Quad Lite or Anglosphere Plus? Making Sense of UK Engagements with the Quad ‘Network’ in the Indo-Pacific

The UK has a shared geographical scope of attention and an overlap with the Quad concerning interests particularly pertaining to maritime security, climate change, and emerging and critical technologies. Over the past four years since releasing its Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy, the UK’s activities across these domains in the Indo-Pacific have intensified at pace. These activities are often carried out through minilateral groupings or with Quad member states, while the Quad’s own propensity for informal and less institutionalized activities, most clearly enacted through ‘Quad plus’ and ‘Quad lite’ mechanisms, aligns with the UK’s networked approach to Indo-Pacific affairs. Despite this, the UK has not had to explicitly mobilize the Quad as a label through which activity is organized. Instead, it has relied primarily on its more conventional ‘Anglosphere’ networks including Five Eyes and AUKUS to organize its engagements, alongside broader bilateral ties. Such a choice stems from the stronger cultural affinity and more dense habitual relations, as well as concerns about the Quad’s coherence and the perception of regional states towards the Quad. However, the considerable overlap of ‘likeminded partners’ in the Anglosphere (plus) and Quad (lite and/or plus) means the Quad nodes are a complementary organizing tool that reinforce the UK’s ability to engage in the Indo-Pacific. This chapter adopts a perspective of the Quad as a network to highlight areas of overlap and the complex ways in which the UK has engaged with nodes in this network in its entanglements with the Indo-Pacific region.