRC. If it fails to increase its strategic value to the US, the damage to the special relationship could prove irreparable, and no amount of soft power will be enough to compensate.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

Soft power is notoriously difficult to measure, and its effects are difficult to assess. It also cannot bridge significant divides in outlook or policy between two states. A state visit is more than an expression of soft power; it is an important piece of diplomatic action which a host state can use to signal that it values the preservation or deepening of a foreign policy relationship.

For HM Government, ‘deploying’ the House of Windsor to host and conduct state visits allows the UK to use what Walter Bagehot called the ‘dignified’ part of government to stimulate goodwill towards Britain. This function was well demonstrated during His Majesty’s visit to the US.

The visit clearly had importance and significance for Trump. His demeanour during the ceremonial and public events of the trip clearly demonstrated that he has a strong affinity for a key institution of the British state. His Majesty’s address to Congress was a masterful delivery in form and substance of the UK’s foreign policy philosophy, aspirations, and significance to a key constituency with which HM Government needs to maintain influence – regardless of whoever occupies the White House.

The visit was a masterclass in how the Royal Family can be used as an affective foreign policy tool by Britain, impacting perceptions of the country. It is a reminder that whatever the external perceptions of the government in office, the Royals’ unique appeal creates an affinity for Britain that can be used to national advantage.

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On 26th March, Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, participated in a virtual meeting of the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), the ten-country rapid response coalition dedicated to security in the High North. Following this, Gen. Jennie Carnigan, Canadian Chief of the Defence Staff, met with counterparts from JEF nations in London in early April.

These actions suggest an increasing likelihood that Canada will join the JEF – a possibility discussed amid tense relations with the United States (US) and growing adversarial interest in the High North, as well as the expanded ‘Wider North’. This provides the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked nine experts: Should Canada join the JEF?

Minna Ålander

Analyst, Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS), Swedish Institute of International Affairs

The JEF is currently the best military cooperation instrument available to like-minded countries in Europe and beyond, given that it does not necessarily require participating countries to be either European Union (EU) or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) members. Finland and Sweden were already members of the JEF before joining NATO, and the United Kingdom (UK), Norway, and Iceland are not EU member states. As Canada contributes to NATO presence in Latvia, Canadian forces are already on the ground in the Wider North.

The expected reduction of American contributions to NATO’s defence plans makes it imperative that Northern European countries and Canada ensure that they are able to defend the wider High North and North Atlantic on their own. Given that the Nordic countries and UK are directly exposed to Russian interests in the North Atlantic, they need to ensure strategic depth, reinforcements, and supplies from across the Atlantic. Canada’s inclusion is therefore long overdue.

Another country that should be upgraded from enhanced partner to full member of the JEF is Ukraine. There is currently no institution in the European security architecture that could integrate Ukraine in any short timeframe, but membership in the JEF would help it to become interoperable with Northern European NATO forces and give JEF nations invaluable insights into Ukraine’s battlefield experience. Red teaming in exercises with Ukrainian drone operators, such as in the Swedish-led Aurora 26 exercise, is a resource which the JEF should make more structured use of.

Prof. Klaus Dodds

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Professor of Geopolitics and Faculty Dean, Middlesex University London

Canada should be invited to join the JEF immediately. Ottawa enjoys a close military relationship with many JEF members, including Britain, and has already worked closely with the group. Membership could – and should – be framed as graduated recognition of operational and strategic realities.

The fundamental reason for Canada’s membership is twofold. Firstly, the relationship between Ottawa and Washington has been turned upside down as a direct consequence of the repeated belligerence of Donald Trump, President of the US. Carney’s speech at Davos in January 2026 spoke of ‘rupture’, and did not need to cite Trump directly. The US is no longer a ‘reliable’ security partner for Canada, Denmark, and the UK.

Secondly (and because of the first reason), a coalition of like-minded northern hemispheric countries stretching from Canada to Finland addresses both the persistent unreliability of Washington and the ongoing threat posed by Russia.

The creation of an expanded Euro-Atlantic coalition will enhance interoperability and deterrence capabilities, tempered by a recognition that Ottawa is embarking on a defence rebuilding process; the ‘Build at Home’ Defence Industrial Strategy. Currently, dependence on the American security umbrella remains high.

However, even enhanced participation by Canada would signal a collective recognition that the North Atlantic and Arctic are part of a shared Wider North. Russia is a common foe. Full membership of the JEF would come later, with guarantees that Ottawa could meet operational requirements.

It is worth noting that Canada was invited to join JEF in 2013 but declined. 13 years later, the strategic optics and operational realities appear very different in the Wider North.

Dr Anisa Heritage

Senior Lecturer, Department of Defence and International Affairs, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst

There is strong mutual strategic and operational logic to Canada joining the JEF. Its flexibility in dealing with sub-threshold threats and its specific focus on maritime security, critical infrastructure protection, and rapid deployment in the High North and Arctic are mutually beneficial.

With Canadian membership, the JEF would become the transatlantic operational framework for High North and Arctic activity, addressing the existing geographic gap across the North Atlantic and Arctic Circle. Canadian membership would increase the JEF’s deterrence credibility, and signal to adversaries that Euro-Atlantic security remains deeply connected across the High North, Baltic, and North Atlantic theatres.

Formalising Canadian membership cements already deepening military collaboration across domains. From a British Armed Forces perspective, Canadian membership would enhance existing Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) and basing capabilities essential for Arctic security. In the land domain, Canadian forces are recognised for their proficiency in sub-zero temperature survival and warfare, maintaining dedicated Arctic training units.

Canadian JEF membership would also bring potential future benefits, such as increased force pooling with a culturally aligned partner (with operational experience of American Command and Control) and cutting costs on critical kit procurement.

However, there are caveats. High North security is increased if the JEF possesses credible, deployable capabilities. Although Carney recently announced that Canada is now investing 2% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) into defence, this is well below the JEF average. In addition, Canadian procurement and warfighting modernisation lag behind JEF counterparts, leading to concerns that Carney can only virtue signal rather than offer real capability or military readiness right now.

Canadian membership of the JEF is logical. However, it needs to address significant deficiencies in its current military capabilities and warfighting readiness, and increase its military commitments if it is to contribute meaningfully to the coalition.

Anthony Heron

Research Associate and Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Arctic Institute

The question should not be whether Canada should join the JEF, but why it has taken this long to consider it seriously.

Canada is more than just a capable Arctic nation; it is Europe’s most steadfast North American partner at a moment when reliability cannot be taken for granted. As the US retreats from its traditional role as guarantor of the international order, Canada has signalled a clear-eyed pivot towards deeper European engagement. JEF membership would formalise what is already a natural strategic alignment.

The military case is compelling. Canada brings world-class Arctic capabilities, a sophisticated understanding of High North maritime operations, and an armed forces culture that is deeply interoperable with existing JEF members. The Greenland-Iceland-UK (GIUK) gap and the increasingly contested High North are precisely the domains where Canadian expertise and assets would strengthen the framework’s collective posture.

There is also a political dimension that matters. Expanding the JEF to include Canada would send an unambiguous signal – to Moscow, Beijing, and Washington – that European security architecture is deepening rather than fracturing. At a moment of transatlantic uncertainty, such a signal has value beyond military utility.

The JEF was built to secure the northern maritime environment. Canada belongs in it.

Linas Kojala

Chief Executive Officer, Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre

Canada joining the JEF could make strategic sense, but the real question is whether it would produce more deterrence – not merely one more political format.

What is seen today is a wider search for new security arrangements. Countries are adjusting to changing geopolitical realities and less predictable American priorities. This explains the renewed interest in the JEF, deeper EU-Canada cooperation, and even the debate in Canada about closer links with the EU – strikingly, Abacus Data found that 48% of Canadians support their country becoming an EU member, even if this remains politically and legally remote.

From a Lithuanian and Baltic perspective, Canada’s interest in the JEF is not abstract. The Baltic Sea, the North Atlantic, and the Arctic are now part of the same strategic theatre. Russian military pressure, sabotage risks, ‘shadow fleet’ activity, and threats to critical infrastructure connect these regions.

Canada would bring Arctic knowledge, Atlantic geography, maritime capabilities, and political weight. It also maintains an important military presence in Latvia. For the JEF – especially after the enhanced partnership with Ukraine – this could add useful dynamism. However, formats do not deter Russia by themselves. Defence spending, readiness, ammunition, air defence, military mobility, and political will matter more than the organisational flag under which leaders meet.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Joining the JEF would align with Carney’s efforts to diversify Canada’s security relationships away from the US while tightening existing bonds with key allies and partners. Geographically, the arrangement makes sense for Canada. Aside from being an Arctic country like the Nordic states, Canada leads the multinational brigade in Latvia. That the JEF has a maritime and expeditionary focus thus complements what Canada is already doing on land in the Baltic region.

For European allies, Canadian participation is attractive because it helps to implicate North America further into their own continental security. Participating in the JEF also lends greater coherence to Canadian defence and foreign policy than some of the other efforts that Carney has made to broaden Canada’s strategic relationships, most notably the recent deals with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and Qatar.

That said, although being part of the JEF might make sense for Canada, Canadian defence planners cannot sidestep the important question of what sort of force posture their country should have, and should support financially. Trying to have everything while being everywhere all at once will amount to little if attention is still spread unevenly and capability gaps remain wide.

Unfortunately, such has been the general tendency in Canadian foreign and defence policy – even when times get difficult, as they are today. The JEF is a worthy venture, but some experts have observed that it has already suffered from insufficient attention and resourcing from its existing members. On its own, Canada cannot address those possible shortcomings – and it may yet contribute to them if its own participation ends up being an afterthought.

Dr Eoin McNamara

Postdoctoral Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

JEF membership is appealing for Canada. At Davos, Carney announced an ambitious vision to lead an evolution in multilateralism in cooperation with other ‘middle powers’. Membership in the JEF would be another step towards realising this vision.

Politically, this would galvanise Canada’s links with the UK and the Nordic-Baltic region, an already effective network in defining the European security policy agenda. Canada faces similar Arctic security challenges as the Nordic states. JEF membership would offer Canada some extra military benefits beyond NATO, through more multinational exercises in cold weather operations and Arctic warfare.

However, it is doubtful that Canada currently holds the military capacity to commit effectively to the JEF, although Ottawa does understand that it must rebuild its military before taking on further transatlantic commitments. Unable to rely as much on its alliance with the US, Canada’s independent defence capacity is under pressure to cover serious security challenges in the Arctic, the Atlantic and the Pacific.

Canada already leads NATO’s multinational Forward Land Forces (FLF) battlegroup in Latvia. Therefore, while JEF membership is politically attractive for Canada, Ottawa has other pressing military priorities, which means that committing to additional JEF commitments is a challenge. More broadly, the JEF holds political attraction as a function of an influential Northern European security community.

However, this must not overtake the need for JEF members to commit sufficient military resources. Developing military capabilities remains key if the JEF’s strategic relevance is to continue.

Matthew Palmer

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The short answer is a very tentative yes.

Caution must be expressed when it comes to the expansion of minilateral organisations like the JEF. The JEF’s strengths come not just from its flexibility, but the like-mindedness and, importantly, the geographical proximity of its members. While not originally focused on Northern European security, it has naturally moved in that direction as a result of geographic logic and Russian aggression.

The JEF’s structure is also fundamentally based on the UK as by far the largest power; being the primary framework nation into which other JEF allies plug in. For this reason, alternative proposals of inviting other large nations such as Germany or Poland are unwise, as it would complicate the structure and politics of the organisation. It should also be remembered that, fundamentally, the JEF is a medium-sized military headquarters. With expansion might come greater responsibility, which would require an increase in resource and authority.

If another NATO country was to join the JEF, Canada would be by far the most likely candidate. A growing area of focus for the JEF is arctic security, in which Canada has both significant interest and expertise. The flexibility of the JEF would allow Canada to participate in an Atlantic security architecture outside NATO, and without American involvement. Furthermore, the JEF’s flexibility would allow for broader engagement of European nations in Canadian maritime security if required. However, clarity on what all parties expect to receive and contribute to an expanded JEF would be crucial in order to avoid strategic drift and diluting the core purpose and advantages of the organisation.

Ryan Wu

Policy Researcher and Susan Strange Fellow, Helsinki Geoeconomics Society

Canada commands the longest Arctic coastline, yet, for decades, Ottawa has neglected this geostrategic asset. Carney’s CA$40 billion (£21.7 billion) northern rearmament and preparation for ‘large-scale conflicts’ mark a paradigm shift in Canadian defence policy. Canadian accession to the JEF as a full member would bring the Wider North into an integrated geopolitical space, binding the Arctic, GIUK gap, and North Atlantic into one theatre of deterrence under British leadership.

Canadian sovereignty is now under strain from three directions. Washington’s coercion of Canada and Greenland, including Trump’s refusal to rule out use of force, has destabilised the Article 5 security guarantee. Russia’s remilitarisation of the High North projects the power of its Northern Fleet through the Bear Gap, while sub-threshold warfare targets critical undersea infrastructure across the Euro-Atlantic.

The PRC poses the least-confronted long-term strategic risk. Its entrenchment through dual-use hydrographic mapping of submarine corridors and Polar Silk Road shipping exploits vulnerabilities in Canadian surveillance and investment screening infrastructure. NATO’s consensus architecture was not built for this convergence of threats, which is why Canada is turning towards the middle-power coalitions called for in Carney’s Davos speech.

Canada needs Europe, and Europe needs Canada. Canada’s Arctic Archipelago and strategic position over the Northwest Passage would extend the JEF’s maritime reach across the North Atlantic into North American Arctic waters. In return, Ottawa would secure a minilateral coalition where shared threat perception is matched by defence spending and hard-power commitment, strengthening transatlantic economic security.

Beijing’s ‘near-Arctic’ posture is designed to exploit the fault lines between North American and European command structures. Only the JEF, with Canada as its 11th member, can close them. Accession would formalise the end of Arctic exceptionalism, stake the first claim in Canada’s Arctic power ambition, and open the door to deeper economic integration with the EU.

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His Majesty’s (HM) Government has shelved the process of transferring the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT) – the controversial ‘Chagos deal’ – to Mauritius amid fluctuating relations with the United States (US) since early 2026. Having first agreed to cede the archipelago in 2024, the United Kingdom (UK) signed the deal with Mauritius in May 2025, which included retention of the joint British-American military base on Diego Garcia for a cost of at least £101 million per year for 99 years.

While HM Government adhered to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruling that the detachment of the Chagos Archipelago from Mauritius was wrongful, it was advisory, not legally binding. Thus, considering the most recent development in the BIOT deal and the UK’s loss of face on the global stage, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: Is Britain overly subservient to international law?

Dr Hillary Briffa

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London

The UK is not overly subservient to international law. The BIOT case indicates a different problem: inconsistency. Britain is usually happy to invoke international law when it supports its wider foreign policy position, but more hesitant when legal rulings cut across strategic interests or the legacies of empire.

From the Mauritian perspective, Chagos is a decolonisation issue. It goes to the heart of how independence was handled, and whether that process was lawful. In 2019, the ICJ concluded that Mauritius’ decolonisation had not been completed lawfully because the Chagos Archipelago had been detached before independence. The United Nations (UN) General Assembly then backed this position, and called on the UK to end its administration of the islands.

The ruling is salient beyond the BIOT itself. For small states, international law is one of the few tools available to push back against raw power. If larger states brush aside rulings when they become inconvenient, the message is stark: rules only apply when you are weak. This is not a good look for a country that regularly presents itself as a champion of the ‘rules-based international order’.

There are other issues too. Diego Garcia still carries major strategic value, and the rights and wishes of Chagossians must be taken seriously. Even so, the proposed deal showed that legal principle and strategic interest can be reconciled. Sovereignty could pass to Mauritius while the base continues to operate under lease.

Therefore, the real question is whether Britain is willing to follow international law even when it is not the easiest option, because doing so strengthens its credibility, shows that its principles are applied consistently, and gives real meaning to its support for a rules-based international order.

Brig. (rtd.) Rory Copinger-Symes CBE

Senior Adviser, Bondi Partners and SecureCloud+, and Non-Executive Director, Halo International Group

The question contains a flaw. International law is not a buffet from which nations select convenient portions. You are either a signatory to its frameworks or you are not. To describe the UK as ‘overly subservient’ to obligations it has voluntarily and formally undertaken is simply to describe a nation honouring its word.

The real issue is not subservience, but interpretation. Britain’s courts and political culture have developed a habit of reading international obligations in their most expansive form. Where treaty language is ambiguous, the UK defaults to constraint. France deploys its military across the Sahel with minimal legal hand-wringing. Hungary defies European Court rulings with impunity. Britain ties itself in knots over the removal of a single foreign national.

This distinction matters acutely in the Indo-Pacific. The UK’s AUKUS commitments and its broader strategic focus eastward demand credibility – which comes from being a reliable partner. Yet, export licensing delays, legal constraints on intelligence cooperation, and institutional caution about sub-threshold operations all erode that credibility.

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) does not agonise over legal interpretation. It shapes facts on the ground – in the South China Sea, in Taiwan’s approaches, and in its economic coercion of regional partners – while remaining nominally within the letter of international frameworks. Britain, meanwhile, applies the spirit of those same frameworks with a rigour that its adversaries find baffling and its allies find frustrating.

The BIOT dispute crystallises this perfectly. A decision with profound basing implications for Diego Garcia – and therefore for British and American power projection across the Indian Ocean – became entangled in legal and moral obligations that, however genuine, carried strategic costs that were either ignored or underweighted.

The UK does not need to abandon international law. Rather, it needs to rediscover the confidence to interpret it – as every serious state does – in light of its own national interest. That is not subservience. That is sovereignty.

Deniz Güzel

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and English-qualified lawyer

The shelving of the BIOT deal is a welcome turn to a saga which the UK should never have entertained. It submitted to a lawfare campaign orchestrated by Mauritius, which mobilised votes at the UN General Assembly against Britain’s sovereignty over the territory, triggering an advisory opinion from the ICJ that considered the UK’s administration of the territory to be a ‘wrongful act’.

In 2024, David Lammy, then Foreign Secretary, claimed that the deal would strengthen Britain’s ability to challenge Russian and Chinese violations of international law in Ukraine and the South China Sea. This supported the view of Lord Hermer, Attorney General, that the UK should rebuild its reputation as a leader in international law by first honouring its legal obligations.

However, while Britain frets about the consequences of ignoring a non-binding opinion on the BIOT or constrains itself through a restrictive approach to military targeting in Iran, the PRC and Russia will continue to breach and instrumentalise international law to achieve objectives contrary to British and allied interests. The UK should not assume that its ‘goodness’ is enough, and should recognise that the legal domain is now a central arena of strategic competition that it must navigate. By clinging to a nostalgic and idealised vision of international law, Britain risks rendering itself strategically weak and unprepared for a harsher world.

The UK should, therefore, integrate lawfare into its broader strategic outlook, enabling it to identify and counter hostile legal campaigns, reassess treaty commitments that impose outdated constraints, resist over‑expansive judicial interpretations, and shape international law in emerging domains such as space. Only by adopting a proactive, rather than restrictive, approach to international law can British interests be protected effectively on the international stage.

David Landsman OBE*

Chair, British Foreign Policy Group

International law differs from domestic law for the political reason that states have sovereignty. Sovereign states choose whether to accede to treaties and to accept international laws. They may do so as a condition of their relationships with others – e.g., European Union (EU) members accepting the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) – but the decision is still political. No international body has the legitimacy of a sovereign nation.

International organisations, including courts, only have authority if their sovereign members choose to accept it. In practice, their decisions can be influenced by states’ political interests. There is also the risk of a ‘principal-agent’ conflict if an organisation and the professionals associated with it advance their own interests and values distinct from the views of its members. Appeals to an ‘international rules-based system’ are political rather than legal, and in a multipolar world, more contested.

Rules are, of course, essential for trust in business, and international agreements on arms control and the environment, for example, bring wider benefits. However, the UK needs to be clear-eyed about its and others’ interests, and more selective about the commitments it makes: caveating them where national interests require, and opting out where necessary.

Not complying with laws a country has accepted destroys trust: refusing to comply is legitimate and should be respected. The latest version of HM Government’s Ministerial Code, which requires ministers to comply with international law on par with national law, is an abrogation of the sovereign state’s duty to its citizens and their interests.

*This response is written in a personal capacity, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the British Foreign Policy Group.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge

I agree that Britain has become overly subservient to international law. For a succession of governments, homage to international law has become the guiding principle of foreign policy at serious cost to the UK. The BIOT deal is the clearest example of this, but the same applies in multiple arenas – from the recent decision to deny American access to British military bases to policy on asylum and immigration.

I base this view on three considerations.

First, the primary duty of any government in the international arena is to uphold national interest. That does not mean disregarding international law. On the contrary, the UK has an interest in promoting a rules-based system that provides predictability and order. But, where international law comes into serious conflict with national interest, the latter should prevail.

Second, international law is not law in the same sense as domestic law. It is not enacted by a sovereign legislature or enforced by a central authority. Rather, it is a body of norms, treaties, and agreements on how states should behave in the international arena, and is inherently more flexible and contingent than domestic law – to the point that states can resile from treaties that contravene their interests.

Third, in today’s geopolitical climate, excessive deference can be counterproductive. The logic of self-restraint presumes adherence to international law by other states – especially Britain’s adversaries. However, that is not the world we inhabit today, if ever we did.

The UK’s opponents ignore, reinterpret, or instrumentalise international law to advance their own interests, and for Britain to bind itself rigidly to it is to place the country at a strategic disadvantage, or worse – as in the case of the BIOT deal – to undermine its national interest.

Dr Danielle Reeder

Freelance security and defence consultant

A major theme within the ICJ’s advisory opinion on the legal consequences of separating the Chagos Islands from Mauritius concerned the principle of self-determination and the human rights implications of colonial rule. Neither the method of ending the UK’s administration over the Chagos Archipelago, nor the manner in which the deal was executed, can be deemed as having seriously foregrounded these particular legal issues.

The drafters of the BIOT deal were correct in understanding that decolonisation is not a political choice, despite the way the deal is currently being discussed. It is a mandated condition of modern international relations. It is merely a fact that maintaining 20th century colonies into the 21st – and 22nd – centuries is logistically problematic.

That is not to say that Britain’s hands were tied, or that the deal was adequately comprehensive – poor upfront explanation to the public, renegotiating on terms overly favourable to the new Mauritian government, and U-turns based on winds of change from Washington all deserve critique.

Maintaining vital military assets abroad should not be conflated with maintaining colonies, even if the current location of bases are credited to a colonial past. Trying to posture to any state, particularly Russia or the PRC, through lawfare cannot have a controlled effect. The UK is in no position to be drawn into bygone spheres-of-influence policy, or continue simply to react to American decisions du jour.

The various pitfalls of the BIOT deal are not indicative of subservience to international law. They signal a problem with Britain’s purported vision of its global leadership model. The UK has to mind the ripple effects of being seen to ignore international law, but it must also consider its strategic coherence – which it is currently struggling to do effectively.

The Rt. Hon. Anne-Marie Trevelyan

Minister for the Indo-Pacific (2022-2024) and Secretary of State for International Trade (2021-2022)

Shelving the handover of the BIOT to Mauritius demonstrates a belated understanding that Britain’s Indo‑Pacific posture rests not on words, but on hard power and the needs of critical allies. Diego Garcia is one of the most globally strategically important islands, underpinning the UK’s Five Eyes power projection capability. It is remote, unglamorous, and indispensable.

Washington’s refusal to agree to changes to the UK-US Treaty, which would enable the giveaway, is a clear reminder that interdependence and trust with Five Eyes partners must be the determining factor in Britain’s decisions. Even when individual leaders are throwing tomatoes at each other, the deep ties and reasons for the alliance are undiminished, and must be protected.

The BIOT deal is not an isolated issue; it sits squarely within the UK’s need to be a serious Indo‑Pacific actor. HM Government has remembered what disruption to choke points does to British economic security vis-à-vis the Strait of Hormuz and consequent energy price hikes. If this happened in the Malacca or Taiwan Straits, it would affect everything from food and phones to chips and cheap Chinese imports. The UK cannot assume someone else will protect its economic interests – it has to be there.

From the South China Sea to the Red Sea, freedom of navigation is under daily pressure. Diego Garcia supports persistent maritime domain awareness, enables rapid response operations, and underwrites deterrence across those key chokepoints.

By shelving the deal, Britain has – perhaps accidentally – chosen strategic continuity over legal resolution. That choice will reassure partners living in this increasingly contested region where sub-threshold coercion, attacks on undersea cables, militarisation of sea lanes, and the weaponisation of legal ambiguity is a daily reality.

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On 25th March, the United Nations (UN) adopted a resolution that declared the transatlantic slave trade to be the ‘gravest crime against humanity’. Spearheaded by Ghana, the resolution received 123 votes in favour, three against, and 52 abstentions – including from the United Kingdom (UK).

While not legally binding, such UN resolutions often carry geopolitical significance. Given the controversy over the righteousness of reparations for the slave trade, and the fact that the British taxpayer would potentially be on the line were such reparations to be initiated, should the UK not embrace a more forceful position? This question forms the basis of this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked four experts: Was Britain right to abstain from the UN vote on slavery reparations?

Prof. Lawrence Goldman FRHistS

Lecturer (CUF) in Modern History, University of Oxford, and Executive Editor, History Reclaimed

Yes, the UK was right to abstain, because the transatlantic slave trade was not a crime in Britain – or anywhere else – during the period when Britain was involved in it (roughly from the 16th century to the early years of the 19th century).

It is looked upon it differently today, of course, but until 1807, when the slave trade was abolished by Parliament, it was, however horrendous, not illegal. It would be against all the principles of English and Scottish law to criminalise retrospectively something that was once legal.

In addition, the following points should be noted:

1. The UN resolution makes no mention of the Arab slave trade out of Africa, which sold even more Africans into the Ottoman Empire and the Near East generally than were transported across the Atlantic; and

2. The first stage of West African slavery involved the capture and enslavement of Africans by other Africans, who sold their captives at the ports to European traders.

Why does the motion not ask for reparations from Arab and African nations that also captured and sold slaves? Also important to note is that in 1807, when Britain became the first major nation to outlaw the trade, more people around the world laboured as forced labourers – whether as slaves, serfs, or indentured servants – than as free men and women.

In short, the UK was right to abstain, because the motion does not condemn all slavery and human sale; only that undertaken by ‘Western’ nations.

Prof. Toni Haastrup

Chair, University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES), and Professor, International Politics, University of Manchester

Britain’s abstention on the UN vote on slavery reparations is a political choice. It is not a principled position. It is an evasion.

To be clear, reparations are not simply about financial transfers between governments. They are about confronting the ongoing legacies of colonialism; the dispossession and the structural inequalities, often gendered, that shape the realities of Africa and African-descendent people globally.

The past is not behind us. It is present in every trade arrangement that perpetuates extraction, every multilateral institution that centres ‘Western’ interests as universal ones, and every decision that reproduces a hierarchy of whose lives are grievable, whose sovereignty is protected, and whose destruction is permitted.

The UK’s abstention at this moment signals a refusal to reckon with these issues. Britain has indeed already helped to develop the architecture of accountability through instruments such as the Basic Principles on the Right to Remedy, which it is now choosing to step back from when being asked to move from rhetoric to action.

What makes the abstention particularly telling is its timing. As Official Development Assistance (ODA) budgets are slashed, and many commitments to justice are quietly being hollowed out, this feels like another nail in the coffin for the idea of a progressive ‘Global Britain’.

So, no, the UK was not right to abstain. It was wrong.

Prof. Alan Lester

Professor of Historical Geography, School of Global Studies, University of Sussex

Britain was wrong to abstain not just on moral grounds – its dominance of transatlantic slavery in the 18th century was one of the greatest crimes against humanity ever – but also because agreeing to reparations talks may well be in the UK’s long-term interests.

To get one thing straight, reparations have been deliberately misrepresented by those opposed to any kind of conversation. They are not the transfer of trillions of dollars, charged to British taxpayers. US$19 trillion (£14.2 trillion) is the amount calculated by Brattle Group consultants as theoretically owed, were the UK ever to pay the wages of generations of enslaved workers, compound interest, and damages for the trauma of racialised captivity.

This is not what the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) and its African allies are seeking. They are asking for talks that might ultimately result in agreed bespoke measures (as happened between Germany and Israel after the Second World War). The outcome would most likely be as follows:

• First, an apology and recognition that the scars of transatlantic slavery persist in racial and geographical inequalities maintained through indebtedness, multinational mis-invoicing, punitive debt, and exploitative resource extraction; and

• Second, an agreement on long-term measures of support, such as debt relief, assistance with health care, low-carbon energy transfer, and climate change adaptation.

The refusal even to begin a conversation is denting British moral leadership, creating distrust, and preventing the formation of sorely needed new alliances. Reparative discussions could revive the Commonwealth as a meaningful entity, embracing African countries with some of the world’s most critical minerals that are now being assiduously courted by the People’s Republic of China (PRC). With reparations talks, the UK has a chance to enhance a much-diminished global status, free of dependency on the United States (US).

Martin Plaut

Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Commonwealth Studies, University of London

The answer to the question must be ‘yes’. Slavery is a critically important question, but the way it was posed before the UN was badly misguided. The resolution calls for ‘recognition of the transatlantic slave trade and slavery as the gravest crime against humanity’. By framing the call for action in this manner, the full horror of African enslavement is obscured.

No recognition is given to the far longer, equally substantial, and just as brutal trade across the Indian Ocean. There is no reason to single out the transatlantic trade when it accounted for perhaps 20% or 25% of Africa’s historic enslavement.

The trade with Arabia, or that controlled by Arabian nations, was at least as large as that undertaken by the Europeans or Americans. It began much earlier and continued into the 1960s or 1970s. Should the modern Arab countries not also be approached for reparations if this debate is to encompass the whole gamut of enslavement?

Indigenous slavery by Egypt, the Sokoto Caliphate, and Ethiopia (to name just three) is ignored. So too is the role of indigenous elites in historic enslavement, for which they too should be held to account.

Most importantly of all, the resolution fails to tackle contemporary chattel slavery in at least five African states today: Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Libya, and Sudan. The African Union, Arab League, and UN have all failed to put pressure on member states to end this notorious practice.

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Since its inception in December 2022, the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) has existed as a trilateral initiative between the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, and Japan, aiming to develop a sixth-generation combat aircraft. Other countries, including Germany, Saudi Arabia, and India, have also expressed interest in becoming involved in the programme, with Poland becoming the most recent to do so at the tail end of last week.

John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, has expressed Britain’s openness to expanding the GCAP partnership in response to Polish interest. At the same time, however, Japan has signalled concern over what it perceives to be budgetary stalling by the UK. Building upon these developments, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: What is the future of GCAP?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Lecturer, Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)

Poland’s interest in GCAP reflects the need to expand its air power in the longer-term perspective in response to requirements for deterrence on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) eastern flank. However, official communications concerning Polish participation in the programme emphasise rebuilding national aerospace industrial capabilities in the 2030s.

A comparison with Poland’s negotiations with Saab regarding the A26 Blekinge class submarine programme is instructive. The Swedish offer is structured around technology transfer, co-production, and the development of domestic industrial capacity, including Polish shipyards’ involvement in construction and lifecycle support.

By contrast, GCAP appears to require pre-existing advanced capabilities. Poland’s contribution could focus on component manufacturing, software integration, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and uncrewed systems, rather than the core platform design. For Britain and Italy especially, Polish participation would strengthen already intensifying defence-industrial cooperation, including programmes concerning frigates, rotary aviation, and air and missile defence. Moreover, it would reinforce GCAP’s position relative to the rival French-German Future Combat Air System (FCAS) programme.

However, Poland is testing parallel pathways. Cooperation with South Korea on the KF-21 Boramae fighter aircraft programme offers a credible route to industrial participation, on top of existing programmes in land warfare systems and FA-50 light combat aircraft, with proven potential for technology transfers. Engagement with Sweden on a successor to the JAS 39 Gripen multirole fighter aircraft presents yet another option.

The trajectory that could secure GCAP’s future growth would be a tiered expansion model, in which partners such as Poland are integrated into high-value industrial chains. This would enable the programme to shift the balance among non-American combat air initiatives in its favour.

Arun Dawson

PhD Candidate, Freeman Air and Space Institute, King’s College London, and Advisory Associate, Oxford Analytica

First flight in 2027 and entry into service in 2035 – at least, that is the plan. In practice, the scale and complexity of GCAP’s ambition make that challenging.

Beyond the technical risks – of which there are many – a central question is whether partner nations can reconcile immediate readiness requirements with long-term capability. The UK’s repeated delays in publishing a Defence Investment Plan, critical to funding GCAP, raise doubts on both counts. The frustration of its partners is palpable, as is the resulting erosion in deterrence.

GCAP nevertheless remains attractive relative to other sixth-generation fighter efforts. It promises the survivability, range, and connectivity required to operate in highly contested airspace while reinforcing industrial and operational sovereignty. Growing external interest is therefore unsurprising, but should be treated cautiously.

However appealing they may make the economics, additional partners risk diluting the programme’s current strengths: alignment of strategic intent and a pragmatic approach to collaboration. A lower-risk pathway for prospective collaborators may instead lie within the wider Future Combat Air System initiative, particularly in uncrewed elements designed to operate alongside the core platform.

These tensions show that GCAP is as much a test of statecraft as it is of metalwork and digital architectures. Can participating nations conceive and execute long-term strategies that combine military, economic, and diplomatic considerations – despite external shocks – to secure their national interests? If so, the future of GCAP is the future of Britain.

Wg. Cdr. Ben Goodwin MBE*

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Whether a pocket of the air littoral over trenches or a suppressed corridor deep into enemy territory, combat air power is needed. GCAP will be part of the mix of systems to achieve this, and the programme is focused rightly on range and payload, the sine qua non of air power.

Autonomy is in an avalanche of development. It strikes me that we are at something like a Jackie Fisher moment, particularly for air power: an inundation of autonomous, cheap weapons, with very long range.

Range and payload still matter. These roles should be the boundaries of GCAP’s design. The bleeding edge of technology should sit in the supporting systems with which GCAP will integrate, be they weapons, decoys, or jammers: software-defined, autonomous systems.

Alongside range and payload, industrial impact and service entry date drive the programme. The design and manufacturing investment made by the UK – currently budgeted at over £12 billion – should advance British manufacturing capabilities sustainably and significantly, all the way along the supply chain. This is closely linked to when GCAP will be fielded. When the threat changes, so does the mission – the UK must be able to design and manufacture rapidly.

GCAP cannot do everything. However, the flexibility of its great range and payload, and its timely delivery, will make it a potent air platform for the constantly developing technology that Britain and its allies will need to deploy.

*This response was written by the author in a personal capacity. The opinions expressed are his own, and do not reflect the views of His Majesty’s (HM) Government or the Ministry of Defence.

Air Marshal (rtd.) Sir Christopher Harper KBE FRAeS

Member of the Air and Space Power Group, Royal Aeronautical Society

Having worked on international combat air programmes in the past, I can see both the promise and potential pitfalls associated with GCAP. As a relatively young officer in the Royal Air Force (RAF), I was involved in the design and development phases of the Eurofighter Typhoon; I later had some responsibility for bringing the aircraft into operational service. Those experiences left me in no doubt as to the challenges inherent in multinational collaboration.

GCAP is central to the future credibility of the UK’s air power. It offers a pathway into the sixth-generation era – something that cannot be taken for granted. Through the involvement of BAE Systems and numerous other British companies, the programme also carries significant economic weight, supporting highly skilled jobs and the growth of the wider defence-industrial base. It may also represent the UK’s last realistic opportunity to play a leading role in the development and manufacture of a crewed combat aircraft.

Against that background, I would welcome Poland joining GCAP. There is a clear geostrategic case; Poland is a committed NATO ally that invests heavily in defence. Furthermore, an additional partner could bring greater resilience and a more capable end product, while reinforcing the programme’s relevance to European security and enhancing interoperability.

However, expansion of GCAP would not be without risk. Multinational programmes struggle with bureaucracy and competing priorities, which can lead to sclerotic decision-making. Adding another partner could also complicate consensus on requirements, workshare, and export policy.

That said, such challenges are manageable. With lessons learned from past programmes, clear governance structures, proper and timely exploitation of technologies – such as digital safety assurance and certification – and well-defined roles within both the GCAP International Government Organisation (GIGO) and Edgewing, the risks of increased complexity could be contained.

A broadened partnership would enhance resilience and legitimacy. Poland’s inclusion in GCAP should thus be supported.

Dr David Jordan FRAeS FRHistS FRSA

Co-Director of the Freeman Air and Space Institute, and Senior Lecturer in Defence Studies, King’s College London

GCAP has enormous potential, although the planned 2027 maiden flight of the demonstrator aircraft will mark the first point at which a proper analysis of potential can begin to be made. With increasing mistrust over American supply of advanced combat aircraft and the trouble facing the FCAS project, the programme may become a huge export success.

All three GCAP nations need an aircraft with Tempest’s proposed capabilities of ‘stealth’, long range, heavy weapons load, and a sophisticated sensor suite. The three partners all have advanced aerospace industries, and GCAP’s potential to drive technological advances in industry and gain export success is considerable.

GCAP’s capabilities make it an attractive proposition to other countries with similar needs for advanced combat aircraft. In recent months, India and Poland have been mooted as possible new partners. It has even been suggested that the serious difficulties over FCAS might lead to Germany joining GCAP.

The reaction from the current partners has been polite at best. Japan has concerns about introducing new partners, and it is not hard to see why.

While diversification may increase funding for research and development, there are risks. Questions of workshare apportionment would be inevitable with more partners, although this might be ameliorated by a model not dissimilar to that of the F-35 Lightning II, in which partners can participate at ‘tiered’ levels.

The danger of work apportioned on the basis of project politics rather than ability to deliver has occurred in previous collaborations, and would need to be avoided, along with parochialism that seeks design leadership or greater control over the programme. If such pitfalls can be evaded, the admittedly limited evidence so far suggests GCAP could be a major success, even as a larger project than first envisaged.

Perhaps the biggest challenge so far lies in the growing concerns over the UK’s failure to produce a coherent defence investment plan. Japan, wishing to avoid delay, is particularly concerned, and there is a sneaking suspicion that HM Treasury might wish to delay investment decisions to make in-year savings, even if past experiences shows this increases programme cost overall. Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, has sought to reassure Tokyo, but, it seems, not entirely successfully.

While GCAP’s future should be assured, it will need to rely on partners taking a long-term view and advancing together – whether as a trio or a larger collective.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

On the surface, Poland’s expression of interest in joining GCAP signals a promising future for the planned sixth-generation fighter aircraft. With an additional partner involved in the project, the costs involved with the design, production, and eventual operation of the aircraft could be diffused more broadly, so as to allow participants to achieve economies of scale.

Moreover, the more allies of the United States (US) that collaborate with one another without America, the less reliant they should become on Washington. Even the US might welcome this development – whatever the implications for its own aerospace and defence contractors – if it is as serious about burden-sharing as it says it is.

Yet, such optimism should be tempered. News of Poland’s stated interest should be balanced against news of Japan’s growing scepticism over the programme itself. London and Tokyo appear to have different perspectives on the timelines involved for the GCAP, as well as the scope of technological ambition that it should achieve. Funding gaps on Britain’s part also draw concern from Japan.

The result may be that Tokyo could resist any new entrants to the programme in order to restrain the complexity of an already very complicated and technically demanding endeavour. Whatever the long-term success of GCAP, uncertainty over cost, timetables, and project management will persist for the foreseeable future.

Rena Sasaki

PhD Student, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University

The most plausible future for GCAP is not unlimited enlargement, but a stable core of the current partners combined with carefully staged forms of external participation. From Tokyo’s perspective, GCAP is not simply an international industrial project. It is the successor to the F-2 multirole fighter, and a strategic effort to preserve Japan’s freedom of modification, high readiness, and a domestic defence-industrial and maintenance base, while still meeting the service entry target of 2035.

This is why expansion is a double-edged sword. Additional partners could ease cost pressures, widen the production run, strengthen export prospects, and deepen the supply chain. These incentives are real. However, bringing in new core members too early could reopen disputes over requirements, workshare, technology protection, and governance, and in turn threaten the programme’s schedule.

For Japan, then, the preferred model is core stability first, selective widening second. Countries such as Poland may still be valuable as future customers, industrial participants, or partners in specific areas, but not necessarily as immediate co-equal members of the governing core. Tokyo’s priority order is clear: protect the timeline and sovereign operational flexibility, and only then broaden participation in ways that reinforce – rather than dilute – the strategic purpose of GCAP.

Gesine Weber

Senior Researcher, Centre for Security Studies, ETH Zürich

If a Polish participation in GCAP materialises – although at the moment, this is still a big ‘if’ – this step would further deepen trends that are already observed in the European security order. It is also very telling about the future of the European Union (EU) as a security actor, and about EU-only cooperation in security and defence.

First, Poland joining the GCAP would highlight the importance of minilateral initiatives in European security and defence for key players. Second, it would also imply that Poland, the EU member state with the most significant defence spending as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), is not looking towards EU partners for defence cooperation.

When more partners join GCAP – itself a project that unites European nations and Japan – these decisions also clearly demonstrate that European security and defence is increasingly being built across theatres. Despite the EU’s considerable funding initiatives, cooperation with partners outside the union remains an attractive option.

Lastly, Poland joining GCAP after previously expressing interest in FCAS is yet another blunder for the French-German project, as it shows that other EU members would prefer to look elsewhere rather than hedge their bets on a project that even the leading nations seem to have lost faith in.

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Five years ago, on 16th March 2021, the Integrated Review was published. Entitled ‘Global Britain in a Competitive Age: The Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy’, the strategy appraised and redefined the United Kingdom’s (UK) position in the world. When announced in February 2020, Her Majesty’s Government ‘committed to hold the largest review of the UK’s foreign, defence, security and development policy since the end of the Cold War.’

But what impact has the Integrated Review had on British foreign and defence policy? Was it really as ambitious and extensive as promised? To mark the fifth anniversary of the strategy’s publication, for this week’s Big Ask we asked five experts: What has the Integrated Review achieved five years after publication?

Dr Robert Johnson

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Director, Oxford Strategy, Statecraft, and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre

Since the publication of the Integrated Review, the international security situation has deteriorated rapidly. While deterred from a direct attack on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), Russia still harboured the ambitions it articulated in its ultimatum of December 2021: to divide the alliance and to ‘de-militarise’ Eastern Europe, rendering these sovereign states into no more than clients of the Russian Federation.

The Kremlin chose to invade Ukraine with overwhelming force, but also to continue its attacks on the UK using ‘hybrid’ measures. Let us not forget that Russia used both a chemical weapon and a radiological weapon on British soil, killing people in the UK.

The objective of the Integrated Review was to bring together the various levers of government – in defence, security, finance, aid, and the economy– to serve agreed national interests and counter such sub-threshold action. But the unity of purpose has not been sustained.

Energy policy today is at odds with the objectives of energy security. Legal instruments appear to protect the rights of individuals who are a security risk, while legislation seeks to prosecute soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. Separating the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and National Security Strategy (NSS) has created different priorities.

In sum, since the Integrated Review was published, Britain has taken a retrograde step, does not exhibit foresight, and does not have a coherent national strategy.

Charles Parton OBE

Honorary Fellow and Chief Adviser, China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy

No British political party would disagree with the objectives that the Integrated Review set for the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Shorn of repetition, it promised to:

• Invest in enhanced PRC-facing capabilities;

• Pursue a positive trade and investment relationship;

• Protect national and economic security (e.g., critical national infrastructure, sensitive technology, critical supply chains) and values (calling the PRC out where it threatened values, interests, or existing agreements);

• Introduce legislation to give the security agencies and police necessary powers; and

• Cooperate in tackling transnational challenges.

The PRC was labelled ‘the biggest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security’. However, the review did not add ‘and also to national security’ (by contrast, Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] is clear that economic and national security are the same thing).

The scorecard is wan. Both the Conservative and Labour governments have been strong on slogans (‘protect, align, engage’; and ‘cooperate, compete, challenge’), but weak on strategy and clear guidance.

Investment in educating civil servants on the PRC (sadly not at the senior levels) has risen, as has consultation of China experts, although claims of having set up a ‘China Experts’ Advisory Group’ suggest a more structured approach than the reality of ad hoc meetings. Unlike its predecessor, the current government has pursued a more positive trade and investment relationship, although its belief that British growth is dependent on the PRC shows a lamentable understanding of how the CCP thinks and operates.

On security and protection, there have been advances in legislation (e.g., the National Security and Investment Act, National Security Act, and Procurement Act), but laws are only as good as their implementation. The new National Protective Security Authority is a renaming of MI5’s Centre for the Protection of National Infrastructure. It provides businesses and other organisations with expert security advice, and the Research Collaboration Advisory Team aims to raise awareness in science and technology research institutions as to when working with the PRC is acceptable or not.

Those who hoped that HM Government’s ‘China Audit’ would be a cracker saw only a damp squib.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

The Integrated Review was a revolutionary document. Rather than acting as a conventional ‘national security strategy’, its aim was to initiate the intellectual reset of British foreign, security, and defence policy. It challenged the post-Cold War complacency and flawed assumptions of successive governments. It dismantled the idea that the world was improving and that integration was a desirable end goal, and acknowledged the stark reality of geopolitical competition, state-based threats (such as those from Russia), the blurring lines between peace and war, and the centrality of the sovereign national powerbase. It served, in many ways, as a genuine grand strategy for the 2020s.

The Integrated Review’s impact has been extensive. It inspired a new strategic vocabulary within the institutions charged with crafting and delivering British foreign, security, and defence policy. Today, they focus less on international development and multilateralism, and more on ‘strategic advantage’, establishing new minilateral frameworks to counter rivals, rebuilding and extending Britain’s nuclear deterrent, and forging partnerships that link the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific. Indeed, the UK’s participation in AUKUS in late 2021, and its robust response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, are difficult to imagine outside of the Integrated Review’s intellectual framework.

Ultimately, the Integrated Review began to sweep away the harmful assumptions of previous eras. It established a robust intellectual foundation for the future, upon which the Integrated Review Refresh (IRR), the SDR, and the NSS, have all subsequently built. There is still work to be done to strengthen Britain further, but the Integrated Review marks the moment where the ‘ship-of-state’ began to turn.

Gray Sergeant

Research Fellow (Indo-Pacific Geopolitics), Council on Geostrategy, and PhD Student, Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

There is ample evidence to say that HM Government has delivered on the Integrated Review’s promise to ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific. Over the past five years, the UK has joined the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), established AUKUS, and has become an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) Dialogue Partner. Meanwhile, Britain has deepened ties with key partners including Australia, India, and Japan.

With support across the House of Commons for these developments, the region is a permanent pillar of British policy (to use the lingo of 2023’s IRR).

But where does this pillar stand in comparison to other interests and regions of the world, and what is next for the UK’s engagement? These questions are most pertinent when it comes to promoting national security.

Geography is destiny, and when it comes to defence there was never any question that, beyond Britain’s shores, HM Government’s priority is the defence of Europe. Government ministers are also quite correct to say that ‘NATO-first’ does not mean ‘NATO only’. Yet, the SDR fudges what comes next, recommending ‘the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific as the next priority regions’.

Is this not a disguised way of saying ‘third’? Indeed, this is saying something given the UK’s seeming inability (unwillingness aside) to defend its interests in the Gulf over the past few weeks. Moving forward, if the Indo-Pacific is to remain a genuine pillar rather than an afterthought, Britain should prove that last year’s Carrier Strike Group deployment was a stepping stone to sustained operational engagement, not just a curtain call.

Dr Marc De Vore

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

The Integrated Review stands out for its systematic and rigorous assessment of the international environment. Rather than a mere cost-cutting exercise, it began from first principles and then defined the UK’s strategic priorities. It diagnosed the Indo-Pacific region as the epicentre of future international relations, featuring both the fastest-growing economies and the world’s greatest systemic challenge in the PRC. The Integrated Review’s recommendation logically followed from this – an Indo-Pacific ‘tilt’ – wherein increased military and diplomatic engagement with the region would yield economic and geopolitical gains.

No modern British strategy document was as well thought-out as the Integrated Review. Equally, no modern British strategy document has become so rapidly obsolete.

While the Integrated Review defined Russia as an ‘acute threat’, it received second billing to the PRC. The Kremlin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, however, changed this equation. Although Russia may be a power in decline, today it stands out as the greatest threat to the UK and European nations due to the following factors:

1. Its willingness to suffer over one million casualties in a war of aggression;

2. Its penchant for engaging in nuclear brinksmanship; and

3. Its systematic engagement in sub-threshold warfare.

The other thing that has changed is the United States (US). Part of the grand bargain implicit in the Integrated Review is that Britain would support America in the Indo-Pacific, while the US would continue to underwrite European security. Donald Trump’s re-election as President of the US fundamentally shifted this equation. Disdainful of NATO, covetous of allies’ territory, and incapable of making long-term commitments, the US is today a weak rod for the UK to lean upon in formulating its foreign policy.

Ultimately, the Integrated Review was a masterful document for its time, which turned out to be very short.

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In early March, Emmanuel Macron, President of France, announced a major shift in France’s nuclear doctrine. Speaking at Île Longue nuclear submarine base in Brittany, Macron stated that the French nuclear arsenal will increase from 290 warheads – a number unchanged since 1992 – to an undisclosed amount, and that France will begin to collaborate with its non-nuclear allies across Europe to develop ‘forward deterrence’ against adversaries.

Unlike the British nuclear deterrent, which is thoroughly strategic, the ‘force de dissuasion’ is a broader deterrent, but one which has, until now, only protected France. While the change in French nuclear posture reflects the increasingly volatile state of international relations, it will also have an impact on the United Kingdom’s (UK) nuclear calculations. This forms the basis of this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked nine experts: How will France’s shift in nuclear doctrine affect Britain?

Dr Henning Hoff

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Executive Editor, Internationale Politik Quarterly and Internationale Politik

Macron’s proposals – essentially, to take the first steps towards ‘Europeanising’ the French nuclear deterrent – should be a moment for the UK to rethink its own approach to nuclear deterrence, including the question of its dependence on the United States (US). Although it would mean a quicker and more extensive increase in British defence spending than currently envisaged, the UK considering this and joining the effort would be advantageous – certainly when viewed from Berlin.

Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, has always been clear that he would want to see both European nuclear powers – Britain and France – engaged with Germany in this effort. While closer French-German cooperation on nuclear deterrence is now underway, many questions, some of huge consequence, are far from being resolved. It is true that the UK, which already works closely with France on nuclear issues, playing its own new role in the context of European nuclear deterrence would make the effort more complex.

However, it would also make European nuclear deterrence more stable and balanced in the longer term. Germany remains highly unlikely to build its own nuclear deterrent, but hosting British as well as French weapons would lead to a stronger posture in case of an American withdrawal, and to Berlin’s decision-makers sleeping more soundly.

There are also further, greater benefits. As Macron (rightly) argued at the Munich Security Conference in February 2026, nuclear deterrence is the ‘cornerstone’ of European defence integration; cooperation in this field will ‘trickle down’ into other domains. It could pave the way for a shared strategic culture soundly underpinning European security – including a strong British element.

Linas Kojala

Chief Executive Officer, Geopolitics and Security Studies Centre

From a Baltic and Northern European perspective, France’s shift is very welcome – and it should be understood correctly. It does not displace the US’ strategic deterrent, which remains the supreme guarantee of European North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) security. The UK’s deterrent continues to play an important complementary role, while France is adding a more explicitly European dimension to the overall deterrence debate.

Thus, the British role only increases. The UK has assigned its nuclear forces to NATO since 1962, and in June 2025 decided to buy at least 12 F-35A Lightning II Joint Combat Aircraft and join NATO’s Dual-Capable Aircraft (DCA) mission. This was certainly noticed in the Baltic states.

That is not symbolic. It reinforces Britain’s role as the key European connector between the American nuclear umbrella and European nations’ own deterrent contribution, and also shows that the transatlantic bond continues to evolve in practical ways despite political turbulence.

So, the broader significance of France’s move is strategic. Paris itself has said that its new cooperation with Germany will ‘add to, not substitute for’ NATO’s nuclear deterrence and NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements. This signals that Europeans are thinking more seriously, and more long-term, about continental security at the strategic level. That is good news for the UK, and for the Baltic region.

Philippe Lefevre

Doctoral Fellow and PhD Candidate, University of Surrey

Standing before the nuclear-armed Le Téméraire submarine, Macron’s speech highlighted the extent to which French nuclear and military posture has adapted more successfully to the realities of the security crisis facing European nations than Britain’s has. Demonstrated further in recent days with the deployment of the French Navy to Cyprus in lieu of the Royal Navy’s own deployment due to delays, France’s shift in nuclear doctrine is a wake-up call to the UK to start taking its own nuclear arsenal more seriously, and could encourage many similar moves for Britain’s own nuclear posture.

The European countries interested in participating in this new forward posture should also convince the UK that it is in its interests to be more multilateral and engaged. By creating a unified joint European nuclear umbrella with France, covering further nations beyond just those with forward presence, Britain and its allies can hedge against the worst possibility of a complete reduction of American deterrence.

France’s shift also draws attention to the UK’s lack of a tactical nuclear arsenal, highlighting a key gap in the British nuclear posture. While debate still rages over cost, and conventional versus nuclear munition benefits, the UK should at least respond to France’s shift with its own understanding of the role of its nuclear arsenal, where its gaps lie and how it intends to fill them, lest others answer this question with aggressive posturing of their own.

Etienne Marcuz

Senior Analyst, Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS)

Macron’s speech announced a major shift in France’s nuclear deterrence policy: for the first time in its history, Paris invited eight of its closest allies to participate directly in its nuclear operations through the new concept of forward deterrence.

Britain holds a privileged position in this French initiative, both due to its status as a nuclear power and the deep strategic ties that have bound the two countries for decades. The Northwood Declaration of July 2025 already broke new ground by mentioning the possibility of political, technological and – most importantly – operational coordination between the two nations’ nuclear deterrents.

The forward deterrence concept will significantly enhance the resilience of the UK and France’s strategic forces, opening the door to the deployment of nuclear assets on each other’s territory – potentially including strategic submarines. Furthermore, Royal Air Force (RAF) participation in French air-based nuclear operations could enable it to regain expertise lost with the withdrawal of the WE.177 gravity bomb from service in 1998, potentially paving the way for a future national programme.

Above all, this doctrinal evolution and the coordination of British and French deterrents will provide a solid foundation for a European security and defence architecture in the face of adversaries, particularly Russia.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

In some ways, France’s decision to establish forward deterrence – by deploying nuclear-capable aircraft to a plethora of European partners, albeit on a temporary basis – means very little. It will play a relatively small role in boosting the defence of Europe, as the Kremlin knows that these aircraft could soon be withdrawn if they apply serious pressure.

Without extended deterrence (an explicit and durable entanglement whereby a nuclear-armed nation stations forces on the territory of a non-nuclear-armed ally), a nuclear opponent may think it can force concessions. In some ways, France’s forward deterrence may even undermine the defence of Europe for the simple reason that it is so ambiguous.

In other ways, the French decision may attract desperate allies who believe the established order in Europe is coming apart. This would provide France with greater influence over the future direction of continental security, alongside all the economic and industrial benefits that come with it. France – not the UK – would become strategically indispensable.

What Britain should do now is straightforward: establish its own sub-strategic nuclear weapons and delivery programme. For one, this would provide the UK and its allies with the means to match Russia’s potential escalatory steps – the Kremlin possesses nuclear forces at all levels, and has demonstrated a propensity to leverage its nuclear status for geopolitical effect. For another, if this could form part of a British-led sub-strategic nuclear sharing system – perhaps based on the F-35A Lightning II and Tempest airframes – with a select group of European nations (such as the Nordic states, Poland, Germany, Italy, Romania and Turkey), the UK could re-centralise itself at the heart of European geopolitics.

This would also provide European allies with greater incentives to buy into the British defence-industrial base, yielding positive trade-offs for future economic growth and technological innovation.

Dr Jan Ruzicka

Lecturer in Security Studies and Director of David Davies Institute of International Studies, Department of International Politics, Aberystwyth University

From the UK’s perspective, there are two ways to read Macron’s speech.

Firstly, several of the announced changes carry distinct benefits to Britain. At the rather modest, though symbolically significant, end of the spectrum, France now joins the UK in embracing ambiguity about its number of nuclear warheads, which it will no longer make public. Much more profound is Paris’ signalled willingness to loosen its notorious nuclear independence, and to ‘conceive our deterrence strategy within the depth of the European continent’.

While this falls short of the British nuclear commitment to European allies within NATO, France’s move may bolster the UK’s existing efforts and even provide some relief. Pointedly, the brief statement from His Majesty’s (HM) Government statement following Macron’s announcement concluded with the following sentence: ‘We welcome the proposals set out by President Macron to cooperate more closely with allies on nuclear issues.’

The other reading of how France’s shift will affect Britain is less optimistic. It reveals that France possesses independent nuclear capabilities that are simply not at the UK’s disposal currently. Sceptics will certainly raise doubts about the depth of France’s commitment to other European countries, as well as the reliability and credibility of forward deterrence. And they may well have a point, insofar as any form of extended deterrence is, at best, iffy.

The fact remains, however, that France can engage in a political-strategic initiative of a kind that Britain currently cannot.

Julien Lalanne de Saint-Quentin

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The commitments announced at Île Longue can be read less as a rupture than as an extension of the 1998 Saint-Malo Declaration: that Europe must be able to act while remaining anchored in sovereign capabilities and Atlantic realities. That the UK was explicitly named in Macron’s speech is significant in itself. It suggests that, despite the rhetorical habits of the post-Brexit period, Paris still sees London as a central strategic partner when the most serious questions are at stake. It places Britain right inside the intellectual architecture of European deterrence, even as France insists – rightly – that nuclear decision-making remains wholly national.

For all the old doctrinal reserve, the reality has long been one of interdependence, even in the North Atlantic and on the approaches to the Continuous At-Sea Deterrent (CASD) bastion. The underwater battlespace allowed a measure of ambiguity: interdependencies could exist without being too visibly acknowledged by those who prefer the more reassuring language of complete autonomy.

The air component is different. By its very nature, it is less able to conceal the practical ecosystem on which it depends. In that sense, Macron’s forward deterrence concept does not so much create interdependence as makes it harder to continue pretending that it does not exist.

Geography matters enormously. Faslane and Île Longue are very close to one another, and the maritime approaches to one bear directly on the security of the other. Although the UK and France each defend their own goal, the same opposing forward can threaten both at once, and the midfielder screening the defence is therefore protecting both goals simultaneously. Capabilities designed to secure the approaches, clarify the tactical picture and complicate hostile action against the bastion are not peripheral enablers; they form part of the credibility of the posture itself.

France’s contribution will therefore remain absolutely central to the protection of CASD, while a more explicit recognition of allied interdependence gives fuller credit to the wider ecosystem within which that protection is achieved.

Prof. Sir Hew Strachan FBA FRSE

Bishop Wardlaw Professor, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

First, Macron’s speech is the most significant from any head of state in a generation. It challenges Britain to be as forthright and strategic. With major conflict in Europe, and Middle Eastern strikes whose justification rests on countering nuclear proliferation, it is no longer possible not to discuss nuclear weapons.

Yet, the UK insists on treating them as ‘political’, and therefore somehow separate from national strategy. The procurement of the next generation of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) dominates the defence budget without a public rationale like that of France.

Second – and related – Macron was clear about France’s readiness to use nuclear weapons if need be: ‘You have to be feared if you want to be free’. France will possess a triad of nuclear weapons: SSBNs, nuclear cruise missiles and air-launched capabilities. Its target is resilience, including a second-strike capability. Britain is currently vulnerable; dependent at any one time on a single, tired SSBN on (an increasingly lengthy) patrol.

Third is the biggest change of all: Macron abandoned France’s long-cherished autonomy in nuclear doctrine. He did not mention NATO, to which the UK’s SSBNs are allocated, even if their implications for Europe’s defence are opaque. Nor did Macron name the US. The defence strategy of Donald Trump, President of the US, stresses deterrence by denial, which failed to prevent Russia’s threats to escalate in Ukraine. Instead, France has embraced forward defence, and is pursuing a series of bilateral relationships, beginning with Germany.

Air Marshal (rtd.) Edward Stringer CB CBE

Director, iJ7 Ltd., and Senior Fellow, Policy Exchange

France’s refreshed nuclear posture is clever signalling. It sends the message that France is reinvesting in serious hard power. In reality, there is little in Macron’s speech at Île Longue that promises significant increased capacity. However, the conceptual component of deterrence has been altered for the better – and I would say better for the UK too.

There will be a lot of devil in the details to be sorted before Macron can deploy French nuclear weapons forward to allied countries, and thus engage other European powers in a putative ‘Euro-deterrent’. Such weapons will, in any case, as Macron admits, always be triggered by the President of France alone.

But that sense of tying European powers together is real. Furthermore, via the Northwood Declaration, Britain is tied more closely to the French nuclear effort. As well as this, France is tied closer to the US via the UK (acting as an intermediary), whose nuclear deterrent is intimately entwined with the American enterprise.

Whatever the robustness of the extended deterrence of the US, a more concrete European defence and nuclear posture is a bonus – all the better to deter foes and keep America onside. Gen. Hastings ‘Pug’ Ismay would have understood this…

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Following weeks of preparation and military build-up in the Middle East, the United States (US) and Israel launched an offensive against Iran on 28th February. Strikes on Tehran eliminated many senior Iranian figures, most notably Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, who was confirmed dead early on 1st March.

Iran retaliated by launching missile strikes against countries throughout the Middle East, while an Iranian drone targeted a Royal Air Force (RAF) air station at Akrotiri on Cyprus on 1st March. Although Britain initially appeared reluctant to show overt support for ‘Operation EPIC FURY’, Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, announced on Monday that the United Kingdom (UK) will allow the US to use British air stations to strike Iran. This development forms the foundation for this week’s Big Ask, in which we asked eight experts: Should Britain embrace a tougher approach towards Iran?

Dr Hillary Briffa

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London

The UK should take a tougher line with Iran, but this does not equate to escalating. ‘Tough’ should mean making it crystal clear that attacks on British people and territory will bring consequences, and showing that the UK can protect what it uses to operate overseas.

Last weekend’s events, particularly RAF Akrotiri being targeted and Britain allowing America to use its air stations, mean that the UK is now closer to the sharp end, whether it intended to be or not. That makes clear red lines (and committing to them!), stronger air and missile defence, and tightly defined basing permissions essential – while avoiding broad, open-ended escalation.

A ‘small states’ lens helps to explain why Iran puts pressure on places like Cyprus and Gulf ‘hosts’ such as Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait. Iran often targets the ‘hosts and hubs’ that keep free and open nations’ operations running. These sites are militarily vital, but politically sensitive.

When Iran strikes or threatens such sites in smaller countries, it is not just trying to punish the UK or US. It is also trying to split coalitions by forcing smaller partners to carry the immediate risk: public fear, domestic backlash, economic disruption, political upset and so on.

So, a tougher British approach should prioritise protecting forward hubs (via integrated air defence, drone defence and maritime security); signalling that attacks on the UK’s bases will trigger proportionate, legally grounded responses against launch infrastructure; tightening financial and shipping enforcement against Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)-linked networks in coordination with Gulf states considering tougher measures; and keeping de-escalation channels open to avoid turning small partners into permanent battlegrounds. It should also be matched by parliamentary scrutiny at home.

By taking these steps, Britain can get tougher on deterrence and resilience, while saying no to maximalist mission creep.

Dr Matthew Ford

Associate Professor in War Studies, Swedish Defence University

Sir Keir’s response to Operation EPIC FURY has been appropriate and entirely understandable. The British Armed Forces are already stretched, and it makes little strategic sense to extend them further. At present, the services face serious recruitment and retention problems, compounded by the persistent lack of habitable service accommodation.

If the UK struggles with both recruiting personnel and looking after those already serving, it should come as no surprise that it cannot put more ships to sea or generate additional formations for operations. Britain’s defence commentators know all of this, yet the clamour to do more with less continues to dominate the discussion.

If the UK’s commentators want the country to defend its global interests, then defence spending must increase. Without sustained economic growth, however, such ambitions remain little more than rhetorical devices designed to attract political attention.

The prospects for meaningful growth amid current geopolitical upheaval appear slim. Banking on growth therefore amounts to kicking difficult strategic choices down the road in the hope that events will allow Britain to continue avoiding them. Yet, hoping to do more globally while ignoring the immediate security challenges in Europe – challenges that the US has repeatedly told its North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) allies to prioritise – is the epitome of bad strategy.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

Before answering whether a tougher stance on Iran is needed, the UK’s interests must first be established. These can be summarised broadly as:

1. Avoid being dragged into a conflict which (so far) has no clear endgame;

2. Protect British people and allies;

3. Mitigate wider economic spillover effects;

4. Minimise fallout for the relationship with the US; and

5. Maintain the credibility of British political will and military capability.

On count one, His Majesty’s (HM) Government was wise to stay out of the initial strikes. On count two, although left underprotected – a Type 45 is only now being prepared to aid in the defence of Akrotiri – the limited British forces in the region are performing well.

However, on counts three, four and five, the UK is not doing great. Here, a tougher stance on Iran would make a lot of difference, and do so without putting the first two interests at risk.

America is frustrated at Britain, Iran lashing out has spooked markets – most importantly shipping insurance – and the decision to downplay the drone strike on Akrotiri risks emboldening other potential foes in the future – particularly pertinent as Coalition of the Willing plans are being worked on.

If another strike occurs and the UK is unwilling to launch a token retaliation strike against a non-nuclear and defanged Iran or its proxies, it should give up the pretence that it would be willing to defend its deterrence force in Ukraine. A tougher stance (although still well short of participation in Operation EPIC FURY) would be a good idea.

The details of what this would entail cannot be outlined in such a short format as this, but proscribing the IRGC as a terrorist group and preparing a limited retaliatory strike in the event of another attack on Akrotiri would be a good start.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

Regrettably, it appears that the Prime Minister managed to choose the worst possible option as it relates to American military operations against Iran. While there was likely no good option, there was indeed a less bad option that could well have satisfied – if only partially – the critical audiences in Washington and London.

By initially refusing to allow the US to use British bases for its operations against Iran on legal grounds (necessary for domestic political considerations), Sir Keir set himself up for direct conflict with Donald Trump, President of the US, for very little gain. Trump is decidedly less interested – if at all – in international law, and focuses instead on what allies and partners can do for his country.

The Prime Minister said no, and received nothing in return except Trump’s predictable ire and a regrettable demonstration of the toothlessness of his objections. By contrast, Friedrich Merz, Chancellor of Germany, and Emmanuel Macron, President of France, have been much more supportive; actions recognised favourably by Trump.

From the start, Sir Keir could have said that while the UK could not support offensive military operations on legal grounds, it could instead deploy alongside American forces or Gulf allies in a purely ‘defensive’ counter-missile and counter-drone role. This would have seemingly satisfied the Prime Minister’s legal concerns and domestic political considerations, while reaffirming British reliability and credibility and softening the rejection for Trump.

Indeed, deciding after the fact to deploy British forces to defend Cyprus and sail HMS Dragon to the region (which should have been done in the first place) only reinforces that Sir Keir’s original decision was ill-considered and politically costly.

Dr Louise Kettle

Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham

British political parties are divided over entering the conflict with Iran; the Liberal Democrats and the Green Party remain firm in their stance of non-intervention, while the Conservatives have called for more offensive action to defend British interests. For now, the Prime Minister appears keen to avoid some of the mistakes made by the Blair government over Iraq.

As a result, there has been a considerable emphasis on the legalities of supporting the American-Israeli operation and the perceived lack of a ‘phase four’ post-combat plan. If lessons from the past are to be heeded, these elements should be resolved before the UK becomes involved in any offensive action.

Consequently, the question becomes less about being tough towards Iran, and more about the challenge to remain firm in policy as the requirement for defensive (and offensive) activity mounts. The pressure to inch further into the conflict will increase exponentially as it becomes more protracted, and if Iran continues its response across the region. Britain has already emphasised its responsibility to protect its citizens, interests and allies, while Trump has made his displeasure at the UK’s initial response well known.

Nonetheless, Sir Keir would do well to remember one of the other most significant lessons, identified by the ‘Chilcot Report’ – the independent Iraq Inquiry report – in 2016: ‘The UK’s relationship with the US has proved strong enough over time to bear the weight of honest disagreement. It does not require unconditional support where our interests or judgements differ.’

This approach is more challenging when the US Government is under a Trump administration, but will remain true in the longer term.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge

Yes, Britain should adopt a tougher approach towards Iran.

The UK has a clear strategic interest in confronting a regime which is openly hostile and threatens its allies across the Middle East. Iran has just attacked British sovereign territory in Cyprus – a further reminder of the regime’s willingness to target the UK.

Britain has a strategic interest in aligning with America; its closest and most important ally on which it depends for external security. London shares Washington’s interest in breaking up the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) international relationships – first Venezuela, now Iran – to ensure it does not attain superpower status.

There is also a strong moral imperative for challenging a regime which has caused so much suffering since 1979, from its repression and impoverishment of the Iranian people, to its sponsorship of terrorism in other parts of the Middle East. Furthermore, against the backdrop of protests at home, the uniting of Arab countries in opposition to Iran, and ongoing attacks by the US and Israel, there is a reasonable chance that, if the UK were to join the anti-Iranian coalition, the regime in Tehran would be seriously weakened and could potentially fall.

At a point when some – including Trump – are expressing doubts about whether Britain is a serious country, HM Government would do well to align itself with an initiative that not only advances the UK’s interests and ends the rule of a murderous tyranny, but might actually work.

Dr Marina Miron

Postdoctoral Researcher, King’s College London

This question emerges at a politically sensitive juncture. The Prime Minister faces sustained criticism for privileging foreign policy engagement over urgent domestic priorities, while transatlantic relations are undergoing visible strain. In this context, any shift in Britain’s posture towards Iran carries both strategic and political implications.

A more neutral or restrained approach would represent a departure from earlier patterns of the UK’s foreign policy, particularly the interventionist tendencies associated with the Blair era. Yet, a tougher stance would not be without cost.

Britain is currently seeking to strengthen its defence capabilities and reduce reliance on America. Escalating tensions with Iran could expose the UK’s military assets abroad to retaliation and increase the risk of entanglement in a wider Middle Eastern conflict. The vulnerability of British bases, such as those in Cyprus, underscores the potential political, financial and military consequences of miscalculation.

None of this suggests that inaction is a viable strategy. Rather, it highlights the need for conceptual clarity. Before adopting a more confrontational approach, the UK should define its foreign policy priorities and determine whether such a move genuinely serves its national interest. If so, policymakers should carefully calibrate the diplomatic, economic and military instruments employed to avoid overstretch.

A sustainable Iran policy requires strategic discipline grounded in long-term objectives, rather than solely reactive responses to shifting geopolitical pressures.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

With the US and Israel launching a war of choice against Iran, Britain’s interests are to protect its own bases, secure the safety of UK nationals and offer protection to allies in the region. The immediate task is defensive: to reinforce force protection, counter-drone and air and missile defences; and share threat intelligence with allies and partners.

There is also the need to craft a more agile public diplomacy. Britain’s public messaging on its response to reasonable requests made by America has been obfuscatory at best.

Crucially, this is a moment for the UK to reset its strategy towards Iran. Over two decades of nuclear diplomacy, as part of efforts alongside Britain’s European Three (E3) partners France and Germany – together with the European Union (EU) – has not yielded a substantive change in moves by Iran’s theocratic regime to acquire the capacity to build a nuclear weapon and necessary delivery systems. American and Israeli military actions have upended the prolonged attempt to create safeguards and restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme, and have made enforced nuclear disarmament a credible proposition.

The Iranian regime has acted as a key ally of the Kremlin, as demonstrated by Tehran’s diplomatic and material support for Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Reducing Iran’s capacity to support Russia can only benefit the UK in its pursuit of its primary European security concern – namely, ensuring that Ukraine attains peace through military capabilities and meaningful security guarantees.

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Tuesday marked four years since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began. The ‘special military operation’, which Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, expected to last only a handful of days, has degenerated into a grinding war of attrition reminiscent of the Western Front during the First World War – and has cost the lives of over one million people fighting for the Kremlin.

Russia has also made itself an international pariah. Its economy suffers difficulties, and free and open nations continue to uphold sanctions regimes against the Kremlin while providing political, financial and military aid to Ukraine. Ensuring Kyiv emerges triumphant is a top strategic priority for the United Kingdom (UK), as continental security hinges on preventing further Russian aggression against sovereign European nations. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: Four years on, what should Britain do to expedite a Ukrainian victory?

Dr Przemysław Biskup

Senior Research Fellow, Polish Institute of International Affairs, and Senior Lecturer, Warsaw School of Economics (SGH)

Over the past four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the UK has played a disproportionately significant role in sustaining Ukraine. Britain moved early in providing lethal aid; trained Ukrainian personnel; supplied advanced defence systems, financial assistance and shared intelligence; and coordinated sanctions and diplomatic support across North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the Group of Seven (G7). This engagement was institutionalised through the 2024 UK-Ukraine Agreement on Security Cooperation, and deepened by the 2025 100 Year Partnership Declaration, signalling a long-term British commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty, reconstruction and defence integration.

Nevertheless, expediting a Ukrainian victory into the conflict’s fifth year now requires translating this activism into durable strategic leadership. As the United States (US) reduces its conventional presence and political bandwidth in Europe, the UK should assume greater responsibility within NATO, particularly as a pivotal northern flank power securing the Arctic and North Atlantic approaches.

However, such leadership must rest on capability. Britain should accelerate modernisation and expansion of its armed forces in line with NATO’s funding thresholds from the 2025 summit in The Hague, rebuilding deployable mass, replenishing munitions stockpiles and scaling defence-industrial output through sustained procurement. Meeting these requirements will need a much more open and comprehensive domestic debate on defence prioritisation within fiscal and budgetary constraints.

If the UK is to anchor European deterrence and help bring the invasion to a favourable conclusion, defence requires a structurally higher priority in public expenditure.

Ian Bond

Deputy Director, Centre for European Reform

The first thing Britain needs is to be honest with itself about three things:

1. Peace is not around the corner. Putin has no interest in peace, except on terms that amount to Ukraine’s surrender;

2. Ukraine’s resilience is not infinite. European nations cannot rely indefinitely on the Ukrainians’ ability to withstand the terrible conditions the Kremlin is inflicting on them without breaking;

3. Donald Trump, President of the US, is not on Ukraine’s side, nor that of European countries. Trump has sought to bully Kyiv into making concessions that would fatally undermine it militarily and politically, almost guaranteeing renewed conflict in Europe.

Against that background, the UK and its allies and partners must treat Ukraine’s security as their own: if Ukraine loses, Putin will target another state, perhaps a NATO ally. They should step up sanctions, including by seizing ‘shadow fleet’ tankers transporting Russian oil. They should invest in rapidly increasing defence production, for themselves and Ukraine, even if that means an increase in budget deficits. And they should put aircraft in the skies over Ukraine to blunt the Kremlin’s efforts to destroy Ukraine’s economy and society – all without waiting for a peace deal or an American ‘backstop’ that will not come.

None of those steps will guarantee that Ukraine defeats Russia and regains territory, but without them, a Russian victory will become more likely.

John Foreman CBE

British Defence Attaché to Ukraine (2008-2011) and Russia (2019-2022)

Ukraine will not prevail militarily, nor restore its 2022 borders, let alone those of 1991, by force.

Ukrainian fighting spirit and ingenuity, together with support from free and open nations, have slowed but not stemmed Russia’s grinding military advance. Ukraine remains at a disadvantage in terms of personnel, materiel and money, and is under significant battlefield and societal pressure. Russia can mobilise more of its national strength, even if it has to date proven unable to leverage its numerical advantage decisively.

Locked in a trial of endurance to exhaust each other’s will and capacity to fight on, it will be resources, not warfare, that will prove decisive, assuming equal commitment to the cause by both sides. For his part, being unserious about peace, Putin is determined to subjugate Ukraine. For theirs, Ukrainians do not support a peace deal on the Kremlin’s punitive terms.

In this war of attrition, it is the party being attrited that will lose first. With the US havering, Britain and other free and open European countries must act to ensure this is not Ukraine, instead making the war too costly for Russia to continue. The reactive incrementalism of the past four years, providing just enough aid for Ukraine’s survival but not to allow it to regain the initiative, should be replaced by doing the following:

1. Instituting concerted proactive policies to provide Ukraine with durable financial and economic support;

2. Removing battlefield, support and logistic bottlenecks;

3. Assisting Ukrainian domestic defence production, in particular for deep strike; and

4. Enhancing and actually enforcing economic sanctions against Russia.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

Carl von Clausewitz once observed that ‘everything in war is very simple but the simplest thing is difficult.’ Indeed, identifying what Ukraine needs for achieving victory is straightforward: in the absence of direct military intervention on the part of others, Ukraine must receive robust and persistent defence industrial support so that it can not only withstand attacks on the ground and in the air, but can also undermine Russia’s ability to occupy its territory for good.

Unfortunately, European countries have been slow in stepping up military production to backstop Ukraine’s defence needs. They are yet to produce a coherent, well-resourced vision for how Ukraine could inflict strategic defeat on Russia. These failures illuminate why Washington exerts as much influence on Ukraine’s future as it does under Trump.

Thankfully, the UK has been one of the most clear-eyed and forward-thinking supporters of Kyiv, assuming key leadership roles in coordinating military aid while vouching for its interests in international discussions. Yet, much more remains to be done.

The new Ukrspecsystems factory in Britain offers a model for further defence industrial cooperation between the two countries. Such investments reinforce the fighting ability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and ensure that no agreement on European security can be struck at the expense of Ukraine or, for that matter, the UK and other NATO allies.

Philippe Lefevre

Doctoral Fellow and PhD Candidate, University of Surrey

While Ukraine’s victory mostly hinges on Ukraine, with outside European actors increasingly becoming irrelevant amid their reticence to perform real conflict-changing actions, Britain at least has the strongest set of available tools to help attain a Ukrainian victory. These revolve around three core pillars: troops, trade and ties.

For troops, it has been suggested that British forces – as many as 5,000-15,000 personnel – could be deployed to Ukraine to perform non-combat roles. This does not go far enough. For the UK to make a real impact, a wider-ranging operation should be considered to secure and protect key cities, such as Kyiv, Lviv and Uzhhorod. This would allow Ukrainian troops to be remobilised towards the frontline and facilitate the reopening of civilian and permanent military logistics, as well as providing British troops real learning in warfare if positioned closer to the front.

In trade, the UK has been entrepreneurial, but this should be deepened. Alongside pushing for loan relief, Britain should use trade mechanisms to keep the Ukrainian economy strong, encouraging its opening into the UK and other European nations. This supports Ukraine’s ability to last economically until victory, and its attempt to mitigate the exploitative practice of operating and taking capital away from Ukraine itself.

Lastly is ties, referring to the need to keep Ukraine in the diplomatic picture. At the United Nations UN) and NATO, in discussions with the European Union (EU), and especially in bilateral relationships in Asia and Africa, Ukraine should be highlighted hand-in-hand with Britain. The more the UK can support in tackling misinformation and pushing back Russian influence, the more pressure can be kept away from Ukraine to capitulate to false negotiations.

While pride can be taken in the UK’s role in Ukraine, it pales in comparison to what individual Ukrainians are doing to reach victory. It is within Britain’s grasp to help Ukraine win if it really wanted it to. Let us at least meet them halfway.

Matthew Palmer

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

Beyond the current level of support, the UK should hasten its activity in three key areas. The first is to work with allies proactively to counter and defeat Russian activity abroad, including neutering the Kremlin’s ability to fuel its invasion. Continued dismantling of the ‘shadow fleet’ and severing the supply of key European components that are still found in Russian weaponry are priorities, as are combatting Russian influence operations, both in European nations and in key middle-ground powers.

The second is to build up its military and industrial capacity significantly, both to rearm its own forces and to supply Ukraine. A strong British military is required to constrain Russian strategic options, while uninterrupted flows of UK equipment – especially critical enablers – can contribute decisively to a Ukrainian victory.

Finally, Britain should continue to argue successfully for the necessity of a comprehensive Russian defeat for global security to both domestic and foreign audiences. War fatigue, budgetary pressures and hostile narratives – especially from populist parties – will all contribute to declining support for Ukraine if left to fester. British politicians should continue to explain clearly to both the British public and audiences abroad why the benefits of a Ukrainian victory far exceed the potential costs.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

From autumn 2021 to summer 2022, the UK led the European response to Ukraine. Not only did it provide vital political support for the Ukrainians, but it also led the way in issuing lethal weaponry, advice and intelligence, as well as support from other European allies.

More than that, it reinforced deterrence along NATO’s central front, not least by providing Sweden and Finland with security assurances once they decided to join the alliance. Britain saw Russia’s imperialist assault on Ukraine as a threat to national and European security, but it was also keen to re-establish its position as Europe’s leading power after the tumult of Brexit. Other Europeans took note: the UK did much to re-establish its strategic indispensability.

Britain needs to return to the confidence and boldness of that era. It is fine to plan for after a potential settlement, but first the Kremlin must be brought to heel. Waiting for the US to act or lead is no longer tenable; the UK’s interests in Ukraine are greater than those of the Americans.

Along with Germany, Britain should convene a vanguard of like-minded European countries alongside Ukraine, and establish a clear plan for Ukrainian victory within two to three years. It should then provide the political cover and resources, alongside its European allies, to fund the Ukrainian war effort.

With clear and decisive British and European backing, Russia may lose the will to continue, enhancing the prospect that its grisly war will come to an end.

Dr Marc De Vore

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer, School of International Relations, University of St. Andrews

So many changes have overtaken the world in the past four years that the UK must force itself to remember the destabilising nature of Putin’s aggression. Knowing what is at stake in Ukraine should buttress Britain’s commitment to it.

What the UK should immediately do is board and seize shadow fleet tankers transiting the North Sea and English Channel to export Russia’s oil and gas overseas. It is a national disgrace that Britain has not stopped and boarded a single shadow fleet vessel while France has boarded two, Sweden and Finland have boarded one each, and Germany has forced one to turn around. Russia’s warmaking depends on its oil and gas exports, which Britain has tolerated due to its lack of imagination.

The UK should also work alongside its European allies and partners to extend anti-drone and anti-missile defences over western Ukraine. American and British fighter jets shot down Iranian drones and missiles bound for Israel, proving that manned aircraft can protect civilians from drone and cruise missile attacks efficiently.

Are Ukrainians less deserving of protection than Israelis? Does the UK have less of a commitment to Ukraine’s security than Israel’s? If the answer to either of these questions is no, then Britain should league together with close European allies, deploy fighter jets to Polish and Romanian airfields, and from there declare an air protection zone extending over western Ukraine.

The fate of Russia’s full-scale invasion is still up for grabs, and Ukraine’s security is indissociable from the UK’s own.

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Both the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and National Security Strategy (NSS) are unequivocal that the United Kingdom (UK) could become embroiled in a peer conflict in the near future. The post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ has given way to an increasingly confrontational geopolitical environment, in which adversarial nations – chief among them the so-called ‘CRINK’ states of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran and North Korea – pose a growing threat to British interests.

Russia’s brazen aggression towards European nations – including drone incursions, cutting undersea cables and targeting space assets – could easily spiral into open conflict. In December 2025, Mark Rutte, Secretary General of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), warned the alliance that it should prepare for an attack by Russia within five years. Sir Keir Starmer, Prime Minister, stated at the Munich Security Conference that ‘we must build our hard power, because that is the currency of the age.’ With the UK being a key nation within NATO, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked seven experts: Should Britain prepare for war?

Dr Sophy Antrobus, Baroness Antrobus MBE

Co-Director and Senior Research Fellow, Freeman Air and Space Institute, King’s College London

The short answer is yes. In a volatile and unstable world, with adversaries who are already attacking the UK – not yet with missiles, but by other means – the only way to deter war is to prepare for it. As ACM Sir Richard Knighton, Chief of the Defence Staff, said last December: ‘the situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career, and the price of peace is rising’.

Preparation will require more engagement with the public – not to scare, but to inform. Recent polling showed that three-quarters of Britons consider it important to strengthen both the UK’s hard and soft power, including approximately four in ten who rate it ‘very important’. Yet, only a minority favour tax increases or spending cuts to fund greater spending on the British Armed Forces.

The SDR stated that the UK must ‘increase national warfighting readiness’, and that this needs to happen urgently. Communication and preparation of the nation requires political will to level with the public, with recent comments from British ministers suggesting that this is understood inside the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

Getting the conversation going more broadly across His Majesty’s (HM) Government and the country is now crucially important. The UK can learn from its Scandinavian allies: Denmark established a Ministry of Resilience and Preparedness in 2024, and Sweden distributed its brochure ‘In Case of War’ to its population the same year.

If Britain fails to prepare, it will embolden its adversaries further. That is my greatest fear.

Neil Brown

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Organising Committee Member, London Defence Conference

If one listens to what every modern British prime minister has said, the first responsibility of government is to safeguard the nation. This is not a hard question. The UK should always be prepared for war.

This is not the case. It has not been so for some time. There is no good excuse.

Wanton disinvestment in defence capabilities since the end of the Cold War ignored an already worsening geopolitical outlook. Threat-based planning assumptions, published throughout the Cold War but suddenly withheld on the grounds of security, hid gaps in warfighting and strategic readiness that have only grown.

In this increasingly dangerous world, preparing for war should be the first priority of HM Government. Given the cost of failing to deter or losing a major war, there are no good reasons to delay what needs to be done; not the scale of the reinvestment needed in the British Armed Forces and defence industrial base; not an economy saddled with high public debt and anaemic growth; not even a population inured to risk.

Today’s political leaders cannot claim ignorance of the danger. Today’s military leaders cannot continue to be so accepting of whatever hand is dealt by HM Treasury.

The SDR’s recommendations should be implemented urgently to deter adversaries, reassure allies and restore the UK’s credibility and influence. Plugging the defence funding ‘black hole’ is low-hanging fruit in the context of the British economy. Committing to spending 3.5% of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on defence long before the end of the next Parliament is the pretext for credible national preparation.

Dr Ruth Deyermond

Senior Lecturer in Post-Soviet Security, Department of War Studies, King’s College London

The UK has no choice but to prepare for war if it wants to protect itself against both current and future threats. Since 2022, Vladimir Putin, President of Russia, has made the idea of existential conflict with free and open nations central to his presidency. Britain is a particular target of Kremlin hate, now that the Trump administration has partially aligned the United States (US) with Russia.

That is not going to change when the conflict in Ukraine ends, although the manner of its end will shape the future threat – a Russian defeat in Ukraine would be the best protection for the UK and the rest of Europe.

With an intensely hostile and aggressive Russia, and an unreliable US, Britain needs to act quickly to counter growing threats to Critical National Infrastructure (CNI) and other sub-threshold attacks, and to prepare for the possibility of military conflict. This will require two things.

Firstly, the UK needs to get serious about defence spending. That means politically difficult tradeoffs for HM Government. Opposition parties who support enhancing British defence will need to get behind this, and not seek to exploit it.

Secondly, even with dramatically increased spending, the UK will not have the resources to stand alone, nor would it be strategically desirable. Britain should work with its European partners to strengthen defence cooperation and maximise European autonomy. Whether the sense of urgency is great enough in Westminster to push these changes through however remains to be seen.

Prof. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe

Professor of War Studies, Loughborough University

To argue that the reality of international relations is currently fraught would be an understatement. Having moved from the sunny uplands of the post-Cold War peace dividend, the unipolar moment and the vision of bloodless war as in Kosovo, the last 25 years have proven, as Colin S. Gray thought they would, to be the beginning of ‘another bloody century.’

The failures in Afghanistan and Iraq, followed by the disappointments of the Arab Spring, have cast long shadows over contemporary politics. Even now, the Americans and the Iranians wrestle with a ‘nuclear’ deal, with the US’ military might poised for a potential strike. The White House of Donald Trump, President of the US, has not been shy in its use of force, as events in Venezuela proved not coy about its ambitions to protect and dominate the Western Hemisphere, even if that means threatening to invade a NATO ally over Greenland.

All of this comes while the US is lecturing European states, including the UK, on the deficiencies in defence spending, (alleged) combat reluctance and a lack of understanding of the realities of current geopolitics.

The reaction of Britain has (finally) been an appreciation of the limits of the ‘special relationship’, the realities of a Washington elite with a profoundly different view of the Russia question, and the challenge of balancing trade with the PRC and Beijing’s obvious ambitions, which run from the Arctic to Antarctica. While politicians mull over their choices, scholars ponder the lessons of Munich.

The UK needs to prepare for all possibilities, which include a serious reconsideration of its deterrence posture, its ability to defend British interests and its role in securing the balance of power in Europe – in short, a renewed British way of war.

Paul Mason

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The UK is already at war. It is backing Ukraine and shares its aim: to destroy Russia’s will and means to fight. The Kremlin’s declared aim is to shatter NATO, which is the centre of gravity of Britain’s national security. The UK is experiencing a spate of hard sub-threshold attacks on industry, public services and CNI. So, the time for ‘preparing’ should be over.

Yet, the crucial conversations with civil society have barely begun, and Britain is rearming far too slowly for the potentially sudden increases in aggression that might occur once Russia itself recovers and modernises its conventional military.

The biggest step-change should occur in the security and political elite’s appetite for risk. Catastrophic failure should be the nightmare that haunts everybody, from HM Treasury and the Bank of England through to council leaders and community leaders. There are still too many people who have never asked themselves what the UK would need to do to win a war.

Dr Eoin McNamara

Postdoctoral Fellow, Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)

As global security continues to deteriorate, Britain must be ready to fight to defend its interests and those of its European allies from Russian aggression. In defence policy, HM Government has honoured its Brexit promise to remain a power guaranteeing security in Europe. Either minilaterally or through NATO, the UK is a linchpin for wider defence cooperation in Northern Europe.

This responsibility will only increase if the Trump administration withdraws more American forces and enablers from NATO’s eastern flank. Britain leads the NATO Forward Land Forces (FLF) battlegroup in Estonia, regularly reinforces significant cold weather exercises with Nordic militaries and is key to NATO cooperation in the Arctic. Utilising these frameworks to maintain credible deterrence, HM Government should continually signal an astute readiness for crisis response.

The UK’s leadership is welcome in Northern Europe, but it remains questioned in the region whether Britain is too stretched between European commitments and military contributions elsewhere. Nordic and Baltic capitals are disappointed that the UK’s defence investment is not quite where it should be; that Britain’s military depth is hindered by recruitment and retention problems in its armed forces; and that domestic political instability weakens its strategic focus.

Resolving these difficulties while prioritising the UK’s military resources to cover considerable defence commitments on NATO’s front line will ensure Britain’s future as a primary security guarantor in Europe.

Tom Sharpe OBE

Freelance columnist, Daily Telegraph, and ex-commander, Royal Navy

The UK should prepare for war, not because it fears it is likely in the next five years from Russia, or from anyone else, but because doing so makes it less likely. The post-Cold War peace dividend was spent under-resourcing defence based on an arrangement with the US which assumed that it would provide the deterrence and the hardware for Britain. Now, both that assurance and the stability it created are diminishing.

If the two first principles of government are security and prosperity, a well-founded and thriving defence industry touches both. Defence is no longer an either/or option, and as a notion should be embraced, not shied away from. This would not only physically improve the UK’s resilience, it would create an awareness that would do the same at a cerebral level. Britain has recently gone soft on what war and national survival means. This would address that issue.

Saying that ‘hard power is the currency of our age’ is fine, but it does then need actual currency to back it. There is no sign of this yet, just more tough talk and soundbites. One can understand why the UK did not invest properly in defence for the last 40 years – wrong and short-sighted, but forgivable.

Now, it is not. Reversing this trend would make Britain more secure, more resilient and reduce the likelihood of a war – which would be catastrophically more expensive. 2022 was the obvious time to do this. The second-best time is now.

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Space is a critical domain for Britain. £450 billion, or 18%, of the United Kingdom’s (UK) economy is underpinned by space assets, and losing Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) would have an economic impact of over £1.4 billion per day. Russia, as an adversarial state, is taking advantage of this by attempting to disrupt British space assets.

This highlights the centrality of space to the future of British security – a fact recognised by Maj. Gen. Paul Tedman CBE, Commander of UK Space Command. With the significance of space also being acknowledged by His Majesty’s (HM) Government in the Strategic Defence Review (SDR) and National Security Strategy (NSS), for this week’s Big Ask, we asked ten experts: How important is space power to British national strategy?

Marco Aliberti

Associate Director of International Engagement, Partnerships and Education, European Space Policy Institute

The UK is not a space power but yields some degrees of spacepower, understood as the ability of a state actor to deploy, operate and leverage space-related capabilities to serve national interest. This power is indispensable to the fulfilment of the objectives set forth in British national strategy, as space is not only a physical domain – the ‘eighth continent’ to be controlled and exploited – but also an inescapable component of modern statecraft and overall power projection.

Spacepower already forms the backbone of contemporary warfare, enabling everything from weather forecasting to multi-domain Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) and missile defence. The equation is as simple as it is compelling: without space, there is no defence.

However, beyond this core security and defence dimension, what should not be overlooked is the relevance spacepower has as a tool for supercharging the national economy, and as a key instrument in foreign policy. The United States (US) and People’s Republic of China (PRC), as the two prominent space powers, understand this well, and are betting massively on space as a key economic driver for the future – primarily through communications, including direct-to-device solutions as a hyper-scaler in consumer markets, and potentially in-space computing and networking. They also fully embrace space as a core asset of their digital sovereignty and international posture; a tool to forge strategic alliances or magnify technological dependencies in other countries.

Today, in a winner-takes-all domain like space, scale is the currency of power. For the UK, embracing a renewed spirit of federation within the European village – at the European Space Agency (ESA), European Union (EU) and bilateral levels – proves the only viable path to building scale and ensuring its long-term strategic relevance.

Ian Annett

Vice Chair, UKspace Launch Committee, and Chief Executive Officer, Celestial Fix Ltd.

The recent announcement that HM Government-backed launch company Orbex has appointed administrators demonstrates how the UK sees space in the context of national power. If Britain turns its back again, as it did in 1971, it will go down in history as the only nation to develop, then abandon, launch capabilities twice (the first time being the Black Arrow programme).

It is difficult to discern where space power does not impact on the NSS’ priorities of security at home, strength abroad and increased sovereign capabilities; whether through national levels of power or space’s contribution to the UK’s security, stability and prosperity.

Britain depends on space for its Critical National Infrastructure (CNI). Global Positioning Systems (GPS) enable everything from airport operations and financial transactions to navigating congested roads or logging Strava efforts. Over half of the United Nations’ (UN) climate variables can only be monitored from space, providing insight into human effect on our planet. Through allies, the UK can watch adversaries via overhead imagery, while communicating securely with globally dispersed critical defence capabilities.

Reliance on the US for access to space can no longer be assured; where British national interests diverge from America’s, there is a risk that the US will refuse. With other European nations advancing space capabilities, such as Germany allocating €35 billion (£30.5 billion) to space defence before 2030, the UK turning a blind eye is an outlier.

As Britain has global interests economically and politically, space is a tool of security and prosperity – alongside supporting the UN in international space stability. However, the UK is currently outbid by its peers and outpaced by adversaries.

For Britain to be a meaningful player in space, it should recognise how companies such as Orbex contribute to overall strategy and security. The value of the internet is not counted as the cost of cables connecting the country, so nor should the value of space be calculated by the cost of sovereign access and the ability to monitor and protect the UK’s interests and capabilities.

Allen Antrobus

Managing Consultant, PA Consulting, and Chair, Security and Defence Committee, UKspace

Space power is not just important to the UK’s national strategy; it is the arena in which Britain could actively shape the strategic environment to its advantage. The UK’s economy and national security depend on orbital infrastructure, but too much of that resilience is outsourced. Britain is heavily dependent on American systems – not through deliberate strategy, but because it has simply drifted into over‑reliance, creating a strategic vulnerability.

The opportunity lies in using space to project national power and build sovereign resilience. The UK has the talent, industrial base and alliances to lead, but it is not leading today. It has strategies and vision documents, yet delivery continues to lag behind the pace at which the domain is changing. Britain should diversify and build sovereign layers where essential. It should also work more emphatically with European partners, while maintaining its relationship with the US.

The UK’s allies are accelerating, and competitors are rewriting the rules of the domain. Britain should be shaping those rules, not adapting to them. With the National Armaments Director (NAD) Group reforms, a maturing National Space Operations Centre (NSpOC) and world‑class industrial talent, the UK has the mechanisms to act decisively, if it chooses to do so. Britain can lead if it moves with focus, pace and purpose.

James Black

Deputy Director, Defence and Security, and European Lead, Space, RAND Europe

and

Dr Aleix Nadal Campos

Space Policy Analyst, RAND Europe Space Hub (RESH)

If we broadly define space power as the ability to exert influence in and from space, one question immediately emerges: who should the UK primarily aim to influence? Russia is a strong candidate – both as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO) key adversary and as a more realistic goal for Britain and its European allies and partners than deterring the PRC in space.

It is a truism to state that space is indispensable to modern military operations, but also pressing is what happens in the sub-threshold ‘grey zone’. Although public attention has turned to undersea cables and sabotage on land, Russian sub-threshold activities against CNI extend to outer space.

Russian spacecraft have moved dangerously close to eavesdrop on European satellites that enable both civil and military activities. From the ground, Russia interferes electronically with GPS and communication signals. It has also insisted that commercial space companies represent legitimate targets, while blocking a UK-led diplomatic push at the UN to agree to new norms on responsible space behaviour.

Despite ongoing efforts by UK Space Command to build capability – with much more limited financial resources than peers such as France or Germany – Britain does not have many sovereign systems to match or deter Russian counterspace threats. Without more robust Space Domain Awareness (SDA) and space control capabilities, as well as cross-domain deterrence options, the UK’s industrial, economic and military dependencies on space will remain vulnerable.

Similarly, Britain’s contribution to allied space power, through partnerships such as the Combined Space Operations Initiative, Operation OLYMPIC DEFENDER or the Artemis Accords, will be less credible and influential with its allies. Failing to address hostile behaviours now will create a normative framework later – one that has not been shaped by the UK’s interests.

James Cemmell FRAeS

Vice President, Institutional Partnerships, Open Cosmos

Space is, without question, central to the British way of life and national strategy. Fibre roll-out is slow: satellite broadband provides an instant connection. Major flooding occurs: images from space map the damage and allow recovery. A missile is launched: it is detected and mitigated from space. And it goes on.

But as a space power, how does the UK fare? Irrespective of the specifics of space, power has two parameters: it must be projected, and it must be resilient. It is risky to become a true space nation – dependent on the advantage of space but without the means to assure it. That is not power. It is a temporary sugar rush.

Unfortunately, the Brexit experience laid bare the UK’s vulnerabilities, with the well-rehearsed loss of access to critical, resilient positioning systems, having an impact on defence and regional airports. Now, with recent turbulence in geopolitics, Britain must ask urgent questions about which assets are truly nationally separable or otherwise assured by international partnerships, as stressed in the recent House of Lords report.

Mapping shows that, Skynet aside, the UK relies substantially on assets over which it has little control. A review of its peer space nations shows a rapid uptake of national space systems (e.g., Japan, Spain, Greece and many others) – mostly small constellations to serve national security and local applications.

Increasingly, these countries are finding ways to share their assets, creating a blend of sovereignty with scale leverage and international partnering while all having skin in the game. This is emerging as a critical de-risking strategy for smaller and middle space powers.

So, how important is space to national strategy? Very. How seriously does Britain take its space power posture? The jury is out.

Dr Malcolm Davis

Senior Analyst, Defence Strategy Programme, Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The UK’s defence and security depend on ensuring a high degree of sovereign and resilient space support. Space is not a peaceful global commons that sits as a sanctuary, serene and free from major power competition on Earth below. The 21st century space domain is highly contested, as adversary counterspace – or Anti-Satellite (ASAT) – systems are tested in orbit.

So, Britain cannot afford to assume access will not be challenged, or will always be assured. Nor can the British Armed Forces undertake modern joint and integrated operations, either independently or within a coalition, if they cannot access space support.

Without space, the British Armed Forces are effectively ‘deaf, dumb and blind’ in 21st century warfare – itself ever more complex and faster paced. They would be unable to utilise modern information-based military capability and would face a return to older-style attritional war, with a greater risk of higher casualties and the possibility of defeat.

Certainly, the UK can accept a degree of dependency on others to provide coalition space capability, such as through NATO, but it should also burden-share in orbit in order to contribute to ensuring allies share capability and to boost deterrence against adversaries with ASAT capabilities, such as Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). It cannot freeride, and total dependency on others carries its own risks.

Britain should strengthen both space self-reliance and space cooperation to ensure its future security, as space is vital to the UK’s defence and security interests.

Gabriel Elefteriu FRAeS

Senior Research Fellow (Space Power), Council on Geostrategy, and Co-founding Partner, AstroAnalytica Ltd.

For most of its short history so far, the space domain has been an enabler, adjunct to the instruments of government and the functioning of modern society. But, as the digital economy and core services are increasingly intertwined with, and dependent on, space-derived Big Data – from sensing to communications and navigation – orbital capability is now morphing into a core aspect of national infrastructure and a ‘centre of gravity’ in its own right.

This is a strategic convergence with far-reaching consequences, placing a premium on space power in the geopolitics of the future – especially for important players in the international system such as Britain, who want to maintain or improve their competitiveness and ability to project influence.

As the military balance evolves, there is also increasing recognition that future wars could be won or lost in space. The defence argument for the importance of space – and space power – has now arguably gained more potency than all the others, at least as regards the UK. To defend itself on Earth, Britain needs to be able to defend itself in space.

In the next couple of decades, the impact of space power in the military field in particular will outstrip anything experienced thus far. While the pace, sequencing and impact of this space-earth strategic convergence across the world remains a matter of debate, the point is that this process is now in motion, and will continue over the next decades and beyond.

Michelle Howard

Strategic Policy Adviser, Perigord Consultancy Ltd., and PhD Candidate, King’s College London

In Toward a Theory of Spacepower, Robert Pfalzgraff argues that the centrality of power to international relations theory as ‘the most important variable for understanding the behaviour of the political units into which the world is divided’ extends logically to space power. However, Britain could be considered to have an inconsistent historical experience when it comes to the pursuit of space power.

One of the first spacefaring nations in the aftermath of the Second World War, and with the intention of retaining great power status, the ensuing decades saw the UK grappling with the tension between a desire to retain a world-leading space programme and concerns over fiscal constraints. The primacy of national security as an objective is now growing as alliances shift, global institutions are destabilised and traditional centres of power recede while others emerge. In response, the drive for sovereign autonomy and industrial consolidation is taking hold among Britain’s closest allies.

This is the broader contextual environment in which a recent House of Lords report expressed concern about the UK’s ability to position itself in this transformed space landscape, stating ‘those who do not adapt will be left behind’. The question posed for this piece is not whether space power should be important to British national strategy, it asks whether it is.

For this to be true, HM Government should articulate the strategic purpose of its national space mission and its plan to achieve it, and resources should be allocated accordingly. It would be difficult to argue that this is the case. Given the rapid pace of change in the global space environment, indecision is a decision. As such, the UK’s window of opportunity to make its own choices about its role as a space power grows smaller by the day.

Dr John Sheldon

Co-founding Partner, AstroAnalytica Ltd.

Space power – the ability in peace, crisis and war to exert influence promptly to, in and from space, and deny adversaries the ability to do the same – is essential to British national strategy. Space power is a critical enabler of the UK’s economy, critical infrastructure and way of war.

This is indisputable, beyond debate and as plain as the noses on our faces. Anyone from Britain who says otherwise is either wilfully ignorant or intellectually dishonest.

From my perspective, the question is not whether space power is important to the UK’s national strategy – it absolutely is. Rather, the question is whether any British political leader is capable of articulating the UK’s national interests in space, and then formulating a policy and implementable strategy to defend and assert those interests. Decades of reliance on the US for space power needs has made the UK ‘fat, dumb and happy’. As a result, British political leaders and officials have abrogated all strategic responsibility for space power to America.

The issue is not space power per se, but the inability of this generation of British technocratic political leaders to think strategically about it in the first place. I would be delighted to be proven wrong on this matter.

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As geopolitical competition intensifies, the major powers are beginning to contemplate territorial annexation, control of supply chains and trade routes, and forging spheres of influence – not dissimilar to the period which presaged the First World War. To counter this disorder, arguments have been made that so-called ‘middle powers’ should group together to frustrate geopolitical competition and uphold multilateralism.

The United Kingdom (UK) looks set to retain a significant powerbase in the 21st century. It is a nuclear-armed state, and boasts both the world’s sixth largest defence budget and Gross Domestic Product (GDP). With these indicators of power in mind, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: Should Britain act more like a major or middle power?

Andrew Ehrhardt

Lecturer in Foreign Policy, Department of War Studies, King’s College London, and Director of Research and Programmes, Centre for Statecraft and National Security

The concept of ‘middle powers’, as amorphous as it is, has a long tradition in ‘Western’ political and diplomatic thought. From the speech given by Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, at Davos to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Middle Power Project, it has returned as one of the most fashionable terms in foreign policy discourse.

By most metrics, the UK could be considered a middle power. While not on the level of ‘superpowers’ such as the United States (US) and People’s Republic of China (PRC), Britain boasts impressive national capabilities and enviable positions in international fora. These are well known, though often underappreciated.

Debates over middle power status are not only distracting, but also tend to force complacency or cynicism. Where some find comfort in status, others lament what they see as an irreversible decline – a country that, on the international stage, is subject to the whims of more powerful actors.

It is important not to let categories become constraints. Whether the UK is a middle power or not is largely irrelevant to the practice of foreign policy. Here the focus must be on where, how and when Britain – undoubtedly a major player in world affairs – can and should use its capabilities and influence to shape what is a more fluid international environment.

The next five years will see the development of new economic, political and security constellations. It is imperative that His Majesty’s (HM) Government both understand how these can work in the national interest and harness the UK’s capabilities and reputation to take the initiative in forming new (or reinforcing old) alignments.

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

While it is clear that Britain is not a superpower, the power base and capabilities at the disposal of HM Government are deep enough and wide enough that the UK can and should act like a major power. Even those who would claim it is more of a ‘middle’ power must recognise that Britain is first among equals. What it suffers from in this new era of geopolitical competition is not lack of resources, but a lack of confidence and lack of imagination.

This is not a dissimilar position to that which England found itself in prior to the Industrial Revolution. Grand strategies of the past also show that when the UK acted with energy and imagination, it could achieve impressive results against ostensibly far more powerful neighbours.

In a new order where powerful countries are facing fewer restraints, it is imperative that Britain act like a major power that shapes its environment, rather than a middle power subject to the prevailing winds. By becoming a global convener, with investment in the hard power – and the national economic and scientific powerbase needed to sustain it – to underpin its position, the UK will surprise itself with the results it can achieve.

At a canter, there is already a catalogue of impressive results, including AUKUS, the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) and leadership on support for Ukraine, to name just three. Imagine what Britain could do with more confidence and energy.

Of course, this would necessitate a rebalancing of the division of government spending, which will be politically challenging, but a greater ability to shape the world order during this period of transition and renegotiation may well save a reduced welfare state in the long run.

Dr Melanie Garson

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Associate Professor in International Security and Conflict Resolution, University College London

In an international system that is currently in a state of flux as it adjusts to the changing dynamics of new notions of power in the Intelligence Age, there is a real question as to whether Britain should seek to define itself or its actions as either, and whether these definitions continue to be useful at all.

The key features of the system have irrevocably changed. Placing expected behaviour within one of these frames is likely to constrain action and creativity negatively, both militarily and diplomatically. Perhaps the question is: ‘what is it to be an “intelligent power”, “trusted-tech power” or a “frontier power”, with the capability to leverage influence quickly with key alliances which advance British interests?’

The UK should stand back and survey the long-term trajectory of its ambitions as an intelligent or frontier power and the fora which it needs to influence for a new frontier or intelligent foreign policy approach, rather than being constrained by the limits of designations from a system that may no longer be relevant.

Sam Goodman

Senior Director of Policy, China Strategic Risks Institute

Britain appears to struggle with the unique circumstance of being a major power that, in the past, has been hampered by policy decisions reflecting a declinist mentality. It is the only way one could explain the Coalition Government’s decision to decimate the defence budget, the decision to dismantle the UK’s development aid department (which was the gold standard and admired by many of its partners) and to cede control of the British Indian Ocean Territory (BIOT).

Such a mentality appears to suggest that the UK’s future is a binary choice between becoming more of a tributary state to the US, or rejoining the European Union (EU). This view offers Britain little autonomy of its own, and is predicated on the idea that its economy is uncompetitive, its voice irrelevant in multilateral institutions and its hard power inferior to its peers. In reality, there is much the UK could learn from other countries, such as Brazil, France, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Türkiye, all of whom punch above their weight in different aspects of foreign policy.

Britain has much to its advantage – and to the envy of its peers – from dominance in soft power to its shipbuilding industry. Its Permanent Five (P5) status at the United Nations (UN) Security Council and its nuclear deterrent ensure that even if it does not always think so, the UK will remain a major power.

Putting aside the US and the PRC, Britain sits firmly in a small group of major powers that have a sizeable military, significant soft power, a large economy and can project influence in most corners of the globe.

A wise policymaker in Whitehall should take the lessons from middle powers that punch above their weight and apply them to the UK’s unique strengths. In doing so, a middle power mentality can be turned into an advantage for a major power.

Patrick Horgan OBE

Senior Adviser, Geopolitical Strategy, GMTL Advisory Ltd.

Britain should act in a way that is consistent with its resources, capabilities and defining attributes. This statement of the obvious needs reiteration in the face of false expectations or popular assumptions that can stem from nostalgia, ignorance or the rigid tramlines of ideology and definitional labels. The UK is no superpower, but nor is it insignificant or lacking in influence in global affairs.

What is clear is that the international context in which Britain enjoyed influence and advantages well beyond those merited by sheer economic, demographic or territorial scale has changed profoundly. Strength and relevance derived from the intimacy of the ‘special relationship’ with the US is diminished; permanent representation on the UN Security Council counts for less when that body is comprehensively hobbled by the vetoes of other permanent members; and the UK’s ability to shape the agenda and approach of Europe as a whole was sacrificed on the altar of Brexit.

This altered context demands adaptation and flexibility in response. Britain has qualities that provide continued relevance and impact globally: research and universities; some areas of technology, defence and industrial expertise; finance; a nuclear deterrent; the reach of the English language; security and intelligence relationships; and alliances. These are the tools and channels to use in pursuing the UK’s national interest in a world where many countries remain keen to work with it as a partner.

Ultimately, Britain’s position in global affairs rests on the effective retention, nurturing and regeneration of inherent domestic capabilities and attributes, built on a foundation of political stability and a growing economy. If that foundation is not kept secure, any discussion of major or middle power status will be seen with hindsight as nothing but hubristic hot air.

Dr Robert Johnson

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Director, Oxford Strategy, Statecraft and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre

As one of the wealthiest nations of the world, with a nuclear-armed navy, and membership of the Permanent Five of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, the UK is obliged to act as a significant global power. It has alliance and treaty terms it has pledged to uphold.

If it is clear it should act, the question is whether it has the capability and confidence to do so. In an era of assertive powers, Britain seems unable to grasp that the values-led order is over. It requires nothing short of a radical reassessment of its internal priorities and an acceleration of its defence modernisation.

Vague promises of future defence spending and international agreements will not secure its position as primus inter pares among medium powers. Its position necessitates not only action, but resolution in doing so.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

When the UK is positioned as a ‘middle power’, it cannot be an expression of status. Of the 196 states recognised by HM Government, Britain clearly sits towards the top of the global hierarchy.

True, it is not a superpower on par with the US or – to a lesser extent – the PRC, but it stands above most other countries. Within the next five years, it is projected to leap over Japan and edge closer to Germany as the world’s fifth largest economy. It remains a nuclear weapons state, a diplomatic heavyweight, and a scientific and technological power with few equals.

Asserting that the UK is a middle power is less of a statement of fact and more a statement of mind. It defangs the country, both in terms of status and policy, and represents a retreat from the burdens of leadership and a preference for subordination to international structures. Its proponents urge the country to ‘know its place’; yet, this is a self-imposed ceiling which ignores the leverage HM Government can actually hold. This mindset is a strand of isolationism, which seeks to insulate Britain from the friction that inevitably accompanies global influence.

In an era defined by renewed geopolitical confrontation, however, modesty is a strategic liability. The superpowers – even Russia – are aggressively expanding their spheres of influence. If the UK adopts the posture of a middle power, it does not correct its self-image; it merely cedes ground to authoritarian rivals who suffer no such crises of confidence.

And it will not be Britain that suffers most. It will be the nation’s smaller allies and partners.

Prof. Richard Whitman

Professor of International Relations, University of Kent

Britain should act more like a major power – not out of nostalgia, but out of necessity. In a fragmenting global order, the space for constructive ‘middle power’ cooperation does not arise spontaneously. It is created and sustained by states willing to bear the costs of leadership: underwriting institutions, enforcing norms, and shaping agendas. Without that stabilising role, multilateralism becomes procedural rather than political, and middle power coordination quickly loses traction.

Recent arguments by figures such as Carney have stressed the growing importance of middle powers in defending an open international system. But that defence depends on enabling actions conducive for such an international environment.

The UK is unusually well-placed to help provide such actions. It retains global diplomatic reach, serious intelligence and military capabilities, and deep institutional memory within the multilateral system. Acting like a major power means using those assets deliberately: setting standards, convening coalitions and accepting responsibility when rules are challenged.

If Britain retreats into a self-conception that it is one middle power among many, it risks accelerating the very fragmentation it seeks to manage. Paradoxically, the best way for the UK to support middle powers is not to join them, but to lead in a way that makes their cooperation possible.

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The United States (US) has reasserted the Monroe Doctrine in the Western Hemisphere; Russia seeks to dominate swathes of Eastern Europe; the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is pushing into Africa and the Middle East; and the United Kingdom (UK) has asserted the primacy of the Euro-Atlantic to its foreign and defence policy. The major powers appear to be territorialising their strategic postures, perhaps in principle as much as in fact.

In his speech given in Davos on 20th January, Mark Carney, Prime Minister of Canada, stated that the institutions upon which the post-Cold War ‘peace dividend’ relied have been superseded by ‘intensifying great power rivalry’. Political and economic competition between major powers is engulfing smaller states, and a new multipolar world order is emerging. Considering this, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked 12 experts: Are we entering a new world of spheres of influence?

Gabriel Elefteriu FRAeS

Senior Research Fellow (Space Power), Council on Geostrategy

The concept of spheres of influence harks back to the high tide of late 19th century imperialism, when the main colonial powers of the time were carving up various parts of the world, such as Africa, between themselves. Later, the term became central to the Cold War reality of a world split along political-ideological lines between the Western and Eastern blocs, with a grouping of non-aligned states gravitating between the two.

In both periods, ‘spheres of influence’ served as instruments for the management of geopolitical competition, and were the immediate or more secondary result of negotiations grounded primarily in hard power realities. Insofar as this approach to foreign relations eschewed any other considerations of ‘morality’ or ‘international law’ (such as it might have existed at the time) and any serious regard to the wishes of the peoples or even states bundled into such ‘spheres’, then yes, the world we are heading into can be said to conform to this logic more than to any other.

But this similarity does not suffice to support the overall case. A crucial element is missing today: the willingness, opportunity and perhaps the ability to negotiate any settlement of this kind. The realpolitik spirit of current times is not (yet) matched by the geopolitical conditions – such as the late stages of a great war, as at Yalta in 1945, or major international diplomatic conferences such as Berlin in 1884-1885 – that can generate relatively clear, sustainable agreements.

What the world has is, for now, worse: a descent into increasingly unrestrained competition in which military power across all domains – including space – is the paramount factor. A point of equilibrium will eventually have to emerge, and with it new, stable spheres of influence – but not before we are made to endure more chaos, and perhaps full-scale war.

Dr Euan Graham

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and non-resident Senior Fellow, Australian Foreign Policy Institute

The risk of a regressive drift to a world defined by spheres of influence is real and, to a concerning extent, already upon us. Globalisation has lost its popular mandate in free and open nations, while adversaries stand to benefit from a divided world, in which the PRC dominates East Asia; Russia overshadows Europe; and the US retreats into the Western Hemisphere, potentially leaving its allies and partners beyond the ambit of a Monroe Doctrine redux to fend for themselves.

The bewildering transatlantic flare-up over Greenland should serve as a warning that a more fragmented, anarchic future is gathering momentum. But the slide towards spheres of influence isn’t irreversible. It can also deceive.

Although the PRC and Russia aspire to roll revanchist frontiers forward, they and their autocratically like-minded associates continue to coordinate and act globally – by deploying rogue merchant ships that move energy and other contraband to bypass sanctions; by spreading disinformation via media that they have themselves banned; and by sourcing warfighting technology from under the noses of ‘Western’ countries’ intelligence and law enforcement.

While free and open nations rightly fear that globalisation has been weaponised against them, the flipside is that modern autocrats still lack the autarky to which they aspire. This is also true for the US, as its official commitment to defend non-territorial American interests in the Indo-Pacific and elsewhere under its new National Defence Strategy (NDS) attests.

The spheres are out of alignment, but they remain interconnected – for friend and foe alike.

Prof. Amelia Hadfield

Founding Director, Centre for Britain and Europe, and Head, Department of Politics and International Relations, University of Surrey

British foreign policy is entering a fundamentally different world, with the concept of ‘spheres of influence’ increasingly shaping geopolitical dynamics and forcing strategic reorientations. Several factors are driving this transformation.

First is America. The approach led by Donald Trump, President of the US, to Washington’s foreign policy explicitly embraces the concept of spheres of influence, led by strongmen and predicated on zero-sum ratios calculated in economic wins rather than political progress.

Second, energy resources have become major drivers, with the hunt for rare earth and raw materials generating ‘resource imperialism’ for the US, the PRC and countries in Europe, allowing governments to wade back into the fray as guardians of energy security.

The broader global context also reinforces this trend. Business leaders and politicians alike refer routinely to increasingly isolationist trends in both private and public sector domains, prompting a sense of regressing to the rudimentary ‘great games’ mapped out by a few major players.

From the perspective of foreign policy, however, a return to spheres of influence rides roughshod over an enormously complex, interdependent world which has largely beneficially institutionalised a raft of rules and regulations to produce certainty, stability and representativeness. A world of spheres actively ignores the roles of institutions, the interests of smaller countries and the correctives of civil society.

The UK should firmly support those countries which are seeking, in a principled and pragmatic way, to strengthen the rule of law and rules-based markets, as well as highlighting the critical balancing role played by middle powers, as artfully highlighted by Carney in Davos. A good start is to work with comparable European countries – notably France and Germany, but also Italy, Poland and others – to protect common interests, while dealing with a US that is still needed, but not trusted.

Prof. Beatrice Heuser

Distinguished Professor, Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy, Brussels School of Governance, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

Are we entering a new world of spheres of influence? The answer is yes.

Should we be afraid of this? The answer is yes, again – very much so.

Sir Herbert Butterfield’s Whig Interpretation of History holds that societies have, over the centuries, made progress towards a more just and peaceful world. Horrendous historic deviations from this have shown this faith in progress to be misplaced. Yet, one would expect free and open societies to have retained some lessons, for example: tyrannies, despotism, absolute monarchies – bad; checks and balances - good; great power-dominated spheres of influence: dangerous, as de facto the strong do as they wish and the weak suffer what they must.

The 19th century version of this resulted in lots of wars, even among the great powers, culminating in the First World War. This is why reformers, led by Woodrow Wilson, President of the US from 1913-1921, subsequently championed the League of Nations. This step forward proved sub-optimal in view of its domination – being once again driven by five or six great powers, excluding the US, of which only two were fairly dedicated to upholding the League’s principles.

After another even worse world war, another global organisation was invented (again with American support) as the United Nations (UN) – but again it was adulterated by the institutionalised dominance of five great powers that rarely agreed. Still, at least there was now a set of rules that were proclaimed and enshrined in the UN Charter – arguably another great step ahead for humankind.

Abandoning this push towards rules-based international order by reverting to the 19th century order – great power domination without that set of rules – is a step back towards wars. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

Patrick Horgan OBE

Senior Adviser, Geopolitical Strategy, GMTL Advisory Ltd.

Few would argue with the contention that the relative stability and predictability of the post-Cold War period is gone, supplanted by a more contested and multipolar world, and buffeted by great power rivalry. But does that mean we are entering ‘a new world of spheres of influence’?

Is this really a déjà vu moment of emerging neo-imperialism and global carve-up, or the imminent arrival of some form of new uneasy equilibrium between a few global powers, each with their own ‘backyard’, ‘near abroad’ or ‘tributary states’? Or is it, as Stephen Miller, political adviser to the Trump administration, insists, simply a more honest recognition of age-old truths; that we live in a world ‘that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power’?

As the world grapples with new realities and the erosion of old certainties, there will no doubt be events that seem to align with this bleak analysis. However, Carney’s succinct and cogent speech at Davos made no reference to the concept of ‘spheres of influence’, and highlighted instead the response of allies diversifying to hedge against uncertainty and withstand pressure.

The ongoing struggle in Ukraine and the rejection of US territorial claims to Greenland show that sovereignty, once gained, can seldom be taken away easily or without longer-term consequences in terms of legitimacy and international support. While the pathway through this ‘rupture’ remains unclear, a new world of spheres of influence is not a goal to aim for, nor is it an inevitable outcome.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

What the world is entering into is less clear than what it is exiting: a period of greater certainty and predictability, based upon a shared agreement among the UK, the US, European nations and select countries of the Indo-Pacific. The existing ‘liberal international order’, as is being realised, was predicated more on American military power and Washington’s willingness to abide by agreed-upon norms rather than a strict set of rules and values. This was more palatable, although those later concepts may have introduced such predominance (under which Washington often cloaked its actions).

The idea of spheres of influence presupposes that those within the spheres accept the dominance of one power, and are ultimately without agency. Neither of these are true. While the US prioritises the Western Hemisphere in its recent National Security Strategy (NSS), and certainly exercises military overmatch in this region, this by no means suggests that Brazil et al. will simply acquiesce to Washington’s desires or interests any more than South Korea or Japan would accept Chinese predominance.

This period of transition is messier, more fractious and more uncertain – more a ‘rough’ or ‘tough’ world order, where self-interest is more nakedly pursued or at least unmasked, rather than a set of spheres of influence.

Dr William James

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor, Strategic Studies, Nanyang Technological University (NTU) Singapore

The real question is whether the US is prepared to allow Russia and the PRC spheres of influence in Europe and East Asia respectively. Washington has long asserted primacy over the Western Hemisphere; the current administration has simply been more explicit and forceful in trumpeting a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine. America therefore already claims at least one sphere of influence.

Based on current evidence, there is little sign that Washington is prepared to allow rival great powers to dominate other regions. Its 2025 NSS commits the US to working with allies and partners to ‘maintain global and regional balances of power to prevent the emergence of dominant adversaries’. In Europe, this entails greater burden sharing, enabling capable allies to ‘work in concert with us to prevent any adversary from dominating’ the continent.

The NDS extends the same logic to East Asia, warning that the PRC cannot be allowed to control the Indo-Pacific, as it would be able ‘to effectively veto Americans’ access to the world’s economic center of gravity’. Beyond words, the US continues to station well over 100,000 troops across Europe, Japan and South Korea, and remains invested in bilateral and minilateral security arrangements such as AUKUS – hardly signs of retrenchment.

What evidence could convince otherwise? A wholesale American withdrawal from its garrisons in Europe and East Asia, effectively abandoning its allies, would suggest that spheres of influence are indeed returning. As it stands, however, the US’ strategy towards the PRC and Russia is best summarised as ‘spheres for me, but not for thee’.

Dr Alexander Lanoszka

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Assistant Professor of International Relations, University of Waterloo (Canada)

We are not entering a new world of spheres of influence. Nor should we try to do so.

The very notion suggests that societies are bundled together and sealed from one another under the lordship of some great power. What can be observed instead is a world of fracture, because many people across different continents are able to exercise some degree of agency – sometimes in support of liberalism and democracy, but sometimes in support of illiberalism and autocracy. Of course, certain regions will feature greater or lesser influence from a certain great power by dint of historical and institutional legacies as well as geographic proximity.

Hence, the US will have more impact on South American politics than Russia, for example. Yet, that impact would not necessarily be tantamount to a sphere of influence per se. Indeed, explicit declarations that reiterate and reformulate the Monroe Doctrine have provoked criticism and pushback from North and South American leaders alike precisely because few, if any, want to be outwardly treated like a vassal.

Asserting influence is not the same as having it. Anti-colonial discourses of sovereignty that have become so popular in the last 80 years will not go away with the simple stroke of a presidential pen.

Dr Timothy Less

Senior Adviser for Geopolitics, Centre for Risk Studies, and Convenor, Geopolitical Risk Analysis Study Group, University of Cambridge

The short answer is no – not because we are not living in a world shaped by spheres of influence, but because we never stopped living in one.

For decades, liberal internationalists in free and open nations have held that the international system is governed by a ‘rules-based international order’, in which great powers have curbed their impulse to dominate smaller states, particularly those in their immediate vicinity. But this was always perception rather than reality.

The US has long maintained an expansive sphere of influence across the Americas, Europe and East Asia, underpinned by overwhelming military, economic and financial power. It embraced multilateral cooperation only insofar as doing so aligned with American interests, and disregarded the rules when they did not.

Other powers have never operated by any other logic. Russia has consistently asserted hegemony over its ‘near abroad’, sometimes by force. The PRC has spent decades methodically building its influence, first in its neighbourhood and increasingly on a global scale. Even the European Union (EU) lays claim to a de facto backyard in places such as the Balkans.

Recent episodes – from Ukraine to Venezuela to Greenland – have not created a new international order. Rather, what has changed is recognition among those who long denied it that the international political system is defined not by laws, treaties and norms, but by raw power and strategic interest.

That is how it has always been, and that is how it will continue to be.

Jennifer Parker

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, Founder and Principal, Barrier Strategic Advisory, Adjunct Fellow in Naval Studies, UNSW Canberra, and Expert Associate, ANU National Security College

We are not just seeing a shift in the global order; it is breaking apart. And this is happening quickly. As Carney put it, this feels less like a transition and more like a rupture. In moments like this, there is a strong temptation to reach for neat labels to explain what comes next. History suggests those labels usually only make sense after the fact.

What replaces the multilateral system that has shaped global order since the Second World War is not yet clear, and it may not be for some time. The idea that we are returning to spheres of influence has gained traction because it offers a simple way to understand growing competition between major powers. But it is also an oversimplification.

There is little evidence that the US, for example, is seeking to abandon Europe or the Indo-Pacific. What can be seen instead is an effort to reduce over-extension, push allies to do more with their own conventional forces, and be more selective about where and how it bears risk.

This does not point to a clean division of the world into spheres of influence. Rather, it points to a far messier environment of contested influence, selective engagement and greater pressure on smaller states to navigate uncertainty. The risk is mistaking a convenient label for an accurate description of what is actually unfolding.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

There are two distinct kinds of ‘sphere of influence’: regions of dominance and zones of denial. Historically, continental powers – Russia, France, Germany and the PRC – have sought to carve out areas in which they hold suzerainty: where smaller nations must subordinate their foreign policies to the interests of the large nearby power. If done successfully, this can multiply a major power’s strength by creating a buffer zone around it.

Maritime powers – such as Britain – have favoured a different approach: because they lack the mass or the need to dominate, they have implemented zones of denial. As Sir Winston Churchill famously stated in The Gathering Storm, for over 400 years, the UK’s foreign policy has been ‘to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most domineering power on the continent.’

The decision of Western European countries to reduce their armed forces and the corresponding resurgence of Russia and the rise of the PRC has led to a period of geopolitical rivalry where spheres of influence are starting to return. Under these circumstances, it might be tempting to believe that Britain should lead a group of middle powers to reassert the rules-based international system. But this is a fantasy; their geographic dispersion and national interests preclude them from acting in such a way, just as Russia and the PRC (and perhaps the US) would seek to undermine them.

Rather, the UK should revert to its traditional approach: to deny hostile powers the overlordship of Europe – or parts of it, especially in the arc stretching from Greenland to the Black Sea. And Britain should not do this with regret, but resolutely. In a geopolitical age, a geostrategic perspective is needed.

Julien Lalanne de Saint-Quentin

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The language of spheres of influence has returned, but in European nations this obscures a more basic problem: there is no shared strategic purpose across the continent. What looks like external pressure is, in reality, an internal mismatch of threats, and therefore priorities.

Northern and Eastern Europe remain overwhelmingly focused on Russia and deterrence. Southern Europe is primarily concerned with migration, instability across the Mediterranean and financial vulnerability. These are not different emphases on the same threat; they are different threat systems altogether, which produce divergent strategic reflexes.

France is perhaps the only major European power that consistently views the Eastern and Southern European theatres as equally central to its security. Paris has therefore long pursued the idea that European countries could be rallied around a single strategic vision. That effort has been relentless – and predictably unsuccessful. European nations are divided not by indecision, but by irreconcilable threat realities.

As a result, debates about ‘European strategic autonomy’ often proceed as if a unified Europe were waiting to be emancipated. In practice, the relevant states are fragmented in their threat perceptions and priorities, and therefore structurally inclined to rely on external guarantors. The debate about returning spheres of influence ultimately says less about global change than about Europe’s intractable strategic fragmentation.

The offhand remark made by Ronald Reagan, President of the US from 1981-1989, about the Falkland Islands as ‘that little ice-cold bunch of land down there’ captures an enduring strategic reality: geography matters. Would Warsaw, for example, truly be prepared to trade the certainty of the American umbrella for the defence of Greenland under the EU’s Article 42(7)?

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The first three weeks of 2026 have seen substantial upheavals in global politics. This includes the extradition of Nicolás Maduro, deposed President of Venezuela, from Caracas by United States (US) special forces; protests in Iran against the regime of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, which have seen thousands killed by government forces in retaliation; and the seizure of the Marinera, a Russian ‘shadow fleet’ tanker, in the North Atlantic by American forces with British assistance.

These have all been to the detriment of the ‘CRINK’ – a loose grouping comprising the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran and North Korea. With its associate Venezuela looking increasingly likely to fall under US influence, and the unrest in Iran being hailed as the biggest challenge to the regime since it took power in 1979, the CRINK’s position on the global stage has been shaken. As such, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked eight experts: Is the CRINK in crisis?

Dr Hillary Briffa

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Lecturer in National Security Studies, King’s College London

The question reverberating through the anxious halls of small state governments today is unlikely to be whether the CRINK is in crisis, but whether it is recruiting: dare I ask, ‘are we about to start saying “CRINKUS”?’

For decades, small states have read American power as stabilising; imperfect and self-interested, but fundamentally predictable and reliable. Venezuela and Greenland have changed the tone. They have reminded the world that the stalwart ally which most ‘superatlanticist’ small states have coveted for shelter will no longer even attempt to justify or disguise blatantly expansionist ambitions. For small states which rely on institutions and rules to soften the law of the jungle, a more transactional world creates a serious strategic dilemma.

American engagement still deters adversaries. But, when that engagement is driven unilaterally rather than in concert with allies, it destabilises the very order it once protected. At the same time, the CRINK is not a unified bloc. The PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea pursue divergent interests and frequently pull in different directions, giving the acronym a false sense of cohesion.

For small states, security has never meant choosing sides, but managing uncertainty. In today’s world, where every major power is unsettling the system, that uncertainty now includes even those who once promised order.

That is the crisis.

Neil Brown

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Geopolitical Analyst, Detroit Asset Management

The CRINK leaders continue to collaborate with each other to critical effect and mutual benefit, notably in support of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. They remain, however, essentially an amalgamation of like-minded leaders with broadly similar prejudices against free and open nations.

Most CRINK leaders are facing domestic crises, including the Ayatollah (obviously); Russia, where President Vladimir Putin is weaker than at any point in his 20+ year tenure after almost four years without strategic success in Ukraine; and even the PRC, where the real economy continues to struggle for the demand-led growth which could wean it off a dependency on exports and address structural weaknesses.

The ability of Russia and the willingness of the PRC to aid Iran, for example, is diminished. Of the CRINK leaders, only Kim Jong Un, Supreme Leader of North Korea, appears to have gained strength thanks to what he receives from the Kremlin in return for his material support to – and participation in – the invasion of Ukraine; and even if that relationship is increasingly a concern for Beijing.

Ultimately, the CRINK is not in an immediate crisis just because – with the refocusing of American security priorities and a stubbornly lethargic ‘Old Europe’ – the political ‘West’ is. This is not just to the detriment of Ukraine, Moldova, Taiwan and Greenland. It undermines wider diplomatic, economic and military efforts to weaken CRINK leaders and their ability to coordinate adversarial activities.

Dr Sari Arho Havrén

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Geopolitical Adviser, Business Finland

The CRINK axis is a set of partnerships that have emerged to challenge the US and to serve as a counterweight to the dominance of free and open nations. They trade in arms, energy and technology, allow sanctions evasion and provide diplomatic cover for one another, despite differing threat perceptions and strategic ambitions.

However, events in early 2026 suggest mounting vulnerabilities and potential shifts in the balance of power within the group. As a result, the CRINK is strained by asymmetric and even conflicting interests – but for now, it is not collapsing; it is adapting.

The capture of Maduro on 3rd January disrupted the CRINK’s Latin American proxy. Venezuela is now facing a US-imposed transition, and the Kremlin’s regional influence and Beijing’s resource access are being eroded. Moreover, somewhat humiliatingly, Venezuela’s air defence systems failed to stop the operation, suggesting that Russian S-300 surface-to-air missile systems and Chinese-made radars may not have been seamlessly integrated, thereby degrading their effectiveness under real combat conditions.

Concurrently, Iran’s internal turmoil, erupting just before the New Year, could weaken Tehran’s military support for Russia and, facing threats of American action, expose the regime’s fragility, risking its further isolation within the CRINK. Targeting shadow fleets, including the seizure of the Russian-flagged Marinera tanker, which was smuggling sanctioned Venezuelan and Iranian oil, undermines CRINK evasion tactics and strains Russia’s war economy.

Taken together, these events demonstrate such raw power that the PRC and Russia will have to reflect on their own strategies and capabilities.

These developments highlight CRINK asymmetries and how American assertiveness exploits weaknesses.

The CRINK’s resilience lies in mutual need and shared hostility to US-led financial and security architecture. However, they remain as a ‘transactional four’, and are often distrustful partners. Therefore, despite all grandiose talk of partnerships, it was no surprise that neither the PRC nor Russia has overtly supported Venezuela or Iran through their crises.

Dr Edward Howell

Lecturer in International Relations, University of Oxford

North Korea predictably condemned the recent US intervention in Venezuela as a ‘hegemony-seeking’ act, akin to how Pyongyang has derided past American intervention in Libya, Iraq and beyond. Beijing’s criticisms of Washington’s actions as an act of ‘bullying’ are also to be expected, given its longstanding oil-for-cash relationship with Caracas. Yet, unlike his counterpart in Tehran, Kim knows that North Korea is unlikely to witness the same fate as Venezuela any time soon.

Not only does North Korea have an ever-increasing ‘treasured sword’ of nuclear weapons, but Kim is currently at his most emboldened. The recent capture of the Marinera will have little impact on Pyongyang’s actions and strategy. For all its moniker as a hermit kingdom, North Korea has found increasingly innovative ways to evade sanctions, with continued Chinese and Russian assistance. Despite the changes in individual countries within the CRINK, the axis itself is not in crisis. It has never been – and is unlikely to be – a formalised strategic alliance.

None of its members, including North Korea, show any intention of leading such a grouping. Yet, US interventionism and support for opposition movements in these states will only heighten the collective anti-American attitude on the part of the CRINK. It is for this reason that free and open nations should pay more, not less, attention to them.

Dr Louise Kettle

Assistant Professor in Politics and International Relations, University of Nottingham

The CRINK has always been a relationship of convenience, with mutual self-interest and anti-Americanism at its core. For Iran, each CRINK country has been useful for bolstering an area of strategic importance. North Korea is its leading provider of ballistic missiles; the PRC is its largest trading partner and has helped support Iran diplomatically; and Russia and Iran supply each other with security equipment, while the Kremlin also provides protection for Tehran against the United Nations (UN) Security Council.

However, the Russian-Iranian relationship has been challenged over recent years, leading to questions over whether the CRINK is in crisis. The full-scale invasion of Ukraine started the change in dynamic, escalating the competition between the two countries to sell hydrocarbons to the PRC and allowing Iran the space to regain some influence in the Caucasus.

The conflict in Gaza complicated matters further, as Russia did not have bad relations with Israel, and the Kremlin has been unable to provide many supplies to Iran while the invasion of Ukraine continues. Finally, the fall of Russia and Iran’s mutual ally in Syria has forced further adjustments in the relationship, as Putin has welcomed Ahmed al-Sharaa, President of Syria and Sunni successor to deposed dictator Bashar al-Assad.

This has left Iran feeling uncomfortable, compounded by the weakening of its ‘axis of resistance’ across the region and the new rhetoric of Donald Trump, President of the US, against Tehran. These events have left a relationship based on convenience more exposed, and likely to be tested further should such rhetoric become reality.

George Magnus

Member of the Advisory Board to the China Observatory, Council on Geostrategy

For the CRINK, geopolitical developments and events surrounding Venezuela, Iran and Greenland are notable more for their political and diplomatic consequences than their economic ones. With a return to the Monroe Doctrine, so to speak, the pushback against the PRC’s growing commercial presence in South America – mostly in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru and Chile (which voted in a new rightist president by a landslide in December 2025) – is likely to increase.

While Beijing may have been surprised, even embarrassed, by Washington’s actions in Venezuela, the economic consequences are not huge. The main transmission channel would be via oil prices and supply, but, so far at least, there have been no adverse effects. Nor have there been any from the protests and brutal repression in Iran.

The PRC was buying 90% of Venezuelan oil, but this was only 4% of its overall oil needs. In exchange for about US$65 billion (£48.2 billion) of now bad loans, Beijing received deeply discounted oil and access to the country’s metals and raw materials.

In relation to Chinese and global demand, however, the volumes were unremarkable. Oil imports from the Gulf, on the other hand, supply half of the PRC’s needs, so if the Straits of Hormuz were blocked for any reason, the impact on the PRC would be significant – although higher oil prices would be a boon for the Kremlin.

On the positive side for the PRC, the row over American intentions in Greenland could see other countries follow Canada’s example of trying to de-risk from the US, doing minor trade deals with the PRC and bowing to the Chinese narrative of a new world order.

British and German leaders are expected to visit the PRC later this month and next month respectively. The economic gains for the visitors will be small, but the economic statecraft gains for Beijing – still in a no-limits friendship with the Kremlin, much to European nations’ part-time chagrin – could be much bigger.

Grace Theodoulou

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy

The CRINK is not an official alliance. While it is mostly a series of occasional and opportunistic engagements, rarely featuring all four states simultaneously, this is not to say it is non-threatening to free and open nations.

What brings the four states together is their authoritarian nature and a desire to counteract democratic international institutions. In many ways, Trump’s lack of diplomatic decorum may only work to the CRINK’s benefit.

There is no shortage of countries who are keen to flirt with the latter. South Africa, for example, is by no means authoritarian, but has increasingly come under fire from Trump for its economic and diplomatic ties with Russia. Relations between Pretoria and Washington are increasingly strained as a result. Just two weeks ago, South Africa hosted the ‘Will for Peace 2026’ naval drill exercises with the PRC, Russia and Iran. All four states are BRICS members; given that the CRINK is an unofficial alliance, some of its members can often be seen working together in other fora.

This brotherhood is not without potential threats further down the line. What would happen to Beijing’s investments in Iran, for example, if Trump were to succeed in installing a leader who is friendlier to the US?

It is unlikely that the PRC is not preparing for this outcome. However, Beijing is also courting plenty of other authoritarian governments which could be pulled further into its orbit if there is regime change in Tehran.

Andrew Yeh

Executive Director, China Strategic Risk Institute

The CRINK is not in crisis because it never really existed in the first place. Yes, the PRC, Russia, Iran and North Korea share a number of common strategic goals, chiefly the weakening of the US, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and broader democratic cohesion. And yes, all the evidence suggests they are increasingly willing to work together to achieve this, and will continue to do so.

However, ‘CRINK’ has never been a formalised alliance, nor have any of the constituent parts promised each other security guarantees (with the exception of that between the PRC and North Korea). The lack of response from Russia and the PRC to the American bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities in June 2025 dispelled any illusions that the CRINK might be anything more than a broad strategic alignment.

Certainly, recent events have not gone the way the CRINK would have wanted. The prospect of Venezuela’s oil coming under US control reduces Russia’s ability to leverage its own oil assets while also inflicting further economic pain on an embattled Iranian regime. The move is less catastrophic for the PRC, which has more options to diversify energy imports, and confirms its existing efforts to increase energy independence.

That said, the long-term picture may still give cause for optimism, at least for the Kremlin and Beijing. For Russia, having the US bogged down in the mechanics of regime change in Venezuela, amid its broader focus on the ‘Western Hemisphere’, is good news for continuing its invasion of Ukraine. While it might not welcome increased American attention on Greenland, it is quite happy to see NATO tear itself apart over the issue – a view shared by the PRC.

For Beijing more broadly, the fact that it hasn’t come to the aid of Caracas or Tehran tells very little about its willingness to assert its interests with military force closer to home. It sees the biggest flashpoint – its desire to annex Taiwan – fundamentally differently; as a domestic issue rather than international. The tepid response of Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to the CRINK’s latest setbacks should not fool commentators into thinking him a passive or weak actor.

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Last week, the United States (US) seized the Marinera, a Russian-flagged oil tanker in the North Atlantic. Formerly sailing as the Bella 1 under Guyanese flagging, the Marinera has historically been used to transport crude oil from Venezuela – an associate of the so-called ‘CRINK’ nations of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Russia, Iran and North Korea.

The United Kingdom (UK) aided the US in seizing the ‘shadow fleet’ vessel by providing Royal Air Force (RAF) surveillance aircraft and support from RFA Tideforce, thus demonstrating the will to act against adversaries and protect its own interests. Taking this to its next logical step, for this week’s Big Ask, we asked six experts: Should Britain consider independent actions to seize sanctioned tankers?

Prof. James Bergeron*

Political Adviser to the Commander, NATO MARCOM

Should the UK consider independent actions to seize sanctioned tankers?

Yes and no. The question begs a number of critical questions. To begin with, all maritime interdiction action is independent, in that Britain will be liable for its actions both legally and strategically, regardless of whether it is responding to an American or North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) request, or conducting interdiction as an independent policy.

The second consideration is the focus on action against sanctioned tankers, which is both overbroad and too narrow. The shadow fleet is propping up the Kremlin’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Some elements of it are flying false flags, and thus stateless and without insurance. Others are ‘Flag of Convenience’ vessels, often with substandard insurance and of poor seaworthiness. An increasing number are now legitimately Russian-flagged; others claim to be.

Their sanctioned status may be fixed, or may flex with the market price relative to Group of Seven (G7) caps. Nothing stops the UK from seizing stateless tankers nor those where the flag registration process was irregular, whether on the high seas or national waters. Indeed, Britain should do so to support Ukraine and uphold international law at sea.

At present, this still applies to the bulk of the shadow fleet, as well as legitimately flagged tankers – of whatever nationality, including Russian – under sanction which enter territorial waters other than for transit. Seizure creates several challenges – where will these ships be berthed, what will become of them, and who will pay for it?

The benefits to freedom of navigation and to Ukraine should trump these concerns. However, national sanctions alone do not create a right of high seas enforcement on legitimately foreign-flagged shipping. That is a diplomatic state to state matter. Such action would be highly escalatory, legally being in the wrong and providing a damaging precedent.

The hard case comes when a stateless, sanctioned tanker is being escorted by a Russian warship. On legal and escalatory grounds, it is more prudent to consider the ship under Russian sovereign protection (and liability). Yet, short of that hard case, Britain should act where statelessness and sanctioned status coincide. In fact, it should act on statelessness alone to the extent it can.

*This response is written in a personal capacity, and does not necessarily reflect any official national views, nor those of NATO.

John Foreman CBE

British Defence Attaché to Ukraine (2008-2011) and Russia (2019-2022)

Despite the American seizure of the Marinera, the shadow fleet of decrepit, inadequately insured and poorly crewed tankers used by Russia to transport oil remains a significant challenge. Sanctions have not prevented the fleet from expanding to perhaps 20% of the global tanker total. Dozens of shadow fleet vessels have sailed through the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) since the detention of the Marinera.

After four years of conflict, British politicians are belatedly talking tough about further enforcement action. Yvette Cooper, Foreign Secretary, promised to ‘tighten the chokehold’ further, while John Healey, Secretary of State for Defence, said that ‘deterring, disrupting and degrading’ the fleet is a priority for His Majesty’s (HM) Government. A legal mechanism to authorise boardings and detentions of unflagged or improperly flagged vessels has been identified.

Britain should seriously consider further boarding operations in home waters. The strategic benefits – upholding sanctions, disrupting funding of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, diverting the proceeds of illegal oil to Ukraine, protecting the environment, safeguarding critical underwater infrastructure and reducing danger to commercial shipping – outweigh the risks of Russian retaliation, international unease and legal challenge.

The UK’s boarding operations are unlikely to cause significant dents to the shadow fleet alone. Expansion of the use of boarding should be coordinated with allies; unilateral bravado would be unhelpful. Coordinated expansion of British, American and European Union (EU) sanctions against the shadow fleet is also required, together with a blanket ban on maritime services – including shipping, insurance, crewing and operations – on any ship transporting Russian carbon-based energy resources. This approach should also be extended to the export of Russian fertilisers; another big export earner for the Kremlin.

Prof. Basil Germond

Professor of International Security and Co-Director of Security Research Institute, Lancaster University, and Visiting Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre

Boarding commercial vessels on the high seas without consent – even when justified under United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) exceptions such as ‘statelessness’ – carries significant legal, diplomatic and political risks. Indeed, such actions challenge established norms and practices and can escalate tensions. Yet, risks can be offset by potential benefits, such as reducing shadow fleet activity and improving the enforcement of sanctions.

Whether the use of force can effectively deter shadow fleet operations remains highly uncertain. These vessels operate within a well-entrenched business model, driven by owners and captains willing to profit from illicit and opaque practices. These networks are supported by adversarial states such as Russia and Iran, and facilitated by permissive buyers and open registries which reinforce opacity and limit regulatory oversight.

So far, this has limited the success of sanctions enforcement. Now, the use of force against contravening civilian vessels could demonstrate resolve, and thus help deter shadow fleet operators by denying the use of UNCLOS as a shield for sanctions evasion.

For HM Government, this can also contribute to posturing and strategic deterrence against Russia’s broader malign activities at sea. Yet, it might also reinforce power politics at sea by undermining UNCLOS, paving the way for expanded hybrid warfare in the maritime domain.

Ultimately, rather than deterring Russia, this could incentivise the Kremlin to escalate sub-threshold activities without even maintaining plausible deniability, signalling a shift toward more overt and aggressive ‘grey zone’ operations which further destabilise the maritime domain.

For HM Government, the risks and benefits of seizing sanctioned tankers must be carefully weighed, as such decisions carry strategic and legal implications alongside the potential gains in deterrence and sanctions enforcement.

Charlotte Kleberg

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Associate Fellow, Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre

Against the backdrop of the British Armed Forces supporting the seizure of the Marinera, recent discussions have focused on the future use of British special forces to seize and detain ‘stateless’ vessels. Whether the UK should act independently depends on its willingness to own the responsibility and consequences if, or when, it chooses to do so. Ultimately, a strong case can be made for boarding and seizing stateless vessels, as inaction risks normalising sanctions evasion, but it is not without its challenges.

Intervening in another state’s trade is inherently delicate, and independent direct action would require naval resources that Britain currently lacks. Coordinated action with allies or partners would better manage risk. However, even where a vessel can credibly be deemed stateless – justifying a seizure under international law – challenges remain. The Baltic states, for example, have grappled with the practical question of what such enforcement should look like and what should follow from such action for a while now.

Current discussions highlight the reality of maritime security: the law of the sea is largely shaped by precedent where there is ambiguity, leaving room for interpretation. In the current climate, whether an activity is formally illegal feels secondary to what states believe they can get away with. While some warn of countermeasures, the UK’s adversaries are already pushing boundaries, raising the question of what protection caution really offers when only one side abides by international law.

Andrea Marchesetti

Analyst, Italian Embassy in London (2014-2024)

An article in The Times reported that ‘UK officials believe they have found grounds for authorising soldiers to board and detain oil tankers under the Sanctions and Money Laundering Act [SAMLA]’. Powers to board ships in international waters, inspect their contents and seize sanctioned goods have been available since 2018 (sections 19, 20 and 41 of SAMLA).

What is missing is a detailed rulebook on what to do with sanctioned goods once seized – whether to destroy them, sell them or donate the proceeds to Ukraine, what to do regarding the owner’s right of appeal, and so on.

The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) itself highlighted that these regulations were missing in 2024. Like most sanctions rules, HM Government can write them expeditiously and without Parliament’s involvement. However, it has not done so.

Current sanctions have so many loopholes that extending them to flagless ships would achieve little. A full maritime service ban on Russia (doing so without the oil price cap rigmarole) and sector-wide sanctions on Iranian oil (Britain only bans transactions with specific entities) are under consideration, but not yet in place.

Difficulties relate to risk appetite, not legal issues. In 2019, 30 Royal Marines detained Grace 1, an Iranian tanker, in Gibraltar. European nations’ responses were divided when Iran retaliated by detaining a British tanker.

The UK’s desire not to ‘stand by and allow Iran – or anyone – to bypass vital EU sanctions’ was noble, but a one-off: this time, Britain would only act alongside allies, governmental figures have intimated.

To convey the spirit of Theresa May, then prime minister, who introduced the sanctions framework in 2018, ‘nothing has changed’.

Prof. Alessio Patalano

Adjunct Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Professor of War and Strategy in East Asia in the Department of War Studies, King’s College London

The question is deceptively simple. It is hard to resist the temptation to suggest that Britain should indeed consider independent action to seize sanctioned tankers. From the perspective of both capabilities and precedent, the UK would stand on solid ground to do so.

Almost two decades of persistent counterpiracy and interdiction activities from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean have enabled Britain – and, in fairness, many other European powers – to possess a fine set of capabilities to board and secure suspicious vessels. In terms of precedent, the recent intervention by French special forces to seize the stateless ship Boracay set an important standard for other countries, including the UK, to follow.

Yet, the question is not one of capabilities, but rather of political opportunity. In this respect, the key question is whether independent British action would bring greater value than concerted action with other allies and partners. Within the context of how shadow fleet assets are empowering the Russian military machine, the issue is not merely a British problem. It is about European security and, as such, there is a genuine advantage in working with others to pursue such an objective.

HM Government has already indicated as much, and allies are seemingly interested in exploring options. Such a choice has a clear operational advantage, and offers an opportunity to contain potential risks. The operational advantage is that concerted action makes it harder for suspicious vessels and their masters in Moscow to know when, and from where, action will be taken towards them. From a risk perspective, collective action makes it harder to identify proportionate targets for responses, keeping the calculus of how to respond to such actions more complex.

In all, yes – the UK has probably considered independent action, but political leaders have also probably considered that working with others is a more desirable option – which does not preclude, in the future, to consider options to go alone.

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2026 has begun with significant geopolitical upheaval, as the United States (US) carried out a military operation in Venezuela on 3rd January, resulting in the capture of Nicolás Maduro, the deposed President of Venezuela. Maduro has now been indicted on charges, including drug trafficking, in New York.

While the operation was an unparalleled military success, it has broad geostrategic implications that will reverberate across both the region and the wider world. So, for the first Big Ask of 2026, we asked six experts: What are the strategic implications of the American operation in Venezuela?

William Freer

Research Fellow (National Security), Council on Geostrategy

From a British perspective, the strategic implications of American actions in Venezuela can be broadly split into three different categories: the good – something which has been broadly overlooked – the directional, and the concerning.

There are in fact some quite positive implications for the United Kingdom (UK) from a Venezuela which is either neutralised or brought into the fold. It should not be forgotten that Maduro spent a great deal of time threatening to invade neighbouring Guyana, a Commonwealth member.

With the removal of Maduro, subsequent internal political disruption, and a Venezuelan military which has been soundly beaten, the risk that British forces might be diverted away from Europe to South America has been greatly reduced. In addition, if Venezuelan oil were to be released to the global market, this would significantly ease the cost of living challenges being faced in the UK – although it of course remains to be seen what will happen with Venezuelan oil reserves.

The directional implications do not need a great deal of exploration. It has been obvious for some time that hard power is back in vogue and global geopolitics is becoming more confrontational. This episode merely reinforces that trend. One can only hope that those in His Majesty’s (HM) Treasury might take greater notice.

As for the concerning, that has come in the aftermath of the Venezuelan intervention. The Trump administration’s designs on Greenland were reaffirmed shortly afterwards. The forced annexation of a treaty ally’s territory (a territory of significant geopolitical interest to Britain) would be deeply troubling, and is something which HM Government should work actively – but carefully – to discourage.

Joshua C. Huminski

International Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Senior Vice President of National Security and Intelligence Programmes, Centre for the Study of the Presidency and Congress

The strategic implications of the US’ capture of Maduro in Caracas are significant, albeit in different ways than media coverage suggests. Will Donald Trump, President of the US, move on Greenland next? Almost assuredly not – he knows what makes for good metaphorical television and likes to keep negotiating partners (allies included) off-balance.

It will, however, manifest most notably in the calculus of Russia and the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The Kremlin and Beijing will see Trump’s use of force as further evidence that he will act unilaterally when he deems it in America’s national interest, especially in the Western Hemisphere. It is proof of the ‘“Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine’ in action.

The operation directly challenges Beijing’s economic interests and energy investments in Venezuela while benefitting the US. Caracas sits on the largest oil reserves (reportedly) in the world and Joe Biden, President of the US 2021-2025, failed to replenish America’s strategic petroleum reserves after releasing 180 million barrels since 2022 (it sits at roughly 57% of total capacity today) – a substantial policy error.

Russia will see it almost exclusively through a defence and security lens, reinforcing existing perceptions that Washington will engage in regime-change behaviour when it deems necessary to do so. It also further highlights the Kremlin’s inability to defend its allies in the Western Hemisphere (or indeed in the Middle East).

Dr Robert Johnson

Honorary Fellow, Council on Geostrategy, and Director, Oxford Strategy, Statecraft and Technology (Changing Character of War) Centre

The American operation into Venezuela represents a shift that has been years in the making. The Trump administration has stated that its priority is ‘America first’. It is eager to assert its influence over the Americas, with its aspiration to control Greenland and Canada, rename the Caribbean as the Gulf of America and terminate regional narcotics trafficking. The removal of a dictator, who had presided over sham elections and orchestrated a regime of intimidation, opens up the possibility of a new political dispensation in Venezuela and the development of a decayed oil industry over the next 30 years.

Some European commentators have asserted that the PRC will be emboldened to conduct a similar coup de main against Taiwan, and that Russia will opportunistically follow suit. Neither of these assertions has any basis in evidence. The PRC is already coercive against Taiwan and countries of Southeast Asia, while Russia is engaged in an aggressive full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Instead, a long-term shift is underway. The United Nations (UN) has been criticised for being unable to uphold international norms. It has been reduced to a forum for diplomacy, but three of the five permanent members of the Security Council have been in breach of the principles of the UN Charter periodically over the last two decades. Even the UK now finds itself in breach of the UN principle of self-determination with regard to the people of the Chagos Islands. The ‘rules-based international order’ is over – if it ever existed. The era of coercion is back.

Prof. Caroline Kennedy-Pipe

Professor of War Studies, Loughborough University

There has been consternation over the US military intervention in Caracas, but no sorrow over the removal of a dictator. Indeed, American actions may even be understood as part and parcel of the Monroe Doctrine and the pursuit of oil. American presidents have long been motivated by access to resources, as the decision to invade Iraq in 2003 demonstrated.

Unlike that adventure, thus far, the incursion into Venezuela seems a success, followed up by the US military boarding a Russian tanker in the waters of the Atlantic. Alongside these ventures, Trump has reasserted his claims to Greenland and its place in his schemes to dominate the Western Hemisphere, countering Russian and Chinese ambitions.

Greenland is strategically important to North America, particularly in terms of nuclear defence and the Russian threat emanating from the Kola Peninsula. The island is also under its melting ice sheet, home to vast reserves of critical minerals valuable to any modern economy. Trump has made it clear that he will, if necessary (or perhaps because he can), invade Greenland, although this is not strictly necessary given the provisions of the 1951 treaty, which permits the US wide-ranging rights in terms of troop deployments and bases in Greenland.

Perhaps Trump is emboldened by recent military success, but let us not forget Russia, muted on events in Venezuela but outspoken on Greenland. Russian spokespeople warn that the visible extension of American power – following the accession of Finland and Sweden to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) – may ignite a flashpoint in the Wider North. Trump may not have much regard for NATO, but the Russians care about events in their Arctic and Baltic backyards.

However, the Kremlin will also watch if Trump does take Greenland by force, calculating that a NATO impotent to defend part of the Kingdom of Denmark may yet falter in Ukraine.

James Rogers

Co-founder (Research), Council on Geostrategy

For Britain, the implications of the American operation in Venezuela are far less significant than the amount of hysteria surrounding the operation would suggest. True, the US swooped in and captured Maduro in a pitch-perfect special forces operation, which is against international law. But international law is not absolute, and America has long asserted a special right to intervene in the affairs of the Western Hemisphere – most recently in the US National Security Strategy of November 2025. Equally, it should not be forgotten that Maduro was hardly a legitimate leader; he retained power after the Venezuelan presidential election in 2024, which international observers claimed was largely corrupt and illegitimate.

Those who argue that the American operation sets a precedent for Russia and the PRC to invade neighbours are also wide of the mark. Russia and the PRC do this at will – most recently and brazenly in Ukraine and the South China Sea – whenever either thinks they can get away with it. These countries do not take cues from the American president; they act when they feel the balance of power shifts in their favour. And non-aligned countries are unlikely to be put off by America’s actions, any more than they did not stop cooperating with Moscow and Beijing after their aggression.

Rather than fuss about Venezuela, HM Government needs to focus on what really matters: Russian aggression towards Ukraine. Ensuring that Ukraine is able to hold firm and/or negotiate from the strongest possible position throughout 2026 is what really matters to British interests. For the UK, what happens in the British sphere of privileged interest – Europe – matters far more than what happens in America’s.

Gray Sergeant

Research Fellow (Indo-Pacific Geopolitics), Council on Geostrategy, and PhD Student, Department of International History, London School of Economics and Political Science

As early as the mid-2010s, satellite images revealed streets in remote Inner Mongolia laid out like those found in central Taipei. Among them, five stories high, with a bisected rectangle layout and a central tower over the main entrance, stood a structure which looked remarkably like Taiwan’s Presidential Office Building. The striking resemblance can be seen better in Chinese state-media footage showing People’s Liberation Army (PLA) troops training around it.

Beijing did not need to see Maduro in a Brooklyn detention facility before it began to contemplate taking out Taiwan’s political leadership. As analysts have noted, the Chinese military has long thought about ‘decapitation operations’ as part of a campaign to annex Taiwan, which includes airdropping special operation units.

In fact, days before Venezuela’s dictator was taken, during the PLA’s most recent large-scale exercise around Taiwan – which involved live-fire – Senior Colonel Zhang Chi boasted that: ‘the exercises conducted simulated strikes against key symbolic targets associated with the ringleaders of the “Taiwan independence” separatist forces’ (i.e, Taiwan’s democratically elected government).

It would be an overstatement to say that Operation ABSOLUTE RESOLVE emboldens Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) vis-à-vis Taiwan. Beijing certainly likes to give its claims to Taiwan a legal veneer, but this matter is of such interest to the communist regime – ‘the core of China’s core interests’ as Zheng Zeguang, Chinese Ambassador to the UK, has said – that international law and norms will not ultimately constrain them. It is the threat of Washington intervening, defeating Chinese forces or imposing such a high cost, that deters Beijing from acting.

In this regard, the sheer effectiveness of the US military, and the questions which have been raised about the failure of Venezuela’s Chinese-made radar systems, may, at the very least, give Beijing pause for thought.

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