From 3h ago Rishi Sunak unveils £5bn extra defence spending ahead of Aukus summit in US Good morning. Rishi Sunak is in San Diego, California, where today he will meet Joe Biden, the US president, and Anthony Albanese, the Australian prime minister, for an Aukus meeting. Aukus is the Australia/US/UK security pact, primarily focused on providing Australia with nuclear-powered submarine capacity. It was set up when Boris Johnson was prime minister, and now provides him with the material for one of his most over-used jokes. The meeting will coincide with…
Tag: Defence policy
Aukus will bolster stability in the Asia-Pacific, not undermine it | John Blaxland
Prime minister Anthony Albanese is set to commit Australia to the biggest national industrial redevelopment project since the Snowy Hydro electricity scheme and the British-Australian nuclear weapons research collaboration of the 1950s. The project involves considerable risk. Spanning three nations (each with multiple jurisdictions) over two or more decades, including the governments of multiple presidents and prime ministers in three countries. This seems inconceivably difficult on one level – were it not for the galvanising effects of: the rise of an increasingly authoritarian and adversarial China; the fallout from Brexit,…
Sunak’s focus may be on China, but it’s Europe’s security that is vital for the UK
The refresh of the integrated review of defence and foreign policy comes only two years after the original, and if Labour were to win the election it may only last a similar amount of time. Nor would it have happened if it hadn’t been for Conservative chaos, as reopening the review was the brainchild of the short-lived Liz Truss. To be fair, the war in Ukraine has upended previous assumptions, but this is not really the path taken by Rishi Sunak. A large part of what is announced focuses on…
Rishi Sunak risks row with Tory hawks over China balancing act
Rishi Sunak has warned that China’s plans to “reshape the world order” represent an era-defining challenge for Britain, but risked sparking a row with hawks in his own party by dismissing calls for Beijing to be categorised as a threat. As he flew to a summit designed to shift the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific region, the prime minister signalled a major refreshing of the UK’s national security strategy and uplift in defence spending. The moves are meant to curb the influence of China, which Sunak said was becoming…
UK rehearsing economic fallout scenarios if China invades Taiwan
Whitehall officials have strategised a series of scenarios about the economic fallout that could follow if China were to invade Taiwan, sources have told the Guardian. Concerns about the major disruption to global supply chains and consequences of any coordinated western response have been examined by civil servants as part of what is said to be routine “forward-scanning” exercises. Foreign Office insiders said there was no change to the scale or urgency of the work, though they conceded Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine last year had given it renewed prescience.…
UK plans security review after spate of mysterious objects over America
The UK will conduct a security review after the appearance of a series of mysterious objects – including a suspected Chinese spy balloon – over North and South America in recent days, the defence secretary Ben Wallace has announced. It comes after US fighter jets shot down an “unidentified object” over Lake Huron on Sunday – the fourth similar object to enter US or Canadian airspace in just over a week. “The UK and her allies will review what these airspace intrusions mean for our security. This development is another…
UK to designate China a ‘threat’ in hawkish foreign policy shift
China is to be formally designated a “threat” to Britain in a hasty rewrite of Boris Johnson’s defence and foreign policy that is being brought forward to end confusion among ministers about how to deal with Beijing. Under Johnson, China had been categorised as a “systemic competitor” but the new prime minister, Liz Truss, wants to take a more hawkish stance quickly, as she seeks to shore up support for her faltering premiership on her backbenches. The redesignation will bring the UK’s official position towards China close to its stance…