The Black Sea incident makes it clear that tension with Russia is never far from the surface

Britannia may be in no fit state to rule the waves these days, but she is certainly still capable of winding up the Russians.

HMS Defender has been sailing around the Black Sea, including a stop-off at Odessa. She has also been caught up in a bizarre but fiery exchange between the Kremlin and London.

In the Russian version of events, the warship was proceeding close to the southern coast of Crimea – territory annexed by Moscow seven years ago in a move condemned by the west – and was subjected to warning shots fired by Russia; in the British version, the incident involved a “routine transit from Odessa towards Georgia across the Black Sea” using an “internationally recognised traffic separation corridor”, when the vessel encountered pre-planned Russian military exercises in the vicinity.

From what can be gathered, it appears to be an unusual sort of incident, in that the Russians want to emphasise that they fired warning shots, while the British are refusing to acknowledge that any Russian aggression took place: just the kind of confusion that can crop up at a time of heightened geopolitical tension, you might say. At any rate, there have been angry diplomatic exchanges – Britain’s defence secretary, Ben Wallace, criticised the Russians for propagating “disinformation” – but nothing more.

HMS Defender was quite within her rights to be in waters recognised internationally as belonging to Ukraine. To have avoided travelling there would have sent the Russians quite the wrong message about the west’s willingness to accept the illegal annexation of Crimea. However, it was still an indisputably provocative move.

There is no reason to be oversensitive to Vladimir Putin. Yet actions such as this have consequences, and we have to factor that in when dispatching Her Majesty’s vessels across the seas.

In other words, Moscow is not beyond retaliation, and we have to assume that the government has sufficiently bolstered British defences to be able to anticipate and mitigate any new moves. Mr Putin is not the sort of man who likes to lose face, after all, and he has made his political career by portraying Russia as the abused victim of western treachery and encirclement. He dislikes being lectured to and disdained by the west.

The odd thing is that the incident with HMS Defender, which illuminates so many of these tensions, has come about just as US president Joe Biden has completed his moderately successful summit meeting with President Putin. Mr Biden made some effort to play down tensions and to make clear what the west will and will not tolerate. The Russians might not have been expecting the British to turn up in such a confident manner, in diplomatic terms.

Much the same goes for the new taste for British naval projection in East Asia. The much anticipated voyage of the new HMS Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier, with its complement of US air force jets, is aimed straight at challenging China’s blatant expansionism in the South China Sea, which has distressed and alarmed its neighbours for some time. It is one of the many hot spots in the world where simmering disputes could turn much uglier. There is a case to be made for western warships, including those from the royal navy, to be deployed so as to send China a clear message. America and China are already engaged in low-level trade wars, and – as with Russia – there is plenty for the west to bicker with China about.

However, as with Russia, the west has to be prepared for China to take initiatives of its own – most dangerously so in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Beijing also has considerable economic and technological weight to throw around.

The net result of these naval and geopolitical manoeuvrings may be to push China and Russia back together again as friends, something not really seen since the end of the 1950s and the Sino-Soviet split. Even if the world never gets close to a real military conflict, proxy wars, cyber skirmishes and economic combat could easily escalate as the decade wears on. Can America and the west – including a reluctant European Union – find the financial, military and political strength and unity to face down the superpowers of the east? We need to find a surer answer to that question.