What does the UK’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy mean for Euro-Atlantic cooperation?

The United Kingdom’s new review of security and foreign policy has been heralded as a radical post-Brexit shift to a ‘global Britain’, but senior British officials have reassured allies that the plan will not weaken the UK’s commitment to NATO and European security, or British support for nuclear disarmament.

“As we assessed our interests and assessed our existing position in the international order, it was quite clear that our interests are global as well as they are European and, in some respects, were becoming more global, from economic interests through to security interests,” explained John Bew, Special Adviser on Foreign Policy to the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and author of ‘Realpolitik: A History’, told a Friends of Europe online debate on March 30.

Despite that global perspective, the review’s much-publicised ‘tilt’ to the Indo-Pacific region, and reductions in tanks and troop numbers which have raised concern in NATO, Bew insisted the UK remains firmly engaged in Europe.