Subcontracting, facilitating and qualities of regional power: the UK’s partial pivot to Asia

The impacts of the economic and financial crash of 2007/2008 brought about policy reorientations in the UK and wider West. Fiscal and monetary projects at home, including quantitative easing and budget austerity, were coupled with reassessments of foreign policy abroad. A wealth of scholarly attention centres upon the USA’s “pivot” (later the “rebalance”) to Asia under the Obama administration, designed to reassert American authority in a region of increasing strategic significance at a time of shifting distributions of global power (for example Tow and Stewart 2015; Bisley and Phillips 2013; Jennings 2013). Yet the UK, alongside other European nations, embarked upon a “pivot” of its own.

In August 2013, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius asserted that France “has undertaken a ‘pivot’ to Asia” (Embassy of France in London 2013). Germany (Sharief 2013), the Netherlands (Netherlands Government 2016) and others have expressed similar aims.¹ These Western pivots were always largely independent of one another, and disparate in nature and scope. European strategies have been less security-focussed than that of the USA. Especially for the UK and France, they have also been driven by post-colonial ambitions to recover a lost presence in Asia, while the USA sought to reassert a regional omnipresence which never reached a discernible end. In April 2012, former UK Foreign Secretary William Hague announced that “[t]oday, Britain is looking East as never before. We are setting our country firmly on the path to far closer ties with countries across Asia” (FCO 2012).

This article examines the UK’s foreign policy “pivot” to the region. This pivot has neither been explicated in detail by UK governments nor organised into a single or entirely coherent policy programme. However, its strategy boasts physical structures and contours now manifest for around a decade, which speak directly to questions about Britain’s place in, and importance to, Asia today. Whitehall has done much to signal that Asia is key to Britain’s future global prosperity, while insisting that the UK remains an important element of Asian affairs and redirecting foreign policy resources in that direction. This “pivot” to Asia is outlined elsewhere (see Warren 2014; Blount 2013), including within the context of European approaches to the region (Simón and Klose 2016). While existing analyses are stronger on the physical contours of the pivot, however, they tell us little about what it has achieved and, ultimately, about the particular space the UK occupies in modern day Asian affairs.

Pertinent questions therefore remain. Why do Asian actors pursue enhanced diplomatic, economic and security arrangements with a physically limited and geographically detached UK, and why do they work to integrate the UK into their institutional architectures? Ultimately, what are the particular forms of power and influence Britain claims in twenty-first century Asia? What difference, if any, has its attempted “pivot” to the region made in these regards? This article examines the motivations for the UK’s pivot to Asia and its manifestations to date, what the pivot has achieved and what it reveals about the UK’s presence in Asia a decade after its tentative emergence in the aftermath of 2007/2008, as the country prepares for a new chapter of internationalism outside the European Union. The focus is the post-2010 period and UK engagement with key partners in East and South East Asia, as well as notable others such as India.

The first section interrogates the political, economic and security dimensions of the pivot which is divided into three main phases since 2007/2008. It is argued that the pivot—confidently but incompletely set out in a small number of policy statements—has been idealistic and rife with internal contradiction. Despite ambitions for expanded regional involvement, self-imposed limitations on UK foreign services and a lack of long-term vision have resulted in a partial and disjointed shift of attention and resources.

The second section explores the achievements of this partial pivot and what its developments say about the UK’s contemporary role in Asia. Drawing from data obtained from the UK Office for National Statistics and interviews with diplomats to the UK of East and South East Asia and with staff of British non-governmental organisations, it is shown that the pivot has done little to improve the UK’s standing as a tertiary-level partner of Asia. Attention then shifts from a concentration on quantities of (economic and military) state power to qualities of power. The latter are shown to have been central to the UK’s post-2010 pivot and its regional function in broader terms, with Britain now occupying two primary roles in Asia: those of “subcontractor” and “facilitator”.

The final section looks to the UK’s future in Asia as it plans to exit the EU. It is argued that while the UK would likely remain a specialist regional subcontractor, post-2016 uncertainties around its future direction and international relationships mean its prized status as facilitator risks becoming diminished.

In 2008, the Labour government established the UK-China Economic and Financial Dialogue and a reallocation of Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) resources towards Asia began, albeit with a lingering focus on Afghanistan and South Asia as theatres of the War on Terror (Foreign Affairs Committee 2009, 32). With the change to a (Conservative−Liberal Democrat) coalition government in 2010, the pivot advanced into a newly intensified second phase. The National Security Council (NSC) and its Sub-Committee on Emerging Powers were established, with its concentration soon narrowing upon Asia where growth remained comparatively strong and consistent. In 2012, William Hague noted that “[o]f the 29 countries we have identified for these efforts, 11 are in Asia, and we have put the need to turbo-charge our economic and political ties with them among the very top priorities” (FCO 2012). National “soft power” initiatives like the GREAT campaign targeted Asian markets (Pamment 2014).

A network shift at the FCO saw diplomatic operations withdrawn from Europe and expanded in China, India, Thailand, Myanmar, North and South Korea, Mongolia and Vietnam, among others (FCO 2011). This refocussing of international priorities complemented what some describe as the UK’s return to the “East of Suez”, in pursuit of closer relations with Gulf and Indo-Pacific partners (Vasager 2016). Enhanced interest in Asia stemmed largely from the (post-2010) coalition, then (post-2015) Conservative, governments’ aims of reducing the national deficit via an increasingly mercantilist foreign policy (HM Treasury 2010) and has always been framed principally in economic, as well as diplomatic, terms. The NSC’s Emerging Powers Sub-Committee was “heavily prosperity focussed” (House of Commons Defence Committee 2011, 29), and government targets included doubling trade with China, Indonesia and Malaysia (Department for Business, Innovation and Skills 2012; Cabinet Office 2012a, 2012b).

From 2010, the pivot quickly centred around ambitions for intensified trade and investment with China. British delegations made high profile visits in 2010 and 2013, with Chinese delegations visiting the UK in 2011 and 2014. In 2015, $50bn of trade and investment deals and a UK-China Infrastructure Alliance were announced (Department for International Trade 2016). The UK became the first Western economy to issue a Chinese currency bond and the first major Western economy to join the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Membership was driven by the Treasury in its pursuit of closer economic relations with Beijing and with the aim of London becoming central to trade in the Chinese yuan (Casarini 2015).

This “golden era” of UK-China relations however, in which the former sought to become the latter’s “best partner in the West” (HM Treasury 2015), attracted hyperbole, driven by the centuries-old myth of the China market which has always been less an external reality than a fantasised Western construct (see Turner 2014). Former prime minister David Cameron was warned by Beijing against “finger pointing” over China’s human rights record (Wintour 2011), and UK-China diplomacy suffered following a 2012 meeting between Cameron and the spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dalai Lama; diplomatic visits were cancelled and Whitehall was forced to distance itself from the issue (Osborn 2013). Yet, products of this so-called golden era extended beyond the economic. The UK, for instance, now has more Confucius institutes and classrooms than anywhere outside the USA (Confucius Institute Headquarters 2014).

Elsewhere, and after becoming the first EU member to appoint an ambassador to the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in 2009, the UK re-opened an embassy in Laos in 2012, gaining a diplomatic presence in each of the institution’s national capitals. David Cameron’s first overseas visit beyond Europe after the 2015 general election was a trade mission to South East Asia (Prime Minister’s Office 2015). In India, two new Deputy High Commissions in Hyderabad and Chandigarh opened in 2012 (UK Government 2012), and in 2010 and 2013, high-profile UK trade delegations visited the country.

After decades of decline, the UK’s military-security profile in Asia is modest. Its infantry garrison in Brunei survives (though primarily because its operating costs remain covered by the sultanate), along with a naval fuel depot and berthing wharves in Singapore. The UK also retains the British Indian Ocean Territory and is a founding member of the Five Power Defence Arrangements, the United Nations’ Command Military Armistice Commission in Korea and the Five Eyes intelligence alliance. The UK attends meetings of the Asia Pacific Intelligence Chiefs and the Shangri La Dialogue security forum, as well as the biennial Rim of the Pacific Exercises. Prior to 2010, the UK thus maintained a formalised and codified, but generally low-cost and low-commitment, security presence in Asia, centred around partnership and dialogue forums. The UK’s 2010 National Security Strategy (NSS) focussed far more on the Middle East and North Africa than Asia (UK Government 2010). Nevertheless, during the second phase of its pivot, the UK adopted a twin strategy of further integrating itself into regional security institutions, while formulating new bilateral arrangements.

In 2012, it joined South East Asia’s Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, and the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia (ReCAAP). In 2013, it signed a Defence Equipment Cooperation Framework and an Information Security Agreement with Japan, to improve joint mechanisms for sharing classified information (UK Government 2013). The 2015 NSS, which more comprehensively outlined the UK’s approach to the region, described Japan as Britain’s “closest security partner in Asia” (UK Government 2015, 57). In 2016, security arrangements with Japan were upgraded to a 2 + 2 defence dialogue as London pledged to “play a more proactive and constructive role for the Asia-Pacific security environment” (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016a). In 2014, the UK also established an annual Ministerial Strategic Dialogue with South Korea (UK Government 2014).

In 2014, Beijing’s Ambassador to London, Liu Xiaoming, indicated that the “golden era” in UK-China relations was overhyped and unsustainable, noting that Britain ranked behind Germany and France in Chinese estimations (Ford and Kynge 2017). Clearer signs that the pivot was transitioning into a third phase, in which China was no longer the fulcrum of Britain’s Asian ambitions, became most apparent with the UK’s referendum on EU membership and subsequent change of government leadership in June 2016.

A key pillar of the Leave EU campaign was the promise of economic opportunities beyond Europe, with India, Australia, ASEAN and the Commonwealth. Government rhetoric since the Brexit referendum has promoted this vision of a Global Britain which “get[s] out into the wider world, to trade and do business all around the globe” (Prime Minister’s Office 2017), with less singular emphasis on China. The new British government, led by Theresa May, quickly established a High Level Security Dialogue with China (UK Government 2016). More recently, Chinese officials have complained of a lack of enthusiasm from the May government and chose not to repeat a large auction of renminbi bonds in London (Ford and Kynge 2017). In 2017, the UK signed the Guiding Principles of China’s ambitious Belt and Road initiative. Yet, Theresa May’s first in-depth trade discussions with a non-EU leader were with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2016 (Spectator 2016), and the 2015 UK state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping remains the high-water mark of post-2010 UK-China relations.

The FCO did most to articulate its aims and ambitions for the UK’s pivot to Asia in 2012 and 2014 (FCO 2012, 2014), presenting it as multidimensional and with myriad opportunities to embrace. Yet from the beginning, it has been rife with internal contradiction. After 2010, few mechanisms of state escaped economic austerity and the drive to cut the national budget deficit, with allocations to the FCO and Ministry of Defence reduced by around 20% (Institute for Fiscal Studies 2015). In this sense, statements on the pivot reflect existing criticisms of idealism in UK National Security Strategies: “thick with description and thin on the main question: the dialectic between the country’s aims and its ability to meet them” (Porter 2010, p. 6).

Post-2010 UK activities in Asia, while intensified, delivered relatively little material commitment. New diplomatic posts in Asia came at the expense of reductions in Europe; new (bilateral and multilateral) security frameworks, agreements and dialogues brought few demands for increased hardware investment; and “golden eras” of relationships with regional partners like China were heavy on rhetoric but lighter on meaningful policy initiatives, while remaining vulnerable to diplomatic disruption. Britain, in short, advocated an unrealistic expansion of its presence and influence in Asia at a time of self-imposed resource limitations, precluding anything more than an inherently limited, partial pivot of attention and assets to the region. From these restricted and contradictory foundations, what has the UK’s partial pivot achieved, and what has it done for the UK’s role in Asia today?

In March 2017, Britain formally began the process of exiting the European Union. The long-term impacts of Brexit are unclear, but its direct effects in Asia are likely to be minimal due to the UK’s relatively minor physical presence. The concern in Asia is for the prosperity and stability of the EU, which has been viewed with concern for at least the past decade; Brexit is seen as the latest in a series of European crises to jeopardise Asian interests (conversation with senior manager of British NGO in South East Asia, 4 November 2016). The EU is China’s largest trade partner and a leading economic partner for all Asian economies. It accounts for around 10% of ASEAN’s international trade and is its largest external source of FDI (ASEAN 2015, 2016b).

Brexit would force a realignment of priorities in Asia, which augers a challenging future for British interests there. Little in the UK’s regional trade and investment profile suggests that it could achieve a parity of interest with Brussels, or that its partial pivot of recent years better prepares it for that scenario. The EU courts the same partners as will a post-Brexit Britain and, as Japanese President Abe observed, “Japan’s priority is negotiating trade deals with Europe…rather than individual states in Europe” (Prime Minister’s Office 2016). Indonesia’s former Trade Minister noted that the UK would be required “to offer better terms to Indonesia than the [European Union]…Indonesia will have to make more concessions for a big trophy like the EU” (Asia House 2016).

Key elements of the UK’s qualities of power, which have driven its post-2010 pivot to Asia, could be sustained. British specialisms in international bureaucracy, security and education, for instance, operate largely independently of Brussels (though as already noted, post-Brexit student visas are already a point of debate). Those elements constitutive of its status as specialist subcontractor therefore could, for the most part, endure. Equally however, exiting the Union would render more vulnerable the UK’s status as regional facilitator, particularly its prized functions as economic gateway and political bridge to Europe.

Asian economies and investors with UK operations fear reduced access to EU markets (Posaner 2017). In its letter to London and Brussels, Tokyo repeatedly stressed the value of British connections to Europe, including tariff-free movements of goods, services, data and cross-border investment; “Japanese businesses…have invested actively to the UK, which was seen to be a gateway to Europe…we strongly request that the UK will consider this fact seriously” (Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs 2016b). It also identifies the importance to Japan of British-based EU agencies, notably the European Medicines Agency, which is expected to move to Amsterdam in 2019.

Interviewees for this study confirmed that Asia would lose the influence of a liberal trading “champion” in Europe (diplomat B, London, 16 January 2016) and a leading proponent of “free trade and the multilateral trading system” (diplomat C, London, 20 January 2016). For these reasons, “it would be much better for your sake and for our sake that you remained within the EU” (interview with diplomat D, London, 3 February 2016). With the UK’s facilitating role in Asia extending to politics and diplomacy, it is expected that its “voice on other issues, on security etc., would [also] be lost” (interview with diplomat C, London, 20 January 2016).

Asian governments lament the prospect of an EU without Britain partly because the direction of travel in Europe has been towards more centralised and institutional-level arrangements to which Asian economies are attracted; the EU recently finalised a comprehensive trade deal with Japan and negotiates with China, India, ASEAN and others (European Commission 2018). Repeated statements of the anticipated “loss” of Britain point to a future in which a “trophy” EU remains the priority in Asia. A key post-Brexit challenge for London would be to convince Asian partners already sceptical of Britain’s ability to occupy a significant long-term regional presence that potential losses such as of its gateway status to Europe can be successfully compensated for.

Finally, Britain’s post-Brexit role in Asian affairs is risked via alienation within multilateral settings. As already described, regional partners like Japan court the UK’s elevated position in the United Nations, and with political factions central to twenty-first century multilateralism, that position has been bolstered and amplified by communal EU membership (Dee and Smith 2017). A rhetorical theme of Britain’s pivot to Asia has been a commitment to the rules-based international order (FCO 2012, 2014, 2015), with London marketing itself as a networked, bridging facilitator to this end; “when the United States is shifting its focus towards the region and we wish to see the European Union take a more active role, there is a great deal for us to work on with them”, noted William Hague (FCO 2012). Indeed, it has been argued that London represents a Transatlantic “interlocutor” between Brussels and Washington (Stokes and Whitman 2013, p. 1103). Yet, in the post-2016 eras of Brexit and Donald Trump, clear uncertainties and tensions have emerged both in the UK’s present and future relations with Europe (Hix 2018) and with the USA (Stacey 2017). Marginalisation in any multilateral setting would almost inevitably limit the projection of British influence and test perceptions in Asia of the UK as a partner of global standing.

In 2012, William Hague argued: “We want Britain to be a leading partner [in Asia]…in trade and commerce, in culture, education and development, and in foreign policy and security” (FCO 2012). However, what has been termed here the UK’s “pivot” to Asia, emerging from 2007/2008 and intensifying in the post-2010 period, has done little to improve its position as a tertiary-level partner of Asia. Trade growth with China, India, ASEAN and others slowed between 2010 and 2015 compared to the preceding (“pre-pivot”) five-year period and compared unfavourably to the UK’s wider global trade patterns (though foreign direct investments remained strong). Its military-security presence in Asia also remains limited.

As such, the UK’s regional importance, and, indeed, its contemporary global identity, is best explained not in terms of its quantities of power—as a “great power”, a “middle power” or otherwise—but by its qualities of power, as a subcontractor of valued skills and specialisms, and as a networked facilitator of international policy goals. The UK concentrates its resources in Asia in niche areas such as finance, education and security sales where it is best equipped to generate returns, and where it is unable to “cover the field” with its quantities of military and economic power, especially at a time of fiscal restrictions and self-imposed limitations on foreign policy resources.

Indeed, the UK’s unrealised ambitions for substantial and consistent increases in trade and investment across Asia, and of a reinvigorated political and security presence, leave its attempted pivot partial and disjointed. While confidently and romantically articulated by successive Foreign Secretaries as a strategy to reinvigorate Britain’s place in Asia, domestic austerity measures have essentially prevented that dream from materialising. As Porter (2010, p. 6) explains, the UK “doesn’t do strategy coherently”, and the UK’s modern-day pivot to Asia has been reactionary and impulsive rather than the product of long-term strategic frameworks and planning.

The historically “ad hoc and patchy” nature of UK foreign policy, Hague once lamented, brought the complaint “that British Ministers only get in touch when a crisis arises” (FCO 2010). Yet, the official narrative of the UK’s pivot to Asia has extended little beyond the need to seize opportunities in Asia after economic and financial crises at home. The perception that Britain’s interests are increasingly contingent on the flow of potential profit was expressed in an interview for this research: “Britain takes a more cautious approach than before. If it is too costly then you don’t take the risk” (diplomat A, London, 11 December 2015).

With the politics of Brexit playing out in Asia, a new fog of uncertainty surrounds its policy aims. London and Brussels are stakeholders among many in the Brexit negotiations, and a failure to defend the interests of others will live long in the memory. Tokyo’s cautionary letter to London and Brussels illustrates this point, and Britain position must speak to their concerns with displays of cooperation and compromise, and a long-term relationship with Europe which accommodates the interests of global others. In doing so, the UK can help preserve a relationship with Brussels which protects its coveted international facilitator status.

Across its range of foreign and diplomatic services, the UK arguably boasts Europe’s strongest networks and expertise in Asia. A suspicion among local partners, however, is that they may become subsumed by negotiations with Europe even beyond its planned EU exit in March 2019 (conversation with senior manager of British NGO in South East Asia, 4 November 2016), causing it to “pivot” away from the region again. Indeed, signals emerged in late 2017 that the FCO’s stated network shift to Asia would formally be abandoned, with plans for “redressing the [diplomatic] balance” back towards Europe in the service of Brexit (Elliott 2017). The UK must accept that the quantities of (economic and military) power its pivot has been primarily designed to enhance will never sufficiently define Britain’s place in Asia, and that the qualities of power on which its regional presence most fundamentally rely are inextricable from its traditional role as a specialised and globally interconnected, European, partner.