Vasiliev Vladimir Sergeevich – Sc.D. in Economics, Chief Researcher, Institute for USA and Canada Studies (ISK RAN)
The article analyzes the geopolitical and geo-economic strategy and tactics of the United Kingdom in the Indo-Pacific region (IPR) after the UK left the European Union at the beginning of 2020, and mainly the strategy towards China. The beginning of the third decade of the 21st century was marked by serious economic difficulties for the UK – the deep economic downturn of 2020 and the recession of 2023–2024. Economic turmoil was accompanied by a political crisis, during which the UK saw three prime ministers. The euphoria of the first years of «free floating» of Great Britain, expressed in the formulation of the concept of «Global Britain», quickly gave way to a more sober approach: within the framework of the strategic orientation towards the creation of the Atlantic-Pacific Partnership, Great Britain began to position itself as a junior partner of the United States. A sharp increase in the competition between the United States and China at the turn of the 2010s–2020s forced the British political elite to seek a balance of interests in the complex dilemma of new geopolitical opportunities and geo-economic benefits from the rivalry between the United States and China. As a result, Great Britain, playing on the hegemonic aspirations of the United States, began to actively provoke Washington to transform the entire set of American-Chinese relations into the «new Cold War» format, while seeking to obtain significant economic benefits and use British-Chinese trade and economic ties to overcome economic difficulties. The decisive role in the development of such an approach to building British-Chinese relations was played by the British historical memory of the period of the first half of the twentieth century, when, during the course of two world wars, the commercial British Empire gradually disappeared from the historical stage, giving the position of the leader to the United States.
new Cold War, Global Britain, Atlantic-Pacific Partnership, China, USA.
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