As Aris Roussinos reveals in this Special Report, it may be too late to guarantee Britain’s survival. Decades of political indifference and dismal procurement strategies have left our Armed Forces outgunned and obsolescent. And with military insiders increasingly expecting a land conflict with Russia, Britain now faces an uncomfortable question: is the coming war already lost?
Read on to learn about:
- Russia’s ability to expose Britain’s weakness
- The dismal state of Britain’s Armed Forces
- A catalogue of procurement fiascos
- How we were crippled by support for Ukraine
- Can Britain build a new army?
- Why we must pivot towards the air and sea
How close is Britain to all-out war? It would be comforting to assume that all the recent warnings from defence officials are mere hyperbole. But quite the opposite is true: as it stands, there is a very real risk that the British Army will be politically committed to fighting a land war against Russia in eastern Europe within the next five years. Without American support, we are on course to lose.
When the Chief of General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, claimed last week that “we need an army designed to… equip the citizen army that must follow”, the debate it produced centred on whether Britain is now too woke or too ethnically diverse to sustain mass conscription, while also considering whether the Britain of 2024 is even worth fighting for. While these are valid questions, the broader context — the idea of a land war against Russia — was left largely unexamined.
Yet Sanders’s warning was not without precedent. In 2022, he declared that this is “our 1937 moment”, in which the British state had a few short years to mobilise industry and modernise the Army on a war footing, with the aim to avert a war if possible, or at least not lose if one began. But if 2022 was 1937, by Sanders’s reckoning, 2024 is 1939 — and this work has not been done.
Russia will expose Britain’s weakness
In 2022, even as Russian troops found themselves bogged down and on the back foot in Ukraine, Sanders presciently cautioned observers that “historically, Russia often starts wars badly”. Thanks to “its depth and resilience”, however, it “can suffer any number of campaigns, battles and engagements lost, regenerate and still ultimately prevail”. While Russia’s slow progress initially birthed a crowing sense of overconfidence among British commentators and Ukraine’s online cheerleaders, Sanders warned: “Putin’s declared intent recently to restore the lands of ‘historic Russia’ makes any respite temporary and the threat will become even more acute. We don’t yet know how the war in Ukraine will end, but in most scenarios, Russia will be an even greater threat to European security after Ukraine than it was before.”
A year and a half later, Ukraine is firmly on the back foot, and while Russia’s gains on the ground are slow and costly, Putin’s mobilisation of his vastly larger economy and population towards the war effort mean that, over the course of the next few years, Russia’s prospects of victory will become more likely, while Ukraine’s will dwindle. To defeat Russia, in the current reality, means not recapturing lost territory but blunting the Russian advance at such cost to Putin that negotiations to freeze the conflict become a more attractive prospect than total military victory. In pursuit of this goal, Ukraine has been dependent on a constant flow of war materiel from the United States which has now ceased, and on a rapid scaling up of Europe’s military-industrial capacity that has not manifested. Just to stay in the fight, Ukraine will be forced to conscript half a million men from a civilian population increasingly unwilling to fight in a war that has caused the country, according to Sanders, “hundreds of thousands” of casualties.
Indeed, the unspoken assumption in military circles is a scenario in which Ukraine loses the war against Russia, perhaps next year or the year after. And if this happens, Putin will then turn his gaze to eliminating Nato as a threat to Russia by launching a war on the alliance’s eastern frontier. The United States will be too preoccupied with its confrontation with China to take part, and European armies, including Britain, are too under-equipped to win. As Sanders warned two years ago: “Given the commitments of the US in Asia during the Twenties and Thirties, I believe that the burden for conventional deterrence in Europe will fall increasingly to European members of Nato and the JEF [Joint Expeditionary Force].”
Giving evidence last summer to the Commons Defence Select Committee, the RUSI analyst Justin Bronk suggested that Britain’s “window of vulnerability is probably late 2026 to about the end of 2028”. That is, he cautioned, “the maximum window of vulnerability for a Chinese-American clash in the Pacific”, as, due to Pentagon procurement errors, this is the period in which Chinese naval power in the Pacific will overmatch the American forces they are rapidly preparing to confront.
As Bronk has warned elsewhere, “in the event of such a military confrontation with China in the mid-to-late 2020s, Russia will have a strong incentive to take a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to break Nato while the US cannot reinforce Europe effectively. By 2026-2028, Russia’s industry will have been at full-scale military production for years, allowing it to rebuild its increasingly battle-hardened forces.” It is because of this likely scenario that prominent US strategic thinkers such as Elbridge Colby, who would be expected to play a major role in a future Trump administration, have warned that “America must first and foremost ensure that it can defeat China in a conflict, and Washington no longer has a military capable of fighting two concurrent wars”.
With a laser focus on America winning a war against China, Colby makes clear that “European Nato needs leadership” — and Britain should fulfil that role. Bronk implicitly acknowledges this, warning that: “We must plan on the danger that, if the Americans are more than occupied, they will not just be unable to reinforce Europe; they will be pulling things out… in all domains, because the threat is really huge in the Indo-Pacific. I would ask people in the country as well: how secure would you feel against Russia in Europe, given it will continue to mobilise long after Ukraine fighting stops, if the United States is not coming to save us?”
The only answer is: Not very. According to one recent study, based on the volume of artillery fire in the Ukraine war, the British Army would run out of munitions after eight days.
The dismal state of Britain’s Armed Forces
If Russia defeats Ukraine, and then launches an incursion against Nato in Eastern Europe while the US fights the greatest war in its history in the Pacific, then Britain is committed to fighting Russia on land in Europe without significant American help. This is not a scenario for which British defence planning has geared the Army to undertake, and is not a war the Army is currently capable of fighting.
Everyone is aware that the British Army is too small for its stated task. From 109,600 troops in 2000, the Army had shrunk to a mere 80,500 in 2022. As Sanders warned: “If this battle came, we would likely be outnumbered at the point of attack and fighting like hell.” And yet, in the year and a half since, the Army has shrunk to 76,950, and is on course to shrink further to 73,000. Sanders has resigned in protest. To put these numbers in context, Russia has currently deployed 40,000 troops in its current operation to seize the small Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, just one front in a series of Russian offensives taking shape over the coming year. Yet it is perhaps under-appreciated that not only is the Army too small for its purpose, it is vastly under-equipped for the coming task.
The most sobering evidence of Britain’s shoddy preparation for our increasingly dangerous strategic environment can be found in the testimony of Armed Forces chiefs and military experts to the Commons Defence Select Committee. Its 2021 report on the state of Britain’s armoured capability put its conclusions in its title: “Obsolescent and outgunned.”
As it warns: “Were the British Army to have to fight a peer adversary — a euphemism for Russia — in Eastern Europe in the next few years, whilst our soldiers would undoubtedly remain amongst the finest in the world, they would, disgracefully, be forced to go into battle in a combination of obsolescent or even obsolete armoured vehicles, most of them at least 30 years old or more, with poor mechanical reliability, very heavily outgunned by more modern missile and artillery systems and chronically lacking in adequate air defence. They would have only a handful of long-delayed, new generation vehicles, gradually trickling into the inventory, to replace them.” Due to “bureaucratic procrastination, military indecision, financial mismanagement and general ineptitude”, for which the Army’s leadership is, if anything, more responsible than the Government, “we are still some four years away from even being able to field a ‘warfighting division’, which, itself, would now be hopelessly under-equipped and denuded of even a third combat brigade”.
As Brigadier (Retd.) Ben Barry, Senior Fellow for Land Warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, warned the enquiry: “The reduced UK division”, which would be Britain’s initial land contribution to a war against Russia, “has half the anti-armour capability, only 30% of the tanks of a Russian tank division, two-thirds of the armoured infantry fighting vehicles, 20% of the anti-tank guided weapons and 15% of the self-propelled artillery. It would be very difficult for that reduced division to stop a Russian tank division. A Russian tank division would seriously overmatch the reduced Third Division. ‘Overmatched’ is a very polite, clinical way of saying ‘could be defeated’.”
As another expert witness, the defence consultant Nicholas Drummond, observed, Russia outguns the British Army in a number of areas: “The first is artillery. It needs to do a wholesale renewal of its artillery systems.” The second is the British Army’s “ability to fire anti-tank missiles from under armour. It does not have that ability. It urgently needs that. The third missing capability is air defence. We are woefully short, and we would get absolutely spanked if we went to war without investing there.”
A catalogue of procurement fiascos
Since 2021, even those timelines have slipped, and capability has worsened since then. Britain’s armoured fleet consists of Challenger 2 Main Battle Tanks, CVR(T) reconnaissance vehicles, Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicles and FV432 Armoured Personnel Carriers. By the middle of this decade both the FV432 and CVR(T) will be approaching 70 years in service: indeed, CVR(T) was partly designed to fit between the trees in Malayan rubber plantations. Warrior and Challenger 2 entered service in the Eighties and Nineties and are also reaching the end of their working life. Yet the joint MoD and Army “fiasco” of procuring their replacements has left the Army waiting for new armour that will not enter service until the end of the decade at the earliest.
The long-delayed Ajax Armoured Fighting vehicle, whose vibrations cause the troops inside debilitating injuries, may enter service in 2030: the Army is “cautiously optimistic” on this point. According to Select Committee evidence, the upgraded Challenger 3 is expected to enter service in tiny numbers — 18 — by November 2027, and its full complement of 148 by December 2030. The wheeled Boxer family of armoured vehicles will see 27 enter service in 2027, not reaching its full complement of 623 units until 2032. As the Committee Chair Tobias Ellwood remarked: “The full complement will not come into service here until the 2030s, when we can start doing our all-arms combat. Until then, we have a mix and match of old and obsolete kit, with the stuff that is coming online.”
If Britain goes to war in the mid-2030s, it will do so with a small but modern armoured force. Unfortunately, as we have seen, the war may already be over by then. As Bronk warned the committee, if the MoD was tasked with providing “a backbone of European deterrence against Russia, with credible warfighting capabilities in Europe in the next three to five years”, and resourced to do so, it will still take “five to 10 years to build that force”.
Crippled by support for Ukraine
If Britain goes to war with Russia within the timeframe our military leadership fears, it will do so with the Army we have, or can quickly build in the next few years. And as the RUSI analyst Jack Watling warned in 2020, the Army we have is not equipped for the task: “The UK lacks ground-based air defences and deployable long-range precision fires… Its heavy armour is under-gunned, its protected mobility is worn out, its artillery is outranged, its logistics are under-resourced, its deployment is too slow, and its ammunition stockpiles too small to deliver the effect for which it is designed.”
Due to well-meaning political decisions, which have not been matched by a sense of urgency in rebuilding the Army, the situation has deteriorated further. The donation of 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, along with AS90 self-propelled artillery systems, M270 rocket launchers and L118 Light Guns, FV432s and significant quantities of anti-armour munitions and artillery shells “will leave us temporarily weaker as an Army, there is no denying it”, Sanders warned a year ago. “There is no doubt our choice will impact on our ability to mobilise the Army against the acute and enduring threat Russia presents and meet our Nato obligations.”
As Watling cautioned in 2022, “UK anti-tank guided missile (ATGM) stockpiles have now been significantly depleted — having been gifted to Ukraine — leaving British units toothless. With the announcement that the UK’s MLRS are also going to be sent to Ukraine, the punch that was supposed to buy out the UK’s lethality in the close fight is about to be stripped from the order of battle. The already woefully inadequate stockpiles of rockets for these systems are now to be expended.” As one senior defence source told the press: “We’ve given away pretty much everything we can afford to give…” As another warned: “The PM’s wartime approach is currently to cut the Army, hollow it out further by gifting [equipment to Ukraine] and with no plans to replace [the weapons] for five to seven years.”
Britain’s Nato commitment to the ground defence of Eastern Europe is an armoured division by 2025. Unfortunately, this division does not exist. As RUSI observed in 2022, the “current force comprises two armoured regiments of obsolete tanks, while one brigade has been converted to a medium-weight Strike Brigade. This forms the core of the UK’s current land contribution to Nato’s conventional ‘hard power’ in Europe to deter Russia.”
Moreover, as Ellwood notes of those two tank brigades: “We have just one brigade deployed in the Baltic right now and it is going to take days, if not weeks, to bring that up to divisional strength. Bear in mind that if the Russians cross the border into the Baltic, that second brigade is going to be under attack all the way from the UK into the Baltic area. Our lines of communication are certainly going to be hit, and hit very hard.” In fact, it is doubtful that even the single existing brigade is currently fit for its commitment, according to the defence analyst Francis Tusa.
In the air, too, Britain will be heavily outgunned, outranged and outnumbered by its opponent. Because Nato’s SEAD capability — the ability to search and destroy enemy Surface-to-Air Missiles — is dependent on the US, for the first time since midway through the Second World War, Britain cannot expect air superiority and must work on the assumption that any build-up of forces will be both visible and vulnerable far behind the front line. Under-equipped on almost every front, Britain is heading towards military defeat.
Can Britain build a new army?
The question is what to do now. As long as Ukraine stays in the fight, Russia will not be able to expand the war, providing Britain and the rest of Europe with breathing space to rebuild military capacity. But enabling Ukraine to do so requires a vast, Europe-wide effort to produce munitions in the quantity sufficient for full-scale war. And in the two years since the war began, Europe has not achieved production sufficient for Ukraine’s own needs, let alone rebuilding Nato stockpiles. Unless this work is done now, the looming war will be lost almost before it has begun.
Even if this level of production is reached, a question mark hangs over Ukraine’s ability to conscript the manpower necessary to survive the coming war: Europe’s year or two of breathing space will be very costly in human lives for Ukraine, without even guaranteeing the country victory at the end of it. In that short space of time, Britain will need to marshal its existing resources — which means shifting its focus to training Ukrainian troops rather than gifting Ukraine our dwindling stockpiles of equipment — while converting what remains of British industry to a war economy.
Yet a country that cannot produce its own steel, and is dependent on nations that will be either open rivals or detached observers for much of its imports of raw materials, is hardly geared towards a wartime-level of production. In the short term, Britain could engage in a frantic spending spree, buying off-the-shelf armour from European allies, as it should have done years ago. But even here, whether Britain could outcompete equally panicked European allies for limited production is questionable. The recent acquisition of 14 ARCHER artillery systems to replace equipment donated to Ukraine shows that, while far short of the investment needed, a rapid procurement programme could swiftly bring results.
Ultimately, Britain needs to rapidly pool resources and production with European allies, based around a standardised, interchangeable suite of capabilities. Drummond suggests a five-year spending drive to buy Boxer armoured vehicles, anti-tank munitions, drones and long-range artillery, while increasing the Army to a size of 90,000 formed in eight brigades — all at a cost of an extra £10 billion defence spending a year, solely focused on the Army. This is a useful baseline level of thinking, but whether the political will exists is doubtful: the two controversially expensive aircraft carriers came to around £8 billion in total, while the Guardian’s lofty declaration that defence spending “should take a place in the queue” behind council funding and fighting climate change suggests that the British political class has no understanding of what the country is very shortly going to be tasked to do, the amount of effort and pain it will take, and the level of spending it will require.
A pivot towards the air and sea
Any future war would not be easy for Russia: the war in Ukraine has re-emphasised that, in modern warfare, the defending side holds a strong advantage. Britain would not fight alone: it would fight alongside the small but capable Baltic armies, currently building a joint defensive line along the Russian border, the currently more effective French Army, the German Bundeswehr and the rapidly expanding Polish army (whose defence procurement and recruiting effort, at much less cost, should shame Britain), as well as Sweden, Finland and other nations. Britain’s land contribution has been so woefully managed that we should expect to play a supporting role, perhaps under European command.
But perhaps we should rethink the question from first principles: the Army is the weakest link in the Armed Forces, and as it stands threatens to be the weak link in Nato’s ground campaign, which itself means it will be disproportionately targeted by Russian fire. Given how things stand, should Britain be frank with the rest of Nato about the state of our Army, and shift our contribution to our better-resourced Air Force and Navy?
As Watling warned in 2022: “if the UK feels it can no longer resource a war-fighting capability then this must be the starting point from which UK strategy develops, and extensive and difficult conversations with allies must be initiated.” Perhaps the time has come to warn Nato that we’re going to be late handing in our homework.
At some time in the 2030s — all things being well — Britain will possess a functioning Army, but until then it does not. A weak and underpowered British land commitment in Europe threatens to become a drag on Nato’s capacity, a burden rather than a gift. Should a war break out this decade, Britain has three choices: to go to war with the Army we have, and lose; to spend the next few years rapidly building up the Army, at vast cost; or to admit in good time that the Army will not be functional this decade, and shift Britain’s contribution to a European war to the air and sea. These are fundamentally political decisions, each of which will be controversial, and which require a degree of political leadership and popular legitimacy the current government, in its waning days, does not possess.
As the historian Robert Lyman observes: “We have opened ourselves up to a shock of very significant proportions.” This is the insufficiently-understood context in which the current conscription discourse, essentially a debate on how to quickly replace our currently-existing Army, which has been set up for defeat, exists. But unlike 1914 or 1940, there is no strategic hinterland of booming factories and willing volunteers to fall back on. There is no Empire to come to Britain’s aid, Russia’s resources will be pitted against us, and the United States will be hard-pressed with its own war against the world’s greatest industrial power.
As Watling warned two years ago: “The old British tradition of losing the early battles but winning the war does not work when it takes years to build sophisticated modern military equipment. In short, if deterrence fails, and the Army is not appropriately provisioned, there will be no comeback. There will simply be defeat.”
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SubscribeThis has to be the silliest article ever. (1) There is not going to be a WWIII. (2) If there is ALL sides are going to lose as they will annihilate each other with a nuclear exchange. (3) The notion that Russia wants to have war with the West is nonsense.
I wouldn’t go quite that far, but the article takes till almost the end before bothering to mention the fact that the British army would be just one of many pitted against the Russians. Up to that point, all the figures floated about relative capability make it sound as if Britain would be fighting alone in Eastern Europe. That’s what makes it nonsensical.
Having said that, it’s clear our political and military ‘leaders’ aren’t capable of anything like coherent policy or planning. It’s not our armed forces but lack of leadership that’s the problem.
The Royal Navy cannot even manage a web site. I invite readers to compare the usability of the official Royal Navy and French Navy web sites.
https://www.royalnavy.mod.uk
https://www.defense.gouv.fr/marine
Health Warning – Do not open the Royal Navy site if you suffer from any of the following conditions * Orthopedic neck immobility * Vertigo * High blood pressure * Poor anger management control *
Ouch! I thought you were joking there. You meant that literally.
The French website is in French, so I found it difficult to make head or tail of it.
That’s the problem with the French (navy), no gratitude !!! For all the ‘wonderful’ things we’ve ever done for them over the millennia, you’d think they might actually do the decent thing and speak an intelligible language (and lay off the garlic…plays havoc with/in the bowels…….of a ship)
Gosh! How extraordinary!
Oh, these crafty French – they insist on using an ancient language which nobody else understands!
It’s cheaper than encryption.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sKWvTlLMB-Y
Thanks, that’s quite revealing.
We’ve clearly spent more on design consultants, The French one is far less glossy and aspirational and is actually about the navy. Ours seems to be about corporate bragging, lifestyle and “what’s in it for me” and nothing really about service or duty. You do wonder if our recruiters are targetting the right people for a military outfit.
Item 1 on the French website is “Nos valeurs” (Our values). There is no such section on the Royal Navy site (at least, not easily found).
There’s also nothing about the Royal Navy’s amazing history and heritage. Astonishing if you stop and think about it. Arguably the world’s greatest ever navy and they have nothing to say about it.
I did reservist training a few years ago and remember during the history section of the royal navy, some civil servant apologised for using gendered language in a quote by nelson, “England expects every man shall do his duty”.
Says it all really
Did they also apologize for not having a sufficient number of flavored coffees in the machines? I can’t imagine how today’s young servicepeople will survive on the front without a proper choice of latte and expresso. Perhaps Starbucks can work with the armed forces to devise a mobile coffee shop to be deployed at the front.
Why not, i believe there used to be a Macdonald’s on bases in either Iraq or Afghanistan
That’s ESpresso, soldier!
As a opposed to the Boomers, who grow teary eyed at stories of young valiant soldiers sacrificing their lives to protect our shores, whilst vehemently opposing making any sacrifices of their own. Of these warmongering boomers- 99%+ have never fought for their country. They have enjoyed the greatest living standards in history; they have harvested the fields of wealth to exhaustion, without replanting or rotation. They have polluted the skies, the rivers and the sea. Now they are about to grow old and impose the largest social security burden ever on the next generation whilst desperately complaining that the ‘yoot’ won’t step up and protect all this lazily accumulated wealth. The party is over gramps. Don’t worry- we will turn out the lights on the way out.
The only thing you missed is the enthusiasm of the old for the young to do the national service that they themselves never had to do.
As a parent of some young people I believe they would survive quite easily. However they think the country and institutions like the navy are run by completely incompetent clowns. They are correct.
The poor ethos exposed in the messaging of the Royal Navy site is something I overlooked but I am not surprised.
If we lower our expectations and just view the web site as a procurement failure it, indicates why our armed forces screw up so often while squandering our money.
A two-bit charity with a £ 1/2 million annual income would do a better job.
A guided missile air defence destroyer is orders of magnitude more complex than a corporate brochure-style web site. If the Royal Navy cannot launch a credible web site, no wonder it produced 6 lame duck Type 45 destroyers 14 years ago, only two of which are available today.
It can’t even avoid running its ships into each other.
A sad event played out in public. It looks like an internal control problem where the gearbox could not be flipped from reverse to forward propulsion.
The bridge crew failed to comprehend their predicament. When seconds away from collision they tried a final burst of forward thrust but they were stuck in reverse which accelerated the rearward velocity and made a bad situation worse.
The media did not pick up on a subtle piece of visual evidence. About 3 seconds before impact some propwash bubbled to the surface aft quarter to starboard, this indicates a last ditch attempt to halt the rearward momentum but the propellors were rotating the wrong way.
It looks like an internal control problem where the gearbox could not be flipped from reverse to forward propulsion.
What, did they buy it from the Italians?
Considering how few of them there are in the first place it was really quite an achievement.
To be fair, the principal purpose of the British military is to promote diversity, equity and inclusion, not to fight wars.
And that’s the heart of the problem right there. When looking at the Website that’s exactly what came to mind; whereas the French Navy’s site talks about values, missions, and equipment, we pander to gender and equity specialists. In short, we seem to be targeting the DEI crowd/wokes whilst the French want patriotic sailors ready to support “la patrie” against her enemies.
So……. the Royal Navy appears to be a woman-only army these days??
And only white women at that?
“…but lack of leadership that’s the problem”….in just about every sphere of life today.
The article sets out in detail how the weakness of our Armed Forces and specifically the Army are very much the problem.
.
You’ve missed my point, spectacularly.
What bothers me is that even when he does canvas opinion about what the army needs, the answers he gets are almost as if Ukraine hadn’t happened. More tanks? Tanks have more or less become artillery pieces in Ukraine. In a war where everything is happening under the eyes of the spy satellites and there are cheap rockets and drones and incredibly precise targeting, the army will need to look very different, surely?
The whole notion of ‘air superiority’ needs to be questioned as well. The Russians have got it over Ukraine, but they can’t exploit it. Why would we be any different?
Do you really think the Russians have are superiority over Ukraine?
They’ve got more and better planes. So yes. But they’re too vulnerable to use – because of Ukraine’s ground to air defence missiles. The point I’m making is, why wouldn’t the same apply if NATO had more and better planes?
Good answer.
I made a similar point a few weeks ago. Once the emotional analysis has faded the techno boffins of the military will be picking over the details of the Ukraine conflict for years as they rewrite their war manuals.
New categories of armaments will evolve but for the moment it looks like immobile trench warfare is the likely outcome when comparable forces meet in force. No sane general wants that, perhaps someone should bring General Sir Patrick Sanders up to speed.
It has happened before, once the French learned how to use gunpowder and cannons to counteract the English terror weapon of the period, the longbow, it squashed the desire of English monarchs to start new wars with the French.
#3 is absolutely correct. However, we have some severely unthoughtful strategists here in the West, considering the Ukraine war could’ve be so easily avoided so I wouldn’t rule anything out…
Are you sure the strategists don’t find the war useful? It ties Russia down, degrades their armed forces, allows the west to see what works against them.
If Russia had not met with such enormous resistance in Ukraine – prepared for by training and weapon supply from US, UK and other NATO partners since 2014, we’d currently be wondering how long it would be before Russia started to ‘liberate’ ‘Russians’ on the Baltics.
Or, it trained them in fighting the Western powers tactics, showed them how to resupply from countries not tied to the west, and from what I have read, has both strengthened their economy while depleting the Wests military resources.
As we would say back in junior high “smooth move, Ex-lax.”
Yes, Russia will have learnt also. They won’t be doing another invasion the way they did this one I imagine. The effectiveness of drones has been a lesson for everyone, as has the difficulty of advancing with heavy armour.
Thinking longer term the war has resulted in Russia turning eastward. Given how far away Moscow is from the east geographically it’ll be interesting to see how that works out.
I agree that Russia doesn’t want to have a war with the West. It just wants to be left in peace to defeat and occupy the countries it considers to be rightfully in its sphere of influence (the Baltic States, Poland, Finland etc).
I’m beginning to think Martin is some kind of AI bot, how else can he manage to wrong about everything
Come back in 5 years and read all the comments again and you’ll realise just how wrong you are.
Martin’s comment is absolutely true.
But you’d rather get personal than deal with facts.
Why wait 5 years, go back read his comments on the Ukrainian counter offensive last summer, he spent months telling us the Ukrainians were making big gains
His argument now is that the Russians are losing, and once the Russian army is defeated, they will then start a war with NATO
It’s just not logical
Is your “the Russians are winning” chorus any more logical, given that they still haven’t “won” ?
Now, what’s your opinion on his actual comment about Russia’s intentions ?
Its a simple fact that the Russians are winning, the Ukraine is a huge country, achieving their objectives will take time, unfortunately, I fully expect this war to be ongoing by this time next year
The Russians have no interest in a war with NATO, that war would go nuclear, nobody can win that
What facts??? This article is propaganda in order to secure military funding, probably due to America putting pressure on us, if it wasn’t for USA sticking its nose into Ukraine this wouldn’t be happening, USA wants Russia degraded and Europe too! (everyone seems a bit naive on here…
“We don’t want to fight but by JINGO if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too,
We’ve fought the Bear before, and while we’re Britons true,
The Russians shall not have Constantinople.“
Those were the days!
Russia sticking its nose into Ukraine. See, easily corrected.
Russia is no different to the US in a desire to control it’s ‘sphere of influence’. Every ‘country’ it has ‘invaded’ since the break up of the Soviet Union has a history of either being part of Russia or thanks to history having a noticeable Russian speaking minority. Russia has protected these minorities when they have come under pressure (often from the NATO backed ‘Colour Revolutions’) Basically Russia is, in redrawing Soviet Borders in a post Soviet World – rather like the Balkans, as opposed to the Gorbachev withdrawal and redrawing of borders in what is now the Eastern EU.
About the only difference (as the ‘freedom in the US is tending toward the “Oligarch” Model) with the US is thanks to the Monroe Doctrine the US sphere of influence officially covers half-a-hemisphere, and unofficially both hemispheres. Russia*s generally speaking cover those areas where historically ‘invasions’ regularly arrived. Ukraine being one. 3 times ‘Europe’ has invaded Russia in the age of firearms and each time the kilometres across the scorched earth Ukraine saved Russia. The 4th time even a Ukraine mightn’t be enough, BUT a starting point of the Donbas would certainly not be enough.
Peter Hitchens is a good introduction to why Russia is behaving as it is. But there is so much evidence if you are interested enough to dive into obscure papers and journals covering the break up of the Soviet Union, the ‘Gentlemen’ agreements with Russia and the Colour Revolution to satisfy any but a left wing former supporter of the Soviets. The US/NATO made the Russia we see today because, much like the Bidens in Ukraine, it served their financial/geo-political aims to pillage the post Soviet country soft. Rather like Versailles and Germany post WW1. Had the US not been so terrified that Russia would grow to be a threat they could have had a great ally with a directed Marshall Plan, now we have a great enemy.
Ukraine contains a significant number of Nazis, though with the reputed elimination of the Azov Brigade by Russian forces, that number may have decreased. BUT if you want to know how ignorant Western Politicians are about Russia/Ukraine, either read Peter Hitchens or look to how the Canadian Parliament publicly applauded a Ukrainian former Waffen SS soldier without knowing it.
Ukraine’s civil war started officially in Maidan Square 2014 when US Politicians (Victoria Nuland, Democrat being one of the most well known) basically supported a coup against a legitimately elected Russian leaning President. The EU connived in it because he reneged on an EU deal when Putin offered him a far better deal including cheap gas. Putin did NOT start the shooting war, it started in 2014 when the supporters of the deposed President took umbrage at the Nazis who deposed him and the Azov brigade carried on where they left off in Maidan square. Shooting people they disagreed with. The rest is as they say history.
When it is all over, history will not be kind to the US/EU/NATO – or the Bidens. Ukraine was lied to and now the chances of it ever recovering is looking increasingly slim.
Perhaps the reason the we in the West are talking about war with Russia is that the idiots who rule us have virtually exhausted our proxy, Ukraine’s, manpower and now want boots not just hardware on the ground.
The Ukrainian diaspora may never return and their Generals are saying they need 500,000 troops – ie a doubling of their army as they have it. They have suffered losses on a scale that matches the Russians in numbers but exceeds them greatly in terms of percentage population. Even the BBC last summer was reporting numbers provided by Zelensky, and though the BBC didn’t report the numbers in the same way for Ukraine as it did for Russia, ie daily for Ukraine, monthly for Russia, it wasn’t hard to do some basic maths to put losses on the same ‘monthly’ footing used for Russia and the numbers were identical.
The BBC also reported on how the Ukrainian veterans at the front were demoralised at the quality and lack of enthusiasm for offensive operations of the replacements.
Time in the UK to kick out ALL the left wing parties, Blu Labour Tories as well as Nu Labour. The only way to do that is gamble on the right wing Reform. As for the US? Well, I never thought I’d live through another End of Empire, but it looks as though I may. Though which comes to an end first nowadays, the US Empire or the World is not something I like to think on. I just hope the m0r0ns who rule the UK have been kicked out and we go the opposite way to Sweden – ie we leave NATO and become Neutral before any shooting war starts.
Thank you, Lord Haw Haw, for services to Putin’s propaganda.
Thank you for a
most sensible comment.
Yes your analysis is entirely correct.
Once again, there was no coup in Ukraine. The president fled when police refused his orders to shoot peaceful demonstrators, leaving the country without a government (which is why it was so easy for Putin to capture Crimea). Then there was democratic elections in the spring of 2014 electing a new president (who in his turn lost to Zelensky in the 2019 elections).
I posted my comment before seeing yours, and I also favour leaving Nato and becoming a neutral state. The trouble is, our politicians are still full of delusions of grandeur, and I don’t trust Reform to be any different.
Excellent summary Bill, although I completely disagree re pre-Starmer Labour. I can’t imagine Corbyn flying to Kiev to take Biden’s order to scupper the peace talks. As for the BBC they’ve been cooperating with Mediazona to scoure Russian social media & local news to estimate Russian losses – but no such effort to get the Ukrainian ones – typically Establishment, typically biased.
You have zero evidence for that. Ukraine is not really a separate country but a province. Further, the war could have easily been avoided had the Biden administration simply stated categorically before the war started that Ukraine would never be joining NATO. Blinken et al. refused to do so, and no surprise the Russians attacked as their red line had been crossed.
OK, so is Ukraine more of a “province” of Russia than Scotland or Wales are of England ?
It’s certainly legally a separate country (internationally recognised as such – even by Russia). It has its own language, parliament, military, currency … . So you appear to be a a very small minority here.
Most interested to hear your considered opinion on this. And when you plan to go up to the “province” of Scotland to deliver the news.
Western Ukrainians speak Ukrainian which basically has a similar relationship to Russian as Scottish does to English. Eastern Ukrainians predominantly speak Russian. For example, in Odessa, almost nobody speaks Ukrainian.
As for international recognition what exactly does that mean when Ukraine and Russia have over 1000 years of history together. It’s nonsense. And yes Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and Norther Ireland are provinces, or if you will the equivalent of US states.
By the same kind of logic Austria is not really a country but a province, or Ireland is not really a country but a province.
Austria was always a country – part of the austro-hungarian empire. And as for Germany, until the late 19th century, there was no Germany. There was a collection of small independent states.
Austria was a part of an empire, just like Ukraine. I notice that you start talking about Germany, not Ireland, which was my other example.
What about the ‘Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation’?
Austria was only ejected from ‘Germany’ by Bismarck in 1867, prior to that it had been an integral part of Germania since the 10th century.
Correct! The Austro-Hungarian only existed from 1867 to 1918. Austria originally was a margraviate of Bavaria given to the House of Babenberg, and then became a duchy and later an archduchy of the Holy Roman Empire under the control of the Habsburgs.
Russia doesn’t want war with the West in the same way Germany in the 30s didn’t want war with Britain and France. Both just want to be left to occupy areas that they consider belong to them.
But, just like the 30s, we have commitments to the countries Russia thinks it should occupy. No one intends to start a world war, both sides just make decisions that sometimes lead to one.
At the moment Ukraine is holding it back. But they will run out of men / will at some point.
It’s painful to think what little will be left of Ukraine when that war is over. Not only will most cities be completely destroyed, but the majority of men of fighting age will be dead so there won’t be anyone left to rebuild.
I wish to raise a geographical point of order.
If the Russians advance another 100 miles to the Dnieper River before an armistice is negotiated then Ukraine will retain 70% of its original land area.
Original Ukraine Area 603,628 km2 x 0.7 = 422,539 km2
How many European countries could fit inside the rump Ukraine?
Portugal = 92,152
Belgium = 30,688
Holland = 41,850
Switzerland = 41,285
Austria = 83,871
England = 130,279
I think you’ve succumbed to nonsense propaganda. The Russians have given no indication that they are interested in any other country than Ukraine. And for Ukraine they are primarily interested in the Donbass. More importantly, Ukraine is really a province and not a separate country. And finally, the current situation all has its origins in 2014 when the US state department engineered the Maiden coup. The bottom line: Russia is behaving no differently from the US if a similar situation pertained in the americas (i.e.. the Monroe doctrine).
The US recognises the South and Central American countries as independent and doesn’t make a habit of invading and colonising its neighbours.
Can you see the difference yet ?
Is that really so. What exactly happened in Panama. What exactly happened when the US either tried or succeeded in overthrowing various regimes in South America. And what do you think would happen if Warsaw Pact troups (when the Warsaw pact existed) would have been stationed in Mexico and Mexico had joined the Warsaw Pact. Care to guess.
Can you now see the different between your altered reality and actual reality.
Putin has stated many times that he reserves the right to use force to ‘defend’ Russian speakers.
Russian speakers are present in many countries in Eastern Europe.
That’s all there is to it. Ukraine was just first in line. The only propaganda here is yours.
Is that so. You are living in la-la land. Ukraine and Russia have a shared history going back over a thousand years for heaven sake. Odessa was founded by Cathrine the Great. Kiev was the focal poiint for the Rus.
Here’s one example from 2014 –
“I would like to make it clear to all: This country will continue to actively defend the rights of Russians, our compatriots abroad, using the entire range of available means — from political and economic to operations under international humanitarian law and the right of self-defense,”
… “When I speak of Russians and Russian-speaking citizens I am referring to those people who consider themselves part of the broad Russian community, they may not necessarily be ethnic Russians, but they consider themselves Russian people.”
So he’s saying he could use military force to ‘defend’ any people who consider themselves Russian. Regardless of which state they live in. That’s not propaganda, they are the words he used.
I’m well aware of the shared history. It’s not relevant – it is literally history. Ukrainians have clearly decided they do not want to be Russian. They disagree with your and Putin’s belief that Ukraine is a province, otherwise they wouldn’t be willing to spill so much of their own blood.
The British have a shared history with many countries around the world – US, Australia, India etc and founded many cities. This does not give the UK a right to go and ‘defend’ any English speakers living there.
I agree with you. If we look at historical connections and context, Germany should have Königsberg (Kaliningrad) returned, because it was built by Germans and German for almost 700 years from its founding in 1255 to its capture by the Soviets in 1945.
Maidan not a coup.
The Russians have given no indication that they are interested in any other country than Ukraine.
Completely untrue. They have already chewed a bit off Georgia and are very active in trying to destabilise Latvia.
Georgia is also part of Russia. Just remember Stalin came from Georgia! So perhaps try and recall a little history before spewing the current western narrative.
And if Russia is trying to destabilize Latvia, what do you think the US was trying to do and succeeded in doing in Ukraine in 2014?
Georgia was part of, not is part of, Russia. Actually, Russia took Georgia (September 1801) later than the greater part of India was taken by Britain.
And don’t forget Ireland, I mean they even speak English.
Are you suggesting that Northern Ireland is Britain’s very own Donetsk People’s Republic?
You’re mistaking the Russian Empire for Russia. People tend to forget that Russia is a European country with what is effectively an Asian empire, because it is contiguous. But empire it is.
Thankyou for repeating my explanation why Russia should be admitted to NATO.
very well expressed!
I will admit to being unsure either way on the issue, but I’ll take the article over your three unsupported assertions any day.
If you want to bury your head in the sand that’s fine – as is becoming increasingly apparent, you won’t be alone in this.
The issue isn’t a question of burying one’s head in the sand. It is simply that a hot WWIII between superpowers would result in immediate destruction of humanity within seconds/minutes as a result of a massive nuclear exchange.
So? Just because that’s both terrifying and stupid doesn’t mean it won’t happen.
There ought to be a handy-dandy Armageddon motto posted in every Cabinet Room and Military Control, plus every Anti-War charity HQ:
1) Nobody will win World War III
2) Appeasement only increases the risk of World War III
Some things are worth fighting for… but not too much.
Silly indeed. And in the sense we are already in WW3 — being invaded with impunity and being gaslit by our own govt — Britain has already lost.
An all out war on Europe is probably unnecessary to achieve Putin’s aims. Cyber attack on the national grid, cutting transatlantic internet cables, constant airspace incursions, separating Hungary from NATO and the EU, stirring up trouble through the Russian-ethnic population’s in the Baltic states …
That will keep us busy while he assimilates Ukraine, Moldova, Romania and the Baltics.
As I’ve noted Ukraine is really a province of Russia. There is absolutely no indication that Putin wants to invade Moldova, Romania and the Baltics. And even if he did, so what. Why should we care about far away places that the vast majority of UKers and certainly americans couldn’t even point to on a map.
Far away countries of which you know nothing. Are you going to come up with a peace in our time paper next?
Better than being a warmonger like yourself. Perhaps you should volunteer to fight with the Ukrainians rather than spew nonsense from your comfortable armchair perhaps in London. The fact of the matter is that the Russians have effectively won no matter how unfortunate that may be. There is no way that the Ukrainians could ever win, just as there was no way, despite initial successes, that the South could ever defeat the Nort in the American Civil War. Has to do with size, industrial capacity and population.
No way to win sounds like what defeatists thought about Churchill ca 1940. And you really don’t think there is anything wrong with appeasement?
By the way, it is Stockholm, not London, that is my home.
Lots of good observations in your post but I would like to point out that Putin need not put any effort into detaching Hungary from the EU.
The despots in Brussels are doing a fine job attacking Hungry and driving it back towards the Warsaw Pack.
(3) might be nonsense but we don’t know. The best way to make sure it remains nonsense is to maintain a credible deterrent posture on land, sea, and in the air. With the British army’s numbers dwindling year-on-year, and with its stock of rockets and artillery depleted by donations to Ukraine, the deterrence is just not there.
Does the sand not get stuck in your beak?
The John Campbell of YouTube covid fame?
If Trump becomes President, again, won’t he, as he boasts he can do, just tell his dictator friends to stop warring and they will oblige? Simple as that.
I hope you are right, but that is a series of assertions, not arguments. Noone “wants” war if they can achieve their objectives by other means, such as intimidation. Which Russia has certainly been doing for the past 15 years. They weren’t overly concerned about their heat mass poisoning of a small English city some years ago, how quickly that has been forgotten in our attention span of a newt political and social culture.
“If you want peace prepare for war”
Oh dear. All those thumbs up for this bogus omniscience makes me think I should retreat to my bunker quick smart.
This is a well researched article with some useful information about the problems with the UK’s armed firces, but it’s central theme – Russia vs the UK on its own – is not realistic. The rest of Europe is acknowledged in the sixth paragraph from the end, but the until then the article calculates the odds of Britain fighting Russia with the rest of the population of the continent somehow evaporated. You may as well ask could Stoke-on-Trent defeat Switzerland.
“There is not going to be a WWIII”
There may, there may not.
But from where do you get your certainty? On what do you base your iron conviction that global conflict is now inevitable?
I’m certain many felt after the Great War there could never be another one like that.
They were wrong. How do you know you are not?
There is a a significant difference between then and now. Between 1919 and 2002 Britain did not seek or try to cultivate the conditions for our involvement in war. We knew it was ghastly and something to be avoided.
Suez and The Falklands were a reaction to a provocation.
What is unfathomable about the present situation is that after disastrous interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and the Ukraine, our Government’s appetite for more war is increasing just when our capability to do it is declining.
I could well be wrong but if there is a global conflict between nuclear superpowers, they will self-destruct and take everybody else with them (i.e. the planet will be unlivable), within literally the space of minutes.
Yes, that’s what we said here in Israel about Hamas and then the war started.
I think equating Hamas with Russia is a step too far. And as for Israel vs Hamas, it is only people in Israel with their eyes covered who refused to see what Hamas always was – and the same goes for the PLO. Neither group has made any secret that their aim is to destroy the state of Israel. Not just that it is all part of Islamic ideology clearly laid out in the Koran. There is no making peace with these people.
We were all sold with the idea that Hamas didn’t want war. Netanyahu sold the public the idea of economic peace, and that the Palestinian issue would go away out of disinterest after all the Arab world made peace with us. We wanted to believe it, but we have now learnt the hard way that ignoring murderous jihadists intent on our demise and paying them off with Qatari money was not a good long term strategy.
Will the real facts stand up please.
For 2 years we have been told about the appalling state of the Russian army following their bruising failure in Ukraine. Just a few WWII vintage Russian tanks left I heard from a multitude of retired British generals on TV news.
Now apparently a regular Russian tank division has 3 times more tanks than the single British Army division we can deploy overseas, according to the article above.
I have to question whether any more money should be spent on Britain’s armed forces. Over the past 10 years the UK has spent a little more than Russia on defence. Reading the tail of woe above about the deplorable state of the UK’s armed forces compared to mighty Russia, this country needs to ask where did the Generals and Admirals squander all those £££.
Let’s first examine why Britain gets so little bang for the pound, before giving them even more money. I will offer one clue, right now the Royal Navy has about 11 deployable shooting surface warships and employs 130 admirals to manage that feeble fleet.
In the mean time Britain’s armed forces can defend this country. We have just lost the ability to engage in serious overseas military adventure.
I think the observations of how many tanks Russia has predated a large portion of them turning into burnt out hulks in Ukrainian fields.
It’s believing that propaganda that’s got us, and Ukraine, where they are now.
We need to make a ‘bonfire’ of those useless Admirals, not mention the equally useless plethora of Generals and senior ‘Crabs’.*
(* RAF.)
Admiral Sir Mark Stanhope – any relation, Charles?
No.
I have an old friend who made it to Group Capt. Attached to NATO but doesn’t really understand why as he has nothing to do, just waiting for de-mob and fat pension.
do they actually make any difference; I suspect most of them are semi-retired on half pay and have nothing to do with military policy making.
“Half pay” for idle Royal Navy flag officers and post captains dates back 100+ years.
The Royal Navy documents the current assignments of its senior officers, there is nothing to indicate any are on half pay or retired. In the case its 98 commodores (junior admirals), I believe they are in full receipt of their 122k annual salary.
“In the mean time Britain’s armed forces can defend this country. We have just lost the ability to engage in serious overseas military adventure.”
And the problem with that is ?
Surely job 1 is defending our own country. Serious overseas military adventure hasn’t really worked out very well for us since the mid 1800s.
“Serious overseas military adventure hasn’t really worked out very well for us since the mid 1800s.“
Really? Burma 1852 & 1885, China 1860 & 1899, Zululand, 1879, a score draw Afghanistan 1879-80, Egypt 1881, Sudan 1898, Boer Republic eliminated 1899-1902 plus numerous other bits of West and East Africa ‘hoovered up’- 1880-1900.
The real disaster was 1914, from we have YET to recover.
You forgot Ethiopia 1867-1868 old boy, though you wouldn’t be the first.
Even took Lhasa in a war almost no one knows of – read ‘Bayonets to Lhasa’, by Flemming, a fantastic book of the Younghusband expedition.
By the way – the whole article is as stupid as the last call
‘Take the vax, it is safe and effective – and 2 weeks to lower the curve’
This is a globalist Elite bit of fear porn to make you sheep all panicked so they and eat you.
Quite right, how very remiss of me!
How could one forget MAGDALA?
We also had a garrison in Yokohama for about ten years, thanks to the Satsuma War.
Thank you.
“Worked out” = won the battles + there was actually a sustained benefit to the UK in fighting them in the first place. That’s how I was thinking about it. Remember – we used to do these things for profit (East India Company), following the initial successful Dutch example.
Temporary occupation of the Sudan probably wasn’t worth the effort. “Drawn one, lost two” vs the Afghans is hardly something to brag about (though arguably better than “played one, lost one” for the Russians and the US if we’re being picky). The Boer War was hardly a success.
I’ll give you the Korean War and Malaya emergency. Falklands 1982 too – except that was a desperate rescue operation. Perhaps the Crimean War.
Actually our East India Company predates the Dutch East India Company by a couple of years.
We did an excellent job plundering China, and did at least get the gold mines off those insanitary Boers, plus pinched the Suez Canal off the French, and stole the rubber from Brazil and the Tea from China. All in all not a bad report I think you will agree?
Incidentally I would score Afghanistan 2-2, eg: Loose 1844, Win 1881, Win 1919, Loose 2021.
Thanks for the update, I knew there was a horrible outcome for the British Army in Afghanistan at some point. Siege of Kut Iraq 1916 was another.
Back on topic slightly, I wonder how many realize Britain and Soviet Russia jointly invaded the northern half of Iran during WWII.
We’d actually carved the place up even earlier, in 1908 I think.
ps: 1880 Battle of Maiwand, destruction of the 66th Foot and the loss of both its Colours. The previous year you will recall the Zulus did the same to the 24th Foot.
You’re forcing me to properly read my copy of “Afghan Wars and the North-West Frontier” by Michel Barthrop now !
We also introduced tea to India to diversify the supply chain …
Well stated.
England, being an island, was always going to prioritize its air and sea power over its land power, with a small yet potent army to back up its forces. That said, an army of 73,000 in a nation of 65 million is pretty small. For comparison, Hizbullah has 300,000 members in its fighting forces, from a population of 5 million. You do the math.
Having just visited Nepal, I am clear on where Britain could recruit some highly effective soldiers to bolster its Army.
‘They’ have their limitations.
For example they were NEVER used for ‘crowd control/rioting’ in Northern Ireland, very sadly it must be said!
That would have been a PR disaster and not made a whit of a difference.
It could have been useful in late ‘69! Day 1 in other words.
Besides Ireland has always been a “PR “ as far as England is concerned, one more wouldn’t have made much difference!
Too bad they have kept it all miles away from the UK.
The good news is that no one will invade you mainly because you have nothing that anyone else wants. What wealth you once had has been stolen and is now elsewhere.
The biter has been bit
But does anyone actually care?
Care whether Britain wins or loses the next war? Probably quite a few people.
‘Effortless superiority’ will no doubt see us through as it has so many times in the past.
I am afraid that country no longer exists
Love it Charles
I’m in two minds, one says that we need war to instil some reality into todays youth and the other says it’s too late, the country is full of nation hating spoilt cupcakes that are not fit for purpose. Sadly we created this monster.
Todays youth is my sons’ generation. There is no hope for them. They have been completely emasculated ad nothing can reverse that.
A British victory in WW3 is difficult to plan for. Perhaps it would be better to avoid such a war?
Agree. Can you give Putin a call, and win him over to that line of thinking?
The very last thing Russia wants is a war with EU – they NEVER could hold an occupation even if they won the battles – this is INSANE journalism.
As useful an article is how Pakistan is about to invade India and conquer it and make it a vassle state.
Or how Singapore plans to take and enslave Malaysia
Stupid Elite Agenda Rubbish!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Is Unherd becoming a CIA/MI6 cutout?
Becoming? I think that ship has sailed. Although if it’s engines were produced by BAE or Babcock then perhaps not.
I get the impression that Roussinos was strapped into a chair at RUSI and deprived of food and water until he finished an approved version of this article.
Anyone who wrote the above rubbish likely has WEF tattooed over their heart.
War with Russia? So what are the Germans for?
The problem with Russia, according to Henry Kissinger, is that it has no definable border. So there is always a fight going on to decide where it should be next.
The EU has no definable limits ….
Indeed, a source of provocation and excuses for Putin. Maybe the EU has over-extended!
“RUN AWAY!”
“I shall wave my private parts at you” should never be an underlying principle of warfare or deterrence.
Nor should “I fart in your general direction “.
Sc*tch Presbyterians seem to be in charge of censorship today!
Don’t panic! We can always deploy the devils in skirts.
Some useful illuminations here.
Left with reaffirmation though support for Ukraine remains strategically and morally vital. (And being on right side of morality a ‘force-multiplier’ before it’s easily dismissed).
The obvious second affirmation is the crucial requirement to build collective European defence strategy recognising the Trump dynamic to potentially come too. As we emerge from the petulant squabbles and twaddle behind so much Brexit nonsense our European relationships can at least now settle again onto the real geo-political challenges.
75 years since since its founding I would have thought NATO might have reached your expectations.
Back in 1954 Prime Minister Churchill wanted to admit the Soviet Union into NATO. We could assume the acceptance letter was lost in the post and try sending a welcome to NATO membership pack to the Kremlin.
This makes no sense. Two civilizations whose geopolitical interests are irreconcilable cannot belong to the same defense organization. Just who would they be defending against?
It’s like saying that you could solve the Israel/Palestinian conflict by having both sides join a defense organization.
How does NATO’s Article V work when one NATO country attacks another? That’s never been tested. In fact, Article V has never been tested, and its my guess that when the time comes, most nations are going to balk, with various excuses. They’ll send a few men and tanks, and that’s it. Not enough to draw the ire of Putin.
Inviting Russia to join NATO in 1954 made sense to PM Churchill and the French Government who supported the proposal.
The early 1950s were a low point for US military engagement in Europe, The US was distracted by the Korean War. British politicians were not that pro US at the time, the US had precipitated problems for us in Palestine by refusing to take a fair share of European Jewish refugees, we had been shut out of the Manhattan project, the US was fermenting trouble in Suez, the US had forced us to drop Sterling trade zones. By contrast Ivy League British universities had bred communist sympathizers who were embedded in Government, there was no Berlin Wall or Warsaw Pack. Britain had been a joint occupier of Iran with Russia until 1946.
What was “irreconcilable” between Russia and Britain in 1954? We shared historic cultural ties e.g. Royal Families, classic music, ballet. Russia had been a part of the Imperial European power system for a 100 years.
Or maybe you were questioning inviting Russia to join Nato today?
“As we emerge from the petulant squabbles and twaddle behind so much Brexit nonsense our European relationships can at least now settle again onto the real geo-political challenges.”
This assumes that the EU and NATO prior to Brexit were actually capable of dealing with real geopolitical challenges. In fact of course they were not: the expansion of the EU to its present size, taking in most of the former Warsaw Pact nations, was achieved primarily by dangling the carrot of NATO defence in front of those nations. This was part of a series of dangerous mistakes made by European and US policymakers from the 1990s onwards, which maintained hostility to Russia as if it had remained a Soviet Communist state, when in fact adopting such a stance made it eventually inevitable that Russia would become hostile in turn. We were warned about this years ago by people like George Kennan and others, and our policymakers chose to ignore the warnings.
Brexit is relevant to these considerations only in the sense – and even this is stretching it somewhat – that the return of geostrategic independence to the UK from the broken and incompetent institutions of the European mainland, allows Britain to act solely in its own strategic interests and therefore might hopefully trigger an improved talent for realpolitik where it’s needed in Europe. Like I said, a bit of a stretch, but then again I wasn’t the one trying to shoehorn Brexit into the debate in the first place.
Unless Golitsyn was right (“New Lies for Old,” 1984) when he asserted that the Soviet drawback and the “end” of the cold war was, while pragmatic, also strategic on their part.
They knew that we would be arrogant and celebrationist, overcome by hubris, declaring the “End of History” and other malarky. They knew we’d degenerate and allow our defenses to atrophy. They only needed to sit back and let it happen.
They were right.
You’ll be unsurprised don’t agree with much of that.
We often forget what Europe looked and was pre 89. It’s a remarkable transformation despite current difficulties. Having travelled in Soviet bloc pre 89 I can tell you it feels completely different albeit still challenges. EU made mistakes but overall a driver of ‘good’ and some do fail to see a much bigger historical picture
On the idiocy of Brexit – our behaviour, esp Bojo et al, badly damaged trust. Fortunately that’s being gradually repaired.
You raise a good point, highlighting the bigger picture (Europe/NATO). Some of the comments have been a bit insular (I know – people in glasshouses shouldn’t …)
P.S. Any comment, even slighly critical, on Brexit in here is bound to get red ink.
The neglect of the armed forces is a prime example of the stupidity of the political class, and the cake-ism of an electorate that expects world-class defence but doesn’t wish to pay for it.
On the other hand, I dislike the casual way the author speaks about “the coming war”. The next war won’t be a re-run of the Suez Crisis, or even Vietnam. It’ll be standing in a corner of your living room watching your children’s faces melt. This point, I fear, has not been adequately grasped by all the little-boy Internet warriors.
I suggest massively building up our armed forces (deterrence is the best defence) while doing everything we can to stay out of it, and persuading others not to start it.
The UK has been unable for ( at least 400 years ) to fight a Land war on it`s own.
The Army , excellent as it is, was always confined to combining with large Continental Armies. or in the later days of Empire local recruited ( a la Roman Empire) and was as “Peace keepers ”
Ever since 1916 it has been de facto required ( for large scale Land Warfare ) ” Citizen soldiers ”
A substantial factor in losing the American Colonies was that the French had control of the seas, thus preventing any re-supply,
Japan doing much the same when capturing Malaya & Singapore .150 years later.
No one wants war other than the Democrats. The UK couldn’t fight its way out of a paper bag and the west has abandoned its morals and its internal defense. It has spiritual cancer. It’s interesting to observe a war being willed into existence by the MSM. Meanwhile bang those Pots and Pans and paint the Tanks pink.
Rainbow…..
WWIII is not to be fought against Russia – it is Being fought in the classroom where they tell the kids how to do weird sex practices from 5 and to never get married and have families, and how and why Britain is the Empire of Evil, and to hate Christianity and love Satan, and that White people need to be removed from the world….
This is the Teachers Union, as given to them by the WEF, mission – that every last child be completely messed up, irredeemable, by the education system – which just makes them more stupid at the same time. There are your 5th column.
Brilliant! – paint the tanks pink.
And Yes! the main purpose of the MSM is to stir up hatred and start wars.
We’ve already lost the ability to win World War Three Aris – so what we have to focus on now it not starting it.
The causes are many and almost certainly terminal. Most are routed in the West’s model of completely-finacialised, rentier capitalism that has hollowed out our Industrial base and essentially offers no way out now – we’re path dependently stymied. Sure we look impressive in GDP terms, but far too much of it is based on services rents and debt and not industrial and techological capacities.
Rebuilding that base will take more than a generation – engineers and technicians take years to train and all the time whilst we’re trying to do that we’ll have to reward them sufficiently to keep them in the industry and not captured by a hedge-fund or bank. But that would require political systems and classes not alread in hock to those financial institutions – one that’s willing and capable of aligning the resources of our State accordingly – and that’s never going to happen, the rot is so deep.
Just throwing money at it now will make no difference – we’d be throwing money at the systems & corporations who complacently gravy-trained us here in the first place. Our recent procurement disasters are ‘our fault’ to an extent, but they’re also the corporations. One little step forward might be to name and shame the corporations involved with each useless boondongle – so we can have General Dynamics Ajax Armoured Vehicles, Lickheed-Martin’s F-35, BAe’s Type 45 Destroyers, Aircraft Carriers, Challenger tanks and pretty much everything they’re involved with.. Also every talking-head on our media should be introduced with their current directorships & advisory roles – ideally tattooed to their foreheads. I’m wondering where General Saunders will end up.
In short, the Russians & Chinese have been planning for this for decades – we don’t have the political class or system capable of doing so.
And I couldn’t respond to your piece here Aris without pointing out that you’re a little late to this party – I didn’t have to look too far into your back catalogue here to find this uncritical nalysis of just one of the promised Western wunder-waffen that have so far failed to turn the tide and build on Ukraine’s illusory “successes”:
https://unherd.com/thepost/what-f-16-fighter-jets-mean-for-ukraine/
I think a little soul-searching is in order.
Thanks A D Kent. I couldn’t agree more with you. Well said.
It’s over, when did you last see soldiers in uniform walking the streets. Hamas could raise a larger army of younger fitter and more agressive men in an afternoon in London.
and we have just thrown out the possibility of making new (rather than reprocessed) steel in the UK, when we cant even make the required number of shells to help Ukraine. We are going to get the steel from China and India, for environmental reasons? When the steel is made in China and India in non-‘environmental’ conditions, and they can stop supplying us when they want. Better to take over one of the blast furnaces from TATA and keep it going as a small British company with government support – thus keeping know-how and employment in the UK. And setting up a territorial and ‘drone’ army and being intelligent about defence (also getting rid of incompetent governments). The French are also realising what a hole they are in, but this British-French alliance is almost the only (threadbare) military resource Europe has ( and it is on the ‘wrong’ side of Europe to intervene as pointed out above). I take it you know that China has built a major naval base in East Africa (in 18 months!), and is building one in West Africa, so don’t rely on any imports.
But 40 years ago I was a cadet visiting Berlin – before the wall went down, and the role of the garrison was to hold back the Russians – for 30 minutes…
By the way, the nuclear deterrent is a busted flush, as Russia have so many missiles that all of Western Europe would be radioactive ash, polluted by Sellafield – who would order that?
Djibouti? Let’s not get too alarmist about it, the new Chinese base is a stones throw from the US, French and Italian bases. Also Japan and Saudi Arabia a trying to establish their own bases in Djibouti.
Djibouti is looking more like a military Davos these days, a place for wealthy navies to preen and posture .
China might decide to help out dealing with the Houthis, after all those drones are raising the cost of shipping Chinese manufactured goods.
Only one international venture would prompt WWIII – regime change in Iran. The idea is being floated around certain circles (perhaps pre-Biden neocons) because it would obviously be better for the world if this theocratic republic dissolved while such an intervention would restore US military hegemony. The UK would naturally toddle along under whatever leader.
The big question is how China would respond, having had the tables turned by Russia who would play both sides within this expedient new system of alliances post-Ukraine. Moscow would presumably be happy the attention was elsewhere despite their history with the Islamic Republic.
General Sanders is on the way out, otherwise he would have been given the sack – he was rebuked by the Prime Minister’s Office for his remarks. Senior officers are supposed to implement the objectives set by their national governments, not go round trying to whip up European wars. It is to be hoped that his successor will align himself with Britain’s specific interests and will resist being led down the road to war by the NATO pied pipers.
His predecessor should be rotting in a military jail for the crime of insurrection.
Back in the summer of 2022 six months after the outbreak of the Ukraine war, the head of our armed forces hosted a press conference and announced he was starting the “mobilization” of Britain’s military.
This was an extraordinary statement. The word “mobilization” has a special meaning in international politics, it is a reserved word that only the civilian government should use during the final weeks of international political shadowboxing prior to a declaration of war.
For 340 years Britain’s forces have obeyed the orders of the Civilian Government, that constitutional normality seems to be over.
You appear to have missed the you-think-obvious fact that we are already in a European war.
We have always been at war with Eurasia
Sander’s was delivering ‘a Parthian shot’, safe in the knowledge his pension was secure.
Possibly this is all rubbish but my concern is that I am not convinced that we will be better off even if we easily beat Russia. Our own Governments have, for 25 years, hated us and are determined to destroy us. If Putin runs the UK like he has run Russia we might, in many ways, be better off than now let alone better off than after fighting, win or lose, a huge war with them.
Excellent Posy – Putin wishes success for his country. The Labour and Tories HATE you and everything about Britain – except the money they get.
Perhaps we should invite Russia to join NATO? Then all those places the Russians have considered to be under their influence historically speaking will able to live comfortably with the bear as troop movements will be normalised, even welcome. I don’t really see why the US is squaring up to China either: Taiwan is a part of old Cathay is it not?
The equation is now different, the worst that could happen in war was that one side could overwhelm the other side and subjugate them for a while, maybe even a long while, now, in a war that one side feels it is going to lose we will risk destroying the entire world ecosystem in a radioactive nuclear winter – why do you think all these internet moguls are buying/building nuclear bunkers in the Southern Hemisphere? To give them a bit of breathing space so they can go to Mars!
“I don’t really see why the US is squaring up to China either: Taiwan is a part of old Cathay is it not?”
Because the West cannot afford to allow the global capital of semiconductor manufacturing to fall under direct Chinese control. We’ve been trying for years to de-risk where this is concerned, and even the USA has failed so far to reshore this crucial manufacturing capacity.
Why is that a problem? the US capitalists fell over themselves to send their factories to China.
You make the assertion, but why is China going to be any worse than the US?
No nonsense about democracy in your reply please.
I was going to give you a substantive reply, but the “nonsense about democracy” quip leaves me unwilling to bother doing so.
This is a worrying analysis that I find mostly plausible. I will easily agree that the West’s complacency, strategic incompetence since 1989, and in the case of Europe a failure to maintain the basic requirements of great power projection, means we’re about to encounter a far more dangerous world in general, and the USA won’t be able to stand behind Europe this time.
There is one thing though that I have to point out: according to another Unherd article this week, Russia is presently spending 40% of its GDP on the Ukraine invasion (total GDP $1.8trn, so $720bn). The West is supporting Ukraine at no perceptible burden upon its collective GDP at all. Yes, that’s partly because Western munitions stockpiles are being depleted instead of maintained which means the costs are deferred not saved, but even so, if we take the UK’s present 2% GDP commitment to defence and extrapolate this to the EU + UK which totals $23trn, equalling Russia’s present expenditure would require slightly over 3% of European GDP.
Economically at least, Europe could match this challenge easily, and while this equation would change in the event of contagion to a conflict across the whole Eastern border not just Ukraine, it must also follow that Russia’s economy would not be equal to that task.
This all assumes, of course, that nuclear escalation is not a serious risk: Russia possesses the ability to turn Europe into a smoking ruin if Putin goes completely mad, but at that point we’re way past worrying about how to develop conventional defence anyway.
From a UK perspective the medium term economic challenge isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that Britain is a profoundly different, deindustrialised and demilitarised nation compared with what it was in the 20th century. Even if we found the money to rapidly reconstruct a credible armed forces, what would that money buy this year? Nothing, because we cannot make the planes, ships and munitions at the rate required for a large war, never mind the sillier questions relating to whether we can conscript and train effective combat troops from a pool of young people who don’t even know whether they’re male or female.
The West is supporting Ukraine at no perceptible burden upon its collective GDP at all. The West, at least the US part of it, keeps printing money it doesn’t really have to support Ukraine’s slow society while depleting its stock of munitions, which would be of limited value anyway considering that we’ve managed to demoralize our military to the point where people no longer want to join. Then there’s the problem at the border, something far more pressing than any faraway conflict, but our leadership is okay with the wholesale importation of millions of people with no tie to America and less desire to assimilate. This should work out well.
The USA could pretty easily stop printing and borrowing while at the same time supporting a war economy. When I say “pretty easily” I don’t mean to say there wouldn’t be political ructions about it, it’s just that this would not be an obstacle if America really felt itself threatened by war.
The West has become debt-ridden in recent years simply because it has indulged itself in worthless political luxuries that create no wealth at all and serve only to support an expensive class of parasites on the public teat. We can get rid of them anytime we collectively decide, and spend the money instead on stuff that matters.
@John – all those GDP figures are irrelevant. You can’t transfer billions of dollars of economic rents (which constitutes much of the US & UK figures) into tanks and miliary equipment at the drop of a hat. Especially not when our supply chains are, by design, massively complicated JIT networks with all sorts of bottlenecks and we don’t have that many STEM graduates & technicians available right now.
That is exactly what my comment concludes.
The Russians were supposed to conquer Kiev in 2 weeks, change the local government and then take over the whole of Ukraine, whereas after 2 years they are still fighting to hang on to the eastern, mainly Russian-speaking, part of Ukraine which they were already occupying to begin with. In the early days of the invasion Russian soldiers, from privates to generals, were openly talking on their mobile phones, resulting in several generals being taken out thanks to simple geolocation. Soldiers were starving and freezing to death in their tanks which were blocked in the biggest traffic jam in history. If this dismal performance is anything to go by, the Russians would be unable to take over even a part of Europe, and they would be totally nuts to think about it. In 1939-40 the mighty Soviet Union was not even able to conquer little Finland. And if Russia were to succeed in taking over even one major European nation, how would they ever hope to administer it? As for beating Britain, Russia would have to mount a seaborne invasion, which they are not exactly expert in, using clapped out ships which would get sunk before they even reached British shores. Maybe I’m an optimist, but I hope not!
The Russians were supposed to conquer Kiev in 2 weeks, change the local government and then take over the whole of Ukraine, — Checking my notes, that’s a claim that was circulated in the West, not by the Russians who have no particular desire to kill people are much like themselves. In the early days, the Russians thought cooler heads might want to negotiate but they were wrong. As a result, a half million Ukrainians are dead and the country is in ruins.
@Alex – absolutely. There are so many Zombie assertions associated with this conflict – all sorts of ‘Putin wants…’ statements that just don’t stand up to scrutiny. All sorts of claims about their losses that come either directly from Ukraine, the US, UK or entirely dubious ‘open sources’ like Oryx (with all their never-properly-verified pictures of tanks. That column of tanks pulled back in reasonably good order – there were plenty of mistakes, but the narrative of massive RF incompetence is just nonsense.
This is the Russians who made it a crime to call it a “war”, yes?
Of course, it’s all the Ukrainian’s fault! Or the wicked West. Not those pure, noble, peace-loving Russians. If only Ukraine had said “alright boss, we’ll do as you say.”
Why not ask a more sensible question – can Britain create a more peaceful world? Answer no, because it is one of the biggest warmongers and it still cannot admit that Stalin won WWII, if it had a winner.
Britain is one of the biggest warmongers? What do you consider a little warmonger? And where does Russia sit on this scale, given it’s just invaded another sovereign country very recently?
Yes I’m feeding a troll
How close is Britain to all-out war? — A lot less close than article wants to believe. Neither Russia nor China have designs on the UK. What in the world? Russia’s conflict is limited to Ukraine; China’s aims are limited to Taiwan and may well have no military component as their society sees things differently than ours. I seriously doubt that the Chinese have a big appetite for killing their own, which is how they see Taiwan in the first place.
The state of Britain’s military, meanwhile, is a separate matter and perhaps worthy of discussion. What if? It’s the whole point of defense, to have a credible deterrent to others who might be having certain thoughts. But, good grief; let’s not pretend that invasion is imminent.
In 1945 America made the stupid decision to require Britian to close down the British Empire as a condition of saving Britian in WWII. Britian had bankrupted itself fighting against Germany and the removal of Churchill was the final stroke. America forgot that the British Navy was its strongest protection. Now Europ had to depend upon the unreliable American government whose policies change with each election. American financial firms chose to move all of America’s heavy industry to China while turning its industrial might into the rust belt. They put short term profit above national security. Now China is giving notice that it plans to use that relocated industry for armed conquest of the world. America is trapped in a domestic civil war and puts the WOKE questions of abortion, uncontrolled borders and men in girls’ bathrooms above military might. It appears that rearming Europ for self-defense may be too late. Europ may have to depend on the nuclear arsenals of Britian and France instead of conventional soldiers in the next war. Can British submarines even fire nukes without permission codes held by the senile Biden? East European nations would be advised to go nuclear fast since America is rapidly pulling out of NATO. Ukraine gave away its bombs for verbal guarantees of protection. Look at their fate.
Apparently the UK Trident defence is independent of the USA but in reality whichever side used nuclear weapons would lose, even if there was no retaliation given the nuclear winter etc that would follow. My advice is not to read this bilge.
America has largely followed a Wilsonean foreign policy doctrine for decades. It’s a rather tiresome absurdity that didn’t settle matters favorably but often gave us increased chaos and despair – see the Arab Spring, Libya, Syria and a host of other “entanglements” that we inserted ourselves into and found the exit conditions rather messy. In some cases, we dragged Europe/NATO into the mess. Then we handled the exit with an American-style, olympic-level of incompetence (see Afghanistan exit). America hasn’t pulled out of NATO, but I think it’s fair the electorate has become weary of hearing of how NATO’s defense outlays continue to hover around what’s necessary to keep the lights on (barely). If Europe wants to employ the “nuclear option” as a primary defense deterrence in lieu of building a collective defense that actually means something, then the U.S. need not participate as it is highly probable that the use of “intermediate” nukes will lead to an uncontrolled escalation. Lastly, as the “credentialed” class of crustaceans in DC have come into low regard by great many of us mere peasants in the U.S., I would give odds that the status quo will be met with a great deal push back going forward despite the efforts our of vaunted MIC.
Unless the object of US foreign policy is not what is stated on the package, it has been a total disaster, having gone from the “shining light on the hill” to international pariah in a couple of years. I have never witnessed such a disparity of aims measured by gains in all of my life.
They have been the biggest, supposedly brightest, the best resourced, the most admired, the most willing, the innocently virtuous, yet all they have achieved is world wide chaos, a mouthful of ashes and the impending collapse of their Empire.
This has been the case slowly ramping up over 50 years. No victories, no lessons learned. It should have been stopped with the fall of Vietnam, but it goes on.
Obviously the US foreign policy objectives are not as advertised as none announced publicly have ever been achieved despite the vast resources used to make them happen.
It is evil and hopefully will soon be stopped and something a little more rational will emerge.
Modernity was always going to hollow out the west. Only global totalitarianism can “solve” global problems.
Underrated comment.
I have been saying for years that the great geopolitical question of the 21st century is whether totalitarian/authoritarian or progressive/democratic types of government better solve people’s problems.
Only one of them is going to survive. The way it’s looking, I’m betting on the authoritarians. They don’t have any “woke” cancer or equivalent social ailment to undermine them. That kind of disease can only spring up and infect a society under the “liberty” that is so cherished in the West.
Absurd. Go watch Perun’s video on European defence on Youtube. Worth listening .
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LKlIh_-U4bU&pp=ygUXcGVydW4gZXVyb3BlYW4gZGVmZW5zZSA%3D
The Russians can’t even beat the Ukrainians, who have had limited, often old kit donated to them. Can they credibly be thought to have a chance of defeating the collective European armies of NATO? Not if the latter are united, determined and remotely prepared (organisationally, not including spending vast amounts).
The risk is about politics and will, not metal and blood, as is presented here. If the nations of Europe are divided and apathetic, then countries in the East of the continent are at risk. Given our geographic location, we will never be threatened directly by Russia, even were it not a paper bear (which I tend towards).
Does this mean there aren’t problems with our military that need fixing? No. But the notion of us “losing” a 1 on 1 fight with Russia is preposterous.
“The Russians can’t even beat the Ukrainians, who have had limited, often old kit donated to them.”
Take away US involvement and Ukrainians would be speaking Russian ( oh yeah, they already do). Sadly the same can be said of every European nation since they all parceled out their defense to NATO, i.e., the USA, so they could fund their ever expanding welfare states.
For decades the American Left has yearned for the European level of benefits while bemoaning its own excessive defense spending. Ironically it’s the high levels of both–defense and welfare spending–that will likely sink the US and leave Europe virtually unprotected. By offloading their own defense, Europe traded security and sovereignty for the ability to buy shiny welfare toys instead. Like when the Indians traded Manhattan for a few baubles.
This article is so bad I am goi g to cancel my subscription to unherd. Utter rubbish – why pay for this?
This is not the only article on Unherd, but I agree that this is a crap. For people who supposedly have their fingers on the pulse they seem to know jack-shit, so you can only conclude that they are propagandists.
We are a rump state. Even the Romans primarily only allowed barbarian foederati in of fighting age. Do we think all these dependents will bother serving?
Just to point out that that the average age of workers in the mining sector is over 50 and there is only around 50ish students studying mine engineering at university per another podcast. Nevermind closing Blast Furances and refining we may not have enough people to get the base material out of the group.
Soft times make soft armies, which make hard times, which make hard armies that hope it isn’t too late.
Every nation has four armies. These are the trained professionals, The wartime volunteer heroes and the conscripted cowards. Mercenaries make up the fourth optional force. In the first year of a war the professionals die to give time to train the heroes. In the second year of war, the heroes die gloriously. Then come the conscripts. If the conscripts fail to show up, mercenaries may be hired. Conscripts are forced into the army by police. Do not confuse them with volunteer heroes as Johnson did in Vietnam. How well they fight determines the final course of the war. Ukraine won the wars of the professionals and heroes. Both sides are down to their conscripts. In that war the advantage shifts to Russia. Russia can put the small remnants of its heroes and professional behind conscript regiments. Any coward who fails to advance is shot in the back. The Russian secret police can force cowards and dissenters into the army. It is said that in Stalin’s army it took heroic courage to attempt desertion. A democracy, like Ukraine, has legal problems with assigning troops to back up conscripts with field execution. They also lack the secret police needed to force cowards to join the army and fight. In America, the situation is worse. In the Vietnam war President Johnson tried to conscript America’s elite. The Elite suddenly discovered all kinds of lofty moral reasons to oppose the war. They could not admit that they were simply cowards. N Vietnam had secret police to force its cowards to fight. All its heroes were long since dead. America lost the war. America has since adopted an all-volunteer professional army. This army is too small because professionals demand much higher pay than heroic volunteers or conscripts. You are competing for recruits with safe high paying jobs in civilian life. The anti-war crowd dominated the elite universities and is now the WOKE government of America. Another solution is hiring mercenaries. France decided to create the French Foreign Legion to fight unpopular but necessary colonial wars of choice. They held Algeria for 100 years with the legion but the day when the first French Conscript arrived the war was lost. The legion and the professional army were too small to fight against an Algerian Islamic holy war and France would need its conscripts. The conscripts refused the call of duty. With mercenaries one must pick one’s mercenary recruits to fit the war. America had a loyalty problem with Irish recruits in the Mexican war. The Irish, recruited fresh off the boat, tended to identify with the Catholic Mexican enemy, not American officers. America could have trusted Afghan Moslem tribesmen in Vietnam but not against a Moslem country. In the Afghanistan war, they should have recruited in South America, Nepal or non-Moslem areas of Africa. By the way, the Gurkha mercenaries of Nepal gained such a high reputation in the British army that Russia is actively recruiting in Nepal for the Ukraine war.
North Vietnam had a superlative weapon; it was called General Giap.
An interesting take and it makes sense. I have to wonder how many volunteer heroes as you describe them even exist in the west and what sort of national conflict might actually inspire people to fight. I further wonder if western democracies are even capable of fielding a conscript army in this day and age. In the US, only China is feared and hated enough to sustain enough public support for long. In that the author is correct. America is putting all their eggs into the Indo-Pacific basket.
With respect, calling conscripts “cowards” in this way demeans your entire argument. Has the history of the First World War taught you nothing?
In the U.S., there is a metaphor circulating that entails Lucy, Charlie Brown and a football. It is a metaphor that has “legs” and I suspect has the political adhesive strength of super glue. Americans are asking themselves why should we continue to care about another country’s national defense more than that country’s own citizens? In light of NATO’s marginal outlays that hover around a percentage big enough to barely keep the lights on, what should Europe expect from the U.S.? While the U.S. MIC will most certainly have a different take, the American electorate is probably closer to the following quote from a former ex-Navy CDR & milblogger who goes by the handle of CDR Salamander…
“As regular readers here know, more than a decade before DJT came down the escalator I’ve been warning the Europeans that the USA is but an election, natural disaster, or domestic squabble away from generally decoupling from Europe, leaving nothing but a phone number to call for emergencies left on its desk in Brussels.” I’d bank on that becoming the prevailing view should Europe not get it’s collective defense outlays to a point where you can take care of your own backyard. The American electorate’s tolerance for Wilsonean, chaos-ensuing, fly-swatting, whack-a-mole, Mario Bros approach to foreign entanglemetns is about exhausted here.
Nice phrases in your post… I would counter and say the US has exhibited a self sustaining enthusiasm for playing global whack-a-mole without any prompting from Europe. Exceptions being Bosnia and Gulf War 1 (Kuwait).
Times are changing and even putting aside voter sentiment in the US, that $33 trillion debt of yours will begin to influence US deployments around the globe.
Thanks for the warning re. NATO spending.
Couldn’t agree more but I would submit that a great deal of that enthusiasm has come from “crendentialed experts” with advance post-grad degrees in how to be a be a global busy body. At the very least, one can be certain that there is a genuine bi-partisan view growing amongst the electorate that we’ve had our fill of this kind of foreign policy.
I sincerely hope so!
The European political narrative about this seems to lazily assign it all to Trump – presumably as a means of discrediting the potential threat – but in truth Barack Obama is also on record as having made the same observations years before.
To be fair to Europe and NATO, it is probably unfair to lump the US taxpayer’s huge contribution to European defence in the same class as America’s foreign entanglements elsewhere, for two main reasons: firstly, NATO in Europe post WW2 was an astounding success of American hard power not a failure, and secondly it did not involve an actual war to secure it in the first place, at least not after 1945. (Yes I know about Yugoslavia in 1995, but it was more a consequence of Soviet-era instability, not European political failure).
But that said, it has been a daft anachronism for decades now that the American taxpayer has been paying for European defence, and it makes no difference where you sit on the political spectrum.
NATO members pay for their own defense. The question we are asking here in the U.S. is whether those respective outlays are meaningful enough to accomplish the task of securing Europe’s collective defence? My perspective is that they do not – not even remotely. Are the collective economies of Europe sufficient enough to handle your own national defense affairs? Yes but it is abundantly clear that Europe’s outlays reflect other priorities. Fine but that shouldn’t carry with it an expectation that the U.S. electorate – as opposed to the unrelenting desires of our MIC – are content to see things “keep on, keeping on…”
A picture of the British Isles centred in a target ring of red concentric circles.
The Battle of the Somme might make it appear that Britain was the objective of Imperial Germany in 1914. Yet she was a distraction. Is Scotland part of Historic Russia? Perhaps it’s in Scotland’s interest to become Historic again if Holyrood can persuade England to leave the Union.
The UK should pivot to the navy. Kaiser William, who was supposed to want to invade Britain according to lurid Edwardian novels, said dreadnoughts did not have wheels. They were useless against Russia, Imperial Germany’s only concern.
Churchill’s advice to the cabinet in 1914 was that a war with Imperial Germany would only involve the Royal Navy. It would all pivot on the dreadnoughts, about which such fuss was originally made (should Britain have six or eight?).
If it’s always 1939 for the UK’s military types, for the Russians it’s always 1941. Is there space there for mutual understanding? Or for mutual misunderstanding? Bring the past into the present and it will be recreated.
Of course it must make sense to have more war, not less. Just as much sense as it did in 1914. A corner of a foreign field can now be forever LGBTQIA+. Britain must pivot to the high seas even though Ukraine is the prison camp of the Russian army.
The Foreign Secretary has advanced a progressive plan to end the war in Gaza. Why not one for elsewhere?
The British problem with Imperial Germany was that it had both a massive army…and an enlarging navy.
Germany probably needed a large army…France to the West, Russia to the East. It did not need a large navy, whose only purpose could be to challenge the Royal Navy…
Russia is in severe democratic winter that with each passing year is undermining his countries economic capacity. Use Cold War tactics and squeeze Russia. Allow Russian professionals who want to immigrate special visas; hollow out the country’s talent base.
The US has already played its economic sanctions weapon against Russia. It was supposed to make Russia collapse. Instead, Russia is a stronger country than before. Sure, some educated professionals have left, but many more have stayed home.
So pressure Europe to impose harsh sanctions. Up the sanctions to Cold War levels.
What other sanctions would you recommend?
Without the USA there isnt any combination of NATO countries that could defend Europe from Russia. Europe sold its sovereignty to the US in exchange for the ability to spend its money on welfare states instead of defense.
From the comments, it all sounds very depressing and sad. It seems that nobody thought about war until this weak Biden Admin. got elected. If fact we seem to be in the same situation as we were at the beginning of WW2. – no men, ships or aircraft. Although this time, I doubt we will have the time to re-build our forces.
We haven’t been at peace since the Americans decided on hegemony. It has been mainly under the radar recently except in the Middle East but has exploded as Biden has ramped up the fight for the destruction of Russia and the looting of it’s resources via the Ukraine proxy war.
So typical of this incompetent British government that they would undertake an extremely aggressive proxy war against a country they can’t possibly defeat. Like most bullies, confront him and he runs home crying for his mummy. I’d love to see Britain grow its military, but for home defence and defence of overseas territories, not for aggressive actions against far off countries like Russia or China.
The solution is to do what should have been done two years ago. Ukraine should negotiate a peace with Russia, likely involving normalisation of its current borders and an agreement to become a neutral country.
I agree with the below comment from J Strauss.
Article totally presupposes China invades Taiwan (!!) and then America responds……a typical MIC propaganda argument .
America does not even want to “defend”the Middle East by responding to Iranian influenced attacks, despite or because Iran is near to having a nuclear weapon.
Russia will “win”in Ukraine on its limited objectives and will deter the NATO hawks, hopefully, from putting nuclear weapons on the Russian border.
Remember Kissinger :
“To be an enemy of the USA is dangerous, to be a friend is fatal”
“…… too ethnically diverse to sustain mass conscription”
Now then.
Isn’t that the real, hard truth about the ‘diversity’ which has been foisted upon us for a decades, and many of us have been warning about for decades.
All those millions of people brought in since the Blair years – at tremendous cost in tax revenue to subsidize them, at the tremendous cost to us in both skyrocketing house prices and pressure on public services.
And when it comes down to it, could we count on them to help defend the nation? Apparently not.
So the conscription, were it to ever happen, would presumably have to be focussed on whom? Indigenous British men?
We should go to fight to protect Blair’s gargantuan cuckoo?
I do fear many might simply refuse.
The entirety of this article hinges on whether the assumption stated here is sensible and credible. I cannot think that it is.
The first assumption is really a foregone conclusion.
I agree that the second one, about Russia’s intentions after Ukraine, needs to be examined. At the very least, it is – from NATO’s stance – a self-serving one.
All of the European militaries need to fundamentally re-think their posture.
To the extent they have spent on their militaries, it has been with a view to supporting the US’ colonial wars. The Ukraine war has shown that today’s war is about infantry, rocket and tube artillery, air defence, and drones – and Roussinos’ article does not even mention drones.
The other fundamental force posture issue is whether you’re gearing up for force projection, as is required to support the US’ international adventurism, or defence. There is a huge difference in terms of force make-up, equipment, and training between the two. Defence is also a whole lot cheaper than force projection.
Large pieces of kit – tanks, jet fighters, surface ships – stand out as highly vulnerable targets. Again, focussing on these large-ticket items may satisfy politicians’ and generals’ desire for fancy toys, but their value pales in comparison to lots of ammo.
The first responsibility of any government is Defence of the Realm. If this article is remotely correct our current Government, the MoD and the Chiefs of Staff have failed badly. Over the years stories about the RN’s aircraft carriers and reduction in Army numbers suggest in substance it is true. Among the overwhelming needs elsewhere (housing, NHS, old age care, education ….. ) it will be a 2 term 10 year project.
If there is leadership, the project could lead to increased manufacturing and use of skilled labour (in engineering and Armed Forces), to the UK’s economic benefit. The scandalous public procurement processes over the last 40 years (remember IT for NHS? HS2?) would have to be torn down, bringing in private sector skills in contract negotiation and project management.
The article indicates other efficiencies such as common materiel and joint procurement within Europe; and if necessary buying from the USA. France is always ‘in’, while nationalist ‘populists’ in other countries in theory should be ‘in’.
Before rubbishing the article – and no stupid jibes about Labour please – this subject is serious – what can you suggest to deter Russia?
One thing we could do to bolster the ability of our military with negligible financial outlay is to send a strong force of observers to Ukraine to learn how a war is currently fought. This is obvious. I presume we are already doing so but it would not surprise me if we are not.
Where is Churchill when we need him?
Dead, thankfully.
There is no scenario in which Britain can win or lose WW3 because at best it would always be a minor player in someone’s coalition. Our biggest contribution is as Airstrip One for our US masters.
It both amuses and frightens me that so many of these comments seem to suggest the was to stop a further war is through appeasement, with out using the actual word. If another country is acting aggressively you can be damned sure the only way top stop a war is to be in a position to unleash hell should he try it against you or your interests. When will people learn that you cannot reason with a bully?
The fact that you seem to think a fight to the death is the answer to all problems suggests that you have very little to offer.
There is another option not mentioned in this article: Britain could pull out of Nato and declare itself to be a neutral state. Far more appropriate I would have thought to a country that is long past its best, and rapidly descending to the status of a banana republic without the good weather.
What absolute nonsense! Have the guys been watching brave new world or 1984! Thinking were going to forget what the world elites have said about creating a world reset, whilst they all align and create the forever war! Absolute morons if they think this. WEF klaus highlighted Putin was a young global leader, in 2021 russia, usa and israel staged a global event if highlighting a staged even on huge cyber attack! The various NGOs align with WEF, UN and WHO who all align with country by country governments, and instill the wishes of the money men. The consciousness of these events has awoken many people. Those who still talking about local government issues without recognising the patterns have limited capacity to absorb macro trends. It’s all too obvious, because then people wouldn’t believe it.
The author is right about all these things, which is why NATO should probably be dismantled and every EU nation west of Poland should take a page out of the Swiss school of warfare. One never has to worry over losing a war if one simply doesn’t fight any wars. When the outlook is this bleak, there’s something to be said for just throwing in the towel.
The Swiss “playbook” is not pacifism or pre-emptive surrender, it is armed deterrence combined with minding their own business. They don’t get involved in other people’s fights, and make it clear by their actions that anybody considering invading them would decide the cost would be too high.
Which is, nonetheless, the correct lesson to take.
The overall strategy is to avoid warfare. The tactics are the methods by which the strategy is accomplished. The Swiss tactics are quite reasonable, but there are other strategies for avoiding warfare. The Japanese have inculcated a defensive and pacifist culture. Singapore has made itself important enough nobody wants to wreck it. Qatar let the US build a major airbase on their territory so they don’t have to bother. Lot of ways to skin that cat.
I don’t understand why Unherd keeps giving Mr Roussinos so much space. He has been wrong on the Ukrainian conflict and his reporting was always biased. He’s a propagandist.
War is a function of economics, follow the money. Do you want to defend the nation? Lower taxes, unencumber small, medium and British owned businesses from state interference, create a geniune free market economy, give tax advantages to married parents, teach all school children, regardless of faith or culture the Lords prayer, Nicene Ceeed and Ten Commandments. Provide purveyers of natural foods, butchers, bakers, dairy producers, greengrocers incentives to set up business and cripple fast and UPF food outlets. Create a different health delivery model that charges contributions for primary health care and supports elective surgical intervention (tax at the point of use). Replace this generation of Police with a cohort of actual police that arrest burglars and thugs rather than Christian street preachers and Catholics praying outside abortion clinics. In other words create a nation worth defending.
One thing is missing. Will anyone even care? The Britain I was born into is no longer there.
My history and culture have been mercilessly destroyed and I am constantly being told I and people like me are the problem.
Why would any of my group fight for more of that?
The remaining third of the population hate our guts, blame us for everything and would be fighting on the side of our enemies.
Of course we would bl***y loose!
Who says that Britain is in any danger from attack by Russia? This article seems either paranoid or deliberately trying to scare people.
I think the best plan would be to start peace negotiations with Putin immediately. We might at least get some gas out of him.
So, why did the UK push so hard to provoke an unnecessary, almost pointless war with what as late as 2007 was still a mostly cordial Russia, a Russia that as late as December 2021 was still trying to find a diplomatic solution? Why did its PM scupper a peace agreement in April 2022? All the while, continuing (along with most if NATO) to disarm?
As Fouchet said about the abduction of the Duc d’Enghien, “Worse than a crime, it is a blunder.”
“Indeed, the unspoken assumption in military circles is a scenario in which Ukraine loses the war against Russia, perhaps next year or the year after. And if this happens, Putin will then turn his gaze to eliminating Nato as a threat to Russia by launching a war on the alliance’s eastern frontier.”
Are we being primed with propaganda from “military circles”?
Everyone is so obsessed by the concept of attack as the best form of defence. As Ukraine has shown a well bedded in defensive force is very difficult to counter. And this is across land. We are an island with very treacherous currents, rocky coastline etc. Let’s take a page out of Switzerland’s playbook. Use our natural advantages to make us extremely undesirable to attack. I spent my childhood holidays on the Island of Alderney. Considered an absolute fortress when occupied by the Nazis. So much so, that the allies had no interest in attacking it and avoided it during the D-day landings. Instead of enlarging an army destined to fail, let’s build a huge network of fortifications along our coastline. It would provide jobs for everyone, and flood defences could be integrated into the designs so they wouldn’t be completely redundant if never used.
Another ‘nudge’ article to shift the alignment of the readership towards elite objectives by framing the debate as – War is coming. Are we ready? This has the result of making war seem inevitable. Rather, we need to be discussing who might benefit from a war with Russia and scrutinising those pushing for war.
While preparing for the last war, Britain has let their eventual conquerors waltz in–and even gives them welfare payments! With the Muslim population expanding geometrically, and native British population stagnating, it’s likely within less than two generations Britain (as well as the rest of Western Europe) will be living under Sharia law. Trying to stop it will be like trying to stop the tide.
Political people are emotionally impoverished, and love to turn their alienated fantasies into everyone else’s living nightmares as self-fulfilling prophesies.
Russia is not capable of winning any war, conventional or nuclear. Just look how they “crushed” lowly Ukraine. Any attempt to attack a NATO country would result in the destruction of Russia in a matter of weeks, if not days.