The Anglosphere: The great power alliance right under Washington’s nose

As George Orwell so sagely put it, “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Sadly, this is a battle most present-day U.S. foreign policy analysts are losing. In obsessing about the unicorn of a united, pro-American, anti-Chinese European Union — a creature that simply does not exist — a majority of foreign policy thinkers are at risk of wholly neglecting an actually functioning anti-Chinese alliance that exists right under their noses. 

The United Kingdom and the major English-speaking dominions of the former British Empire — united by a shared tradition of English common law and the individual political and economic freedoms that flow from it — are easy to overlook. However, allied with the United States, the Anglosphere’s institutional and geographical heterogeneity belies a practical geostrategic closeness that Brussels cannot begin to match. The Anglosphere alliance is simply the most important foreign policy reality that no one is talking about. 

For example, and most tellingly, in all of the major geostrategic contests in the last tumultuous century — the first and second World Wars and the Cold War — much like a bickering Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, who nonetheless always came out shooting together, all the Anglosphere countries found themselves on the same side in every contest. This record of strategic closeness is unparalleled, and it is not an accident. 

Beyond geostrategy, in terms of intelligence matters, the Anglosphere is already the superpower. The “Five Eyes” amounts to by far the most important intelligence-sharing consortium in the world. The U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia and New Zealand have openly and automatically shared signals intelligence since 1956, in turn targeting the Soviet Union and then global terrorism. Now, with the rise of China, the non-U.S. elements of the Anglosphere once again have found a strategic rationale to tighten their already formidable bonds to the U.S.

Rather bravely, given its economic dependence on Beijing, the Australian government of Scott Morrison has asked the necessary, obvious, but pointed questions about China’s role in the propagation of the COVID-19 virus. On April 19, Foreign Minister Marise Payne forthrightly stated that Canberra would “insist” on an independent international investigation into the origins of the pandemic.

China, well aware of its complicity, took this effort at truth-telling as an assault on the country. Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-run Global Times, responded to Canberra’s call with ferocious language. On April 22, he thunderously stated that, “Australia is always there, making trouble. It is a bit like chewing gum stuck on the sole of China’s shoes. Sometimes you have to find a stone and rub it off.”  

Nor were China’s threats merely rhetorical. On May 18, the Chinese government went further, imposing tariffs on Australian barley of up to a punitive 80 percent and banning large exports of Australian beef. 

Undaunted, the Morrison government has repeated its call for an international coronavirus commission. Beijing’s bullying over Canberra’s call for an investigation into the genesis of the pandemic has decisively rallied Australia to the Anglosphere cause.

For the U.K., the break with Beijing follows a politically embarrassing U-turn over allowing Huawei, China’s telecoms giant, to have a major stake in establishing Britain’s new 5G network. Rather unthinkingly, following on from the Cameron and May governments’ naïve efforts to initiate a Golden Age of trade with Beijing, the Johnson government initially signaled that Huawei would play a lead role in the vital project, only to be wholly unprepared for the firestorm that followed. 

Huawei long has had uncomfortably close ties (by Western standards) with the Chinese government, as is true of all of the country’s major economic players. Beijing’s national security law of 2017 states plainly that the country’s businesses must “support, assist and cooperate with the state intelligence work.” This makes it clear that, if the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) asks a Chinese business to hand over the personal data of its customers, there is no way it would refuse. 

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo led the charge to get its Anglosphere ally to change its disastrous decision. Practically, he made it clear that, without revision, the U.K.’s coveted place in the Five Eyes clubhouse might be called into question, because “American information should only pass across a trusted network.”  

Belatedly jolted into action, the Johnson government began a torturous climb-down. In January, it capped Huawei’s share in the U.K.’s 5G network at 35 percent. By May, the U.K. government announced that it planned to entirely phase out all Huawei technology from its network by 2023. 

Compared to NATO European allies Germany and France, who have kept the Huawei option open for their own 5G networks, it is striking that all the Anglosphere countries —with Australia and the U.S. rejecting Huawei outright, while Canada and New Zealand have chosen more expensive, if safer, options — have uniformly rejected the company from having a stake in the running of their 5G networks in the long term. Once again, the five major partners in the Anglosphere find themselves on the same side of history. 

The Anglosphere’s fortunes soon may become even brighter, because of typical Chinese strategic overreach. Already, the Quad in Asia has emerged as the nascent strategic grouping standing up to Chinese adventurism. It is composed of core Anglosphere members — the U.S. and Australia — with honorary Anglosphere member Japan also involved. Vital India, undoubtedly part of the Anglosphere but with a different and more conflictual colonial history and tradition of non-alignment, is the last of the Quad’s members. 

Given this different history, Delhi has always shied away from Anglosphere participation — that is, until now. As the shocking news of Beijing’s aggression against Delhi in the Himalayas settles, India likely realizes that its strategic destiny is bound up in an Anglosphere dedicated to limiting Chinese adventurism. The Anglosphere, far from being the past, may well be the future of international relations.

Dr. John C. Hulsman is president and managing partner of John C. Hulsman Enterprises, a global political-risk consulting firm headquartered in Milan, Germany and London. A life member of the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, Hulsman is a contributing editor for Aspenia, the flagship foreign policy journal of The Aspen Institute, Italy.