CANZUK

[Furunculus]

Seems solid, but it doesn't address the question of decline. This is an attempted ranking of global powers today according to their ability to actively maintain narrowly-defined strategic status quo.

All as opposed to a framework of mere capacity for territorial defense, the paper lays out - however, it doesn't characterize dynamic adaptation around constraints into actual exercise of power, such as power toward denial of competitors'/adversaries' strategic aims and priorities; a limitation when this is perhaps where China and Russia are presently most potent with respect to the US and the rest.

Our decline is principally caused by defence inflation - which outstrips oridnary inflation by some measure - and all hi-tech militaries are subject to the same pressure. Problems are usually relative, this one certainly is.

I don't think there is any expectation of the UK/CANZUK taking on china in area denial overmatch. that role would always fall to the US.

What interest or capacity does the UK have in projecting power in the Pacific independent of the US, is the big question.

You know what would really be the most powerful military and economy on Earth, bar none? A union of North America and the EU (including UK). I don't see why it's much less reasonable in the long term than CANZUK, since feelings of "cultural similarity"* eo ipso don't, I believe, motivate concrete foreign policy once the government no longer cares about the old-fashioned imperial posturing (the like which you see foremost in China and Russia).

The Defence Concepts and Doctrine Centre has got you covered:
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...ions_sasia.pdf
https://www.gov.uk/government/upload...eb_Secured.pdf

I disagree about the similarity in the degree of congruence between CANZUK and NA-EU.
France still sees NATO as a vehicle of US dominance.
And Germany has a crippling lack of trust in America and Americans:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo...-a7562276.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German...ti-Americanism