Recommendable! Echoes of Britannica Rex or Rule, Britannia!
"Last month, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a £16.5 billion (A$29 billion) increase in funding for the British Armed Forces, on top of an increase of 0.5% above inflation per year announced in the Conservative Party’s 2019 election manifesto. Combined, this means that the UK is due to ... over the next four years, potentially taking the country from the world’s sixth largest to fourth largest military spender. ...
Much of the funding will be used to push forward with the replacement of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines, critical in deterring hostile states like Russia—a mission that has new-found importance given the recent deployments of British conventional forces in Eastern Europe. ...
This became clearer with Johnson’s assertion that some of the new defence funding would be used to uphold the Royal Navy’s position as ‘the foremost naval power in Europe’, mandating the construction of a new generation of frigate (the Type 32), in addition to the Type 26 and Type 31 classes already on order. ...
Much of the funding will be used to push forward with the replacement of the Royal Navy’s nuclear submarines, critical in deterring hostile states like Russia—a mission that has new-found importance given the recent deployments of British conventional forces in Eastern Europe. ...
This became clearer with Johnson’s assertion that some of the new defence funding would be used to uphold the Royal Navy’s position as ‘the foremost naval power in Europe’, mandating the construction of a new generation of frigate (the Type 32), in addition to the Type 26 and Type 31 classes already on order. ...
In short, the UK appears set to tilt further ‘east of Suez’—British strategic parlance for the Indo-Pacific—a move that has been underway for some time. Since the early 2010s, the UK has deepened its strategic relations with the Gulf states and the countries of Southeast Asia as well as Japan and Australia, while also moving to bolster its ‘strategic array’ of military facilities throughout the region, including in Bahrain and Oman.
The British naval presence in the Indo-Pacific has also become more persistent, most notably in August 2018 when the amphibious assault ship HMS Albion steamed through the Paracel archipelago en route from Tokyo to Hanoi. With this manoeuvre the Royal Navy became the only navy, other than the US Navy, to negate China’s illegitimate imposition of ‘straight baselines’ around the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea."
No comments:
Post a Comment