Abstract: One of the most significant novelties introduced by the Integrated Review published in 2021 concerned Britain’s ambition to reinvigorate its policy engagement with the Indo-Pacific region. Often assessed through the lenses of post-Brexit Britain, the Indo-Pacific 'tilt’ has been the subject of much media and intellectual debate, if not outright opposition. This talk addresses the process that led the policy team overseeing the Integrated Review to adopt it. It seeks to challenge the two main criticisms around the tilt. The first concerns its intellectual origins as a post-Brexit ambition to disengage from Europe to re-engage with the wider world; the second focuses on its unattainable ambitions to increase the UK profile as a security actor in the region. The talk suggests that far from being an exercise in post-Imperial vanity, the tilt reflects three major changes in foreign policy under the Johnson government. The first regards the shift towards state on state competition as a crucial component of international affairs; the second, deals with changes in the UK defence posture post-Afghanistan; the third specifically addresses the impact of the Indo-Pacific in international security and how the UK can contribute to the region’s stability through a renewed emphasis on membership to key multilateral forums. The talk reviews this process and set forth an argument for an approach that is unlikely to significantly change under the new Prime Minister Sunak. 

Bio: Alessio Patalano is Professor of War & Strategy in East Asia at Centre for Grand Strategy at the Department of War Studies (DWS), King’s College London (KCL). He specialises in maritime strategy and doctrine, Japanese military history and strategy, East Asian security, NATO-Japan cooperation, and British defence policy towards the Indo-Pacific. Prof Patalano is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (FRHistS), a Visiting Fellow at the Royal Navy Strategic Studies Centre (RNSSC) a Visiting Professor at the Japan Maritime Command and Staff College (JMCSC), a non-resident Fellow at the Royal Australian Navy Sea Power Centre, and an Adjunct Fellow at the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. In January 2022, Prof Patalano became Specialist Advisor on the Indo-Pacific to the Foreign Affairs Committee in the UK Parliament for a period of six months. Prof Patalano’s monograph Post-war Japan as a Seapower: Imperial Legacy, Wartime Experience, and the Making of a Navy (Bloomsbury 2015) received international recognition and was translated in Chinese language.