Boris has made the big strategic choice – to stand with the democratic US against China

In the UK the penny has dropped. Downing Street has caught up with the US, where the dime dropped years ago – China is a strategic competitor.

This week’s “Integrated Review” on defence and security described China as a “systemic competitor” but it amounts to the same thing. If David Cameron’s “Golden Era” of bilateral relations ever really began (doubtful) it was a very short era. Instead, we are in what former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently described as “the Decade of Living Dangerously’.

The British review states that China’s authoritarian system is at odds with UK values and an open society. Using the language of competition and values suggests Boris Johnson frames the approach towards Beijing in a very similar fashion to the Biden administration. The new US president has pledged to put values at the heart of China policy and his National Security Strategic Guidance says that democracy is “our most fundamental advantage”. The promotion of human rights values is a change from the Trump years, but the idea that China is a strategic competitor precedes both presidents.

George W Bush used the phrase on the campaign trial in 2000 and, although he softened his tone on taking office, in private he did not change his view. Barack Obama sought a partnership with China but was concerned about the rise of its military power, intellectual property theft, and unfair trade practices. In 2017 Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy labelled China a Strategic Competitor and ended hopes that the two great powers could cooperate at an economic and military level.

During China’s rise there were many policy makers who believed two fundamentally flawed things about the country. First, that the creation of what is essentially a capitalist economic system would in turn bring political liberty thus resulting in a friendly relationship between the two powers.  Secondly, that the differences in foreign policies could be reconciled. The first idea fails to understand the dictatorial tendencies of any Communist regime, especially one led by someone who believes, as does President Xi, in Marxist historical determinism. It also fails to account for the conviction in the Chinese government that a stable society is a rare thing and preserving it requires the elite cadres to impose their will. The second premise does not take into account the contradictions in the two foreign policies. The Chinese are determined to make almost all of the South China Sea its territory despite the sovereign claims of nations such as Vietnam and the Philippines. It intends to eventually retake the island of Taiwan, by force if necessary, and increase its dominance in the East China Sea. The US is determined to keep the international sea routes open for all via its freedom of navigation operations, go to the aid of Taiwan if it is invaded (unless it declares independence) and stand by its allies.

The Americans cannot agree to China effectively controlling the east Pacific, while the Chinese cannot accept the Americans containing their rise. This is the backdrop to Kevin Rudd’s speech to the National University of Singapore in February and his warning that “the 2020s are going to be a make-or-break decade for American and Chinese global power, when the balance of strategic, economic, and technological power between Washington and Beijing is likely to move closer to parity than ever before.” During this period there will be moments of tension and probably dangerous flashpoints. Some may begin as minor incidents, but neither side will want to give way. Both are courting and/or coercing nations across the region – at each sign of weakness a country may edge closer to one side or the other.

It’s not inevitable they will clash militarily. They need to agree on climate change measures, nuclear arms reductions, a Space treaty, and there are a range of confidence building measures which can be taken. However, Xi is betting that after the Trump years America will not regain its confidence, is a nation in decline, and that the regional powers, and others beyond, will read the situation the same way and gradually come under China’s hegemony.  Enter Boris Johnson and the Integrated Review. It may be about more than China, but there is no bigger problem it addresses.

This decade will see numerous countries making decisions about their relationships with the two superpowers which will lead to most of them, at the least, to lean towards one or the other. The UK administration is not just leaning towards the US, it is maintaining a decades long policy of standing next to it.

In May the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth leaves Portsmouth bound for the South China Sea to conduct freedom of navigation exercises.  As it heads out to sea, onboard will be a US Marine Fighter Attack Squadron and its F-35B stealth jet fighters, and alongside it will be the USS Sullivans – an American destroyer. That’s quite a statement from a post-Brexit Britain which also hopes to secure lucrative trade deals with Beijing.

The Global Times, which is close to the Chinese Communist Party, reacted to the Integrated Review with a range of views. The UK was a “toady of the US”, the decision to send the aircraft carrier was a “fantasy of reviving its past glory” and revealed “London’s overconfidence in its current international status and national strength.’

The deployment of the carrier does look symbolic, it’s hardly a sustainable military presence and the Americans, with 12 carrier groups, do not require British sea power. What they do require are allies all over the globe.  This is a truism Donald Trump was incapable of grasping but which Joe Biden has spent a long career believing and practicing, something Boris Johnson understands and is taking advantage of. It’s placing a bet that Xi is wrong and that Biden can rebuild American power and that the UK’s interests lie in co-operating mostly with a fellow democracy and not one which has imprisoned a million of its citizens for the crime of being Uigher.

The British Prime Minister hasn’t bet the farm and hopes not to have to. There will still be a degree of kowtowing to be done with China’s “Wolf Warrior” diplomats to facilitate trade, but when it comes to security and defence, when there’s a choice to be made, it already has been.

Tim Marshall’s new book – The Power of Geography – is published on April 22.