Lately it seems as though the Western policy world is divided between Europe First and Asia First. In Britain, the Starmer government appeared initially to abandon the Conservative idea of “Global Britain” in favour of a greater focus on Europe. In the US, Donald Trump has insisted that the war in Ukraine should end as quickly as possible – no matter the outcome – and that all efforts should be concentrated on dealing with China. This choice is often treated as a zero-sum game: a perhaps intuitively appealing option given limited resources and voters’ preoccupation with national priorities and domestic economic concerns.
Yet Trump’s return to the White House fundamentally transforms the relationship between the US and its traditional allies, whether in Europe or in Asia. The US president’s willingness to intervene in the case of Russian aggression in Europe or an attack by China on Taiwan cannot be taken for granted. Britain, very much the junior partner in the US-UK relationship, needs to strengthen – and substantially expand – its cooperation with other liberal-democratic allies to confront common security risks. At the same time, it must mitigate the sharply increased risk of a US retreat from its historical stabilising role in Europe and the Indo-Pacific.
Europe and Asia cannot be separated in strategic terms. They are fast becoming one battle space, ideologically and increasingly militarily as well. The dispatch of 10,000 North Korean troops (substantially increased by the addition of up to 3,000 more troops in February) to support Russia’s attack on Ukraine is stark evidence of this interconnection.
It is useful to consider the universal clash between Western values and autocracy taking place in the Euro-Atlantic and East Asia. The democratic world – Nato, the EU, Japan, South Korea and Australia – with possibly conditional support from Trump’s America, now faces off against the Russian, Chinese and North Korean dictatorships. The three leaderships may not constitute a formal axis – though North Korea has a defensive treaty with China and since June 2024 a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership with Russia – but they are collaborating closely.
We can see the effect of this relationship in Europe. In 2017, China and Russia held joint naval exercises in the Baltic Sea. Furthermore, Moscow and Beijing collaborate in the Arctic and High North. Indeed, the long coastal Northern Sea Route, which connects China and European Russia in the ice-free months, literally links the two spheres.
Meanwhile in Asia, Russia is still a major military and territorial presence. In May 2022, shortly after the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Chinese and Russian bombers flew a joint operation near Japanese air space. Moscow has also offered Beijing access to naval waters just north of Japan. In July 2024 there was a joint Sino-Russian bomber exercise off Alaska, which caused deep alarm in the US. As recently as September, Chinese and Russian naval forces cooperated in joint exercises in the Sea of Japan, adding to concerns in Tokyo about China’s increasingly assertive intrusions into the waters and air space near Japanese territory.
Faced with these threats, the Starmer government has wisely sought to re-engage with Europe (such as signing a new security and trade partnership with Germany, the Trinity House Agreement, in October) and has taken the lead in seeking to build a “coalition of the willing” to address the crisis over Ukraine, while also indicating its commitment to the Indo-Pacific focus of its Conservative predecessors. Later this year the HMS Prince of Wales carrier strike force will deploy for seven months to the Indo-Pacific region, bolstered by the participation of the Norwegian navy because, as the Ministry of Defence puts it, “the UK recognises that security in the Indo-Pacific region is indivisible from that in Europe and is committed to strengthening relationships in the region further to support stability”.
There are long-standing reasons for the UK to remain engaged in East Asia. For a start, the Indo-Pacific matters deeply to Britain in its own right: the region is the main global source of economic growth. Japan boasts the world’s fourth-largest GDP and is an active promoter of regional trade liberalisation; South Korea is Asia’s fourth largest economy and ranks 14th in the world by nominal GDP. The new entrepreneurial culture in the region – especially its proven capacity for innovations in semiconductors, high tech, and consumer tech – offers opportunities for the UK. It is no coincidence that Britain sought and in December was given admission to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a regional free trade agreement of which Japan is the largest member.
Meanwhile, China’s attempts to dominate the South China Sea, through which about 12 per cent of the UK’s trade passes, are alarming. If China were to attack Taiwan, it would trigger a global economic crisis, not least because a substantial proportion of the semiconductors needed for all modern devices are produced on the island. The UK also has a specific obligation to help the residents of its former colony of Hong Kong as the Communist Party of China clamps down there.
The UK’s allies do not see the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific as binary choices in a zero-sum game. If Xi Jinping prevails in Taiwan or the South China Sea, it is only likely to embolden Vladimir Putin. Likewise, if the US abandons Ukraine, it would be a fatal blow to the credibility of Asia’s deterrence. If Ukraine falls, the Japanese believe, Xi will be encouraged. “Ukraine today,” the then Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida warned at the Hiroshima G7 summit in 2023, “may be East Asia tomorrow.” By contrast, Ukraine’s survival encourages Taiwan – and the rest of Asia. This is why many allies focus on the “indivisibility” of Asian and European security. “We face the head of the dragon and the tail of the bear,” the Japanese deputy defence minister Makoto Oniki told us during a recent visit to Tokyo, “and you face the head of the bear and the tail of the dragon.”
This is why Japan and South Korea have been at the forefront of efforts to support Ukraine. Japanese diplomats, well regarded in the Global South, have done their best to encourage powers such as India to distance themselves from Russia. Japan is also the second-largest donor of non-lethal financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine after the US. South Korea, fearful of what Putin will give North Korea in return for its troops, is considering providing military assistance for Ukraine, and sending monitors to study North Korean tactics at the front. It is already supplying large amounts of weaponry to Poland, which releases equipment to Kyiv.
Asia views Britain, known for its fierce support of Ukraine, as a valued partner in this strategy, the most important globally behind the US. This also reflects Britain’s overall economic, military and intelligence strengths, and the fact that the UK is seen in the region as a “hedge” against abandonment by the US. As such, Tokyo and Seoul have been eager to deepen ties with London. In 2023 then-prime ministers Rishi Sunak and Kishida signed the Hiroshima Accord, which outlined new agreements on defence, trade and investment, as well as science and technology collaboration. At the end of that year, South Korea and the UK inaugurated a “global strategic partnership” with the Downing Street Accord, which committed both parties to defend a “rules-based economic order” and specifically condemned Russian aggression against Ukraine.
Yet the return of Donald Trump has made everyone nervous. Officials in Tokyo and Seoul are braced for the White House to demand huge increases of their financial contributions for US troops stationed in their respective countries. If carried out, Trump’s plan to levy 10-20 per cent tariffs on foreign imports would have devastating impacts on the Japanese and South Korean economies, and in the case of the latter, there are fears that Trump might want to renegotiate the South Korea-US Free Trade Agreement.
Moreover, both Japan and South Korea are domestically in weakened positions. South Korea is grappling with the fallout from President Yoon Suk-yeol’s extraordinary 3 December 2024 declaration of martial law and his resulting impeachment by the country’s National Assembly. If the Constitutional Court rules, as expected, to uphold the impeachment motion, then the country will face a presidential election that may usher in a new progressive president less inclined to focus on European issues in favour of negotiating with North Korea. In Japan, Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s minority Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government is expected to perform badly in this summer’s scheduled upper house election, raising expectations of a possible change of leadership.
Britain can help allay geopolitical fears through a more integrated strategy. From a security perspective this could include expanding its Five Power Defence Arrangement with Singapore, Malaysia, Australia and New Zealand to include Japan and South Korea. The UK could also consider setting up another joint expeditionary force – like the one it leads with the Nordic and Baltic states, as well as the Netherlands – to knit together smaller partners, this time in the Indo-Pacific. Aukus or the Five Eyes intelligence partnerships could be expanded to South Korea and to Japan, notwithstanding questions about the reliability of Japan’s national security and information safeguards.
With the new Trump administration discarding long-established norms of cooperation with allies, particularly with European partners, in addressing the war in Ukraine, there is an urgent need for a new cooperative partnership to fill the emerging void in security preparedness both in Europe and Asia. Britain should build on the recently launched UK-Korean foreign and defence ministerial meetings, to explore opportunities for new trilateral security linkages that would bring together British, South Korean and Japanese officials. In recent months, Seoul and Tokyo have substantially bolstered their security cooperation, including via joint military exercises and intelligence sharing, prompted in part by the August 2023 trilateral Camp David accord between the US, Japan and South Korea. A similar, formalised trilateral partnership between the UK, Japan and South Korea would have benefits greater than the sum of its parts. Critically, a new trilateral framework would allow British, Japanese and South Korea leaders to consult privately on how best to work cooperatively to minimise the consequences of increased US unilateralism.
It’s increasingly clear that the UK faces a combined threat from Russia and China in both the Euro-Atlantic and Indo-Pacific alongside the new, unprecedented challenge of a US administration deeply ambivalent (at best) about its commitment to the liberal international order. As the US negotiates directly with Russia and great-power politics threatens to marginalise smaller powers, British, Japanese and South Korean leaders should be cooperating privately to minimise the consequences of US unilateralism. To address these twin threats from Beijing and Moscow, Britain must, alongside the new partnerships with European countries, also create a community of deterrence and a community of common values with our Japanese and Korean partners. Otherwise, we risk being mauled by the claws of the bear and lashed by the tail of the dragon.
Brendan Simms is director of the Centre for Geopolitics, and John Nilsson-Wright is head of the Japan and Koreas Programme at the Centre, both at the University of Cambridge.
[See more: European leaders still aren’t facing reality on Ukraine]
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