The news that American and Japanese soldiers are now training in the Australian outback sends a frisson of anxiety through the corridors of Whitehall. It should not. It confirms what any student of imperial decline already knows: the United Kingdom’s much-vaunted ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific is a strategic illusion, a rhetorical flourish designed to mask our reduced circumstances. We are not pivoting; we are clinging to the coat-tails of others.
Consider the spectacle. US Marines and Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force are rehearsing jungle warfare in Queensland, while British defence officials cluck approvingly from London. The AUKUS pact, the Carrier Strike Group deployment, the trade deals with Australia and New Zealand — all presented as evidence of a resurgent global Britain. Yet what do these gestures actually amount to? A handful of frigates, a carrier often bereft of aircraft, and diplomatic boilerplate about the ‘rules-based order’.
The Victorians would laugh, as they did when Palmerston dispatched gunboats to Canton. They understood that power requires credible force, not just signatures on memoranda. Today, we lack the naval tonnage to patrol our own waters, let alone the South China Sea. Our Army is the smallest since the Napoleonic era. To pretend that we can project deterrence from the Falklands to the Philippines is to indulge in a collective delusion reminiscent of the Roman Senate sending empty decrees to the Rhine frontier.
Meanwhile, the real actors — the United States and Japan — are deepening their bilateral ties with Australia without bothering to consult their supposed British partner. The exercise in the bush is a reminder that for Washington and Tokyo, London is a complementary accessory, not a pillar. We are the third wheel in a tricycle that handles perfectly well on two wheels.
What then is the purpose of our Indo-Pacific pivot? It is a rhetorical crutch for a nation uncomfortable with its reduced status. We cannot defend Europe, we cannot dominate the Middle East, and we cannot compete in Asia. So we summon the ghosts of empire — the Royal Navy’s global reach, the Commonwealth ties, the special relationship — to convince ourselves that we remain a player. This is intellectual decadence of the worst kind.
I propose an alternative: strategic honesty. Acknowledge that the UK’s primary security interests lie in the North Atlantic and the Baltic, where we share borders and alliances with NATO. Stop pretending that a handful of destroyers can check Chinese expansion. Instead, invest in the capabilities that matter: cyber defence, intelligence, and economic resilience. Let the Americans and Japanese lead in the Pacific; they do not need our cheerleading.
But such realism is unlikely. The allure of playing global power is too seductive for politicians who fear admitting that the age of British naval dominance is over. So we will continue to send soldiers to the bush, sign communiqués, and applaud exercises that have nothing to do with our security. Nero fiddled while Rome burned. We rehearse while our real defences crumble.
In the end, the question is not whether British troops will join their American and Japanese counterparts in the Australian heat. They have, and they will again. The question is whether a nation that once ruled a quarter of the globe can learn to live within its means without resorting to imperial pantomime. The answer, I fear, is no.
