BRITAIN is more powerful than Russia and China, coming second in a study of global power.

The finding comes in a new report by a neoconservative think tank, the Henry Jackson Society.

Only the US was found to outclass Britain, and is the world’s sole “superpower.”

China was placed third, classified as a “global power” almost on a par with Britain.

Russia trailed in tenth place, below India and Australia, and was only regarded as a “regional power.”

The report’s author, James Rogers, described a regional power like Russia as only having the ability to “defend itself and its interests, primarily within its own region.”

By contrast, he said that global powers like Britain have the capacity “to project and extend itself and its interests – sometimes selectively – around the world.”

In reaching his conclusions, Mr Rogers said that “manpower is not a particularly useful indicator of military capability.”

He explained that “Without access to overseas military bases, warships, logistics vessels and transport aircraft, and so on, it would be hard to move military personnel beyond their respective homelands, rendering them all but useless except for national defence.”

Britain has one of the largest networks of overseas military bases, which Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson recently said he wants to expand.

Mark Curtis, author of several books criticising British foreign policy, said the report’s findings were “certainly plausible.”

Mr Curtis wrote on Twitter that the report was “a challenge to the liberal world view that UK policy-makers are living in some post-imperial fantasy world.”

He went on to warn “It’s worse than that: the elite in Whitehall remains largely imperialist, it has immense power in the world, and it regularly uses it.”