US wants UK military to shift focus to Europe

This appears to be a completely different strategy from the one during the Joe Biden era, where the US asked its allies to focus on the Indo-Pacific region.

According to five sources cited by the Financial Times (FT), Elbridge Colby, former US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, told British officials that a Trump administration would require the British military to increase its focus on the Euro-Atlantic region.

Colby, formerly the Pentagon’s third-highest ranking official, also expressed concern about London sending the HMS Prince of Wales aircraft carrier on a deployment that would also operate in the Indo-Pacific. Colby has long argued that European countries should take more responsibility for the security of their region, especially concerning the war in Ukraine. He states that this would allow the US military to focus more on China and the Indo-Pacific.

This move represents a 180-degree turn from the Biden administration. The Biden administration argued that increasing Europe’s military presence in Asia would help counter “aggressive Chinese military activities” in the region and could help deter a potential decision for a Taiwan war.

In recent years, European countries, including Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands, have sent warships to the South China Sea despite Beijing’s objections.

In 2021, the Pentagon welcomed the United Kingdom’s “historic” deployment of the Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier to the Indo-Pacific. During the first half of the Biden administration, Kurt Campbell, the White House coordinator for the Indo-Pacific, urged Europe to take more steps in the Pacific, arguing that the Atlantic and Pacific regions are interconnected.

Zack Cooper, an Asia security expert at the American Enterprise Institute, said, “This decision indicates that the Trump administration would try to separate the two regions. This could cause allies in both regions to become more concerned about the continuation of the US presence in the region,” he added.

A source familiar with the matter said that the United Kingdom “is always active globally, including close cooperation with the US on Euro-Atlantic priorities,” but that it “will also consider its own interests as well as its global partnerships, whether in Europe, the Middle East, or the Indo-Pacific.”

While US military officials are generally pleased with a greater European military presence in the Pacific, the civilian policy team within the Pentagon under the Trump administration wants countries to focus more on their own regions.

Colby this week described increasing Europe’s defense spending to 5% of its GDP as “key.” Encouraging countries to increase defense investments, Colby recently told Congress that Japan should exceed its 2% target and Taiwan should spend 10%.

Eric Sayers, an Asia security expert at Beacon Global Strategies, defended the plan, saying, “Given Europe’s limited military power, it is natural for a Trump administration to want this power focused on the European continent and the Russian threat rather than being spread to Asia or elsewhere. Practicing naval diplomacy in other regions during peacetime is not a luxury Europe can afford these days,” he added, defending the plan.

However, critics of the strategy say that increasing cooperation between Iran, Russia, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), and China means the US needs help from allies outside its own regions.

An official from a country in the Indo-Pacific region said, “The regions of Europe, the Middle East, and the Indo-Pacific have always been deeply interconnected. But today, security is more indivisible than ever; not least because of the re-emergence of a strong global axis of authoritarian revisionist powers,” they added.

The British Ministry of Defence said, “We are in close cooperation with the US and our Indo-Pacific allies regarding the deployment of the carrier strike group for exercises later this year with HMS Prince of Wales.”