United States

This was strengthened further following the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing War on Terror. The urgency to thwart such plots led to the “relationship becoming increasingly close, at all levels”, according to Savill. While there have always been policy disagreements between the UK and US, Savill clarifies, the friction between the US government and its own intelligence community is new. In an article published last year, Savill argued that following the purge of numerous US intelligence leaders at the beginning of the Trump administration, countries like the UK would “need to consider the US a less reliable intelligence partner”.

The private Chinese security players “have evolved from marginal actors into an important instrument of Beijing’s overseas risk-management architecture,” said Alessandro Arduino, associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, a London defense think tank. Chinese private security companies have had a more discreet presence than Russia’s Wagner Group, which acted as a shadow Russian military in parts of Africa, or America’s Blackwater, which provided logistical support for U.S. interventions abroad. “Beijing remains deeply wary of outsourcing violence beyond Party control,” Arduino said.

This would need to be a multinational force to have the kind of enduring presence [in the Strait]. The interesting bit is the use here of various types of uncrewed vessels, drones, for a combination of sensing, for situational awareness - seeing what is out there, and potentially clearing mines...A lot of this technology is untested though. The Royal Navy is having to look at different ways of achieving what it tries to do because it is shrinking in terms of ships and people."