'For Britain to rearm now is essential.' Marco Di Lauro/Getty Images
As anyone who has renovated a run-down house will attest, the very first, unglamorous tasks are to ensure that the structure is stable and weatherproof, and above all that the work ahead is affordable in the first place. Many are the ambitious buyers who have, with great excitement, undertaken a greater task than their resources allow, leaving them in an unliveable shell, to the mutinous grumblings of their family. The auction listings and divorce courts of Britain are testament to the temporary power of enthusiasm to triumph over sober caution and self-knowledge.
In much the same way, it would be unwise in the extreme for a country’s leaders to embroil their people in a distant foreign conflict without a confidence approaching certainty that their military, industrial, economic and political resources are matched to the great challenge ahead. Were one, like one of our ambitious renovators, proceeding from a state of near-dereliction, then the confidence that the necessary reserves are there to be drawn upon would need to be even greater still; the risks of disaster all the starker. For those granted the power of the British state and the trust of its people to make these decisions, as the analyst William D. James observes in his penetrating 2024 book British Grand Strategy in the Age of American Hegemony, these basic calculations come under the intimidating rubric of “grand strategy”.
James’ view is that the essential calculation of grand strategy is “proportionality”. Ultimately, James observes, grand strategy is simply “the sustainable balancing of means and ends, based on a prudent calculation of the state’s interests and the threats to those interests”. Strategy of this kind requires the identification of “interests or objectives that are commensurate with the state’s aggregate power (economic strength, technological prowess, and military capabilities), its geographic location, and the nature of its security environment”.
In contrast, a “disproportionate” grand strategy would be based on imprudent calculations. The result, James warns, would be “overstretch (pursuing overly ambitious goals given available means) or underreach (identifying overly conservative goals given the security environment)”. For Chamberlain not to have rearmed in the late Thirties, given the precarious security environment, would have been irresponsible underreach. Yet for Britain to have sent a military expedition to support plucky Finland against the Soviet Union in 1939, as politicians and military planners convinced themselves was a strategic necessity, would have been catastrophic overreach, given the balance of power that a combined Nazi and Soviet juggernaut could bring to bear.
Today, Britain’s grand strategy, in as far as it exists, is set by the Government’s Strategic Defence Reviews, such as the one the Labour government commissioned last year, due to be released next month. Yet as James notes these works of distilled Whitehall wisdom are often triumphs of the willing spirit over the weak flesh, ending up “thin on the main question: the dialectic between a country’s aims and its ability to meet them”. No man can read the future; even so, the defence reviews of recent years have fared poorly. All too often, planning assumptions are rapidly overtaken by real-world events. In this vein, the 2021 Integrated Review, a triumph of Johnsonian cakeism aiming to enshrine post-Brexit Global Britain into defence policy, vastly understated the approaching risks to Europe’s security. As James notes, “Just three months before Russian armour rolled into Ukraine, Prime Minister Boris Johnson boldly asserted that ‘the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on the European land mass are over.’” Instead, the driving concept of the Integrated Review was Britain’s “Indo-Pacific Tilt”, the goal of which was for Britain to establish “a greater and more persistent presence than any other European country” east of Suez.
While “the Tilt” caused much excitement among defence wonks, no one could say with any certainty what it actually meant or what the purpose was. As the Commons Defence Committee warned in 2023, “the UK’s regional military presence in the Indo-Pacific remains limited and the strategy to which it contributes is unclear”, given that “fundamentally UK Defence is already under-resourced for its role within NATO in the Euro-Atlantic, which is the core current and medium-term security challenge for the UK and Europe”. Without effectively doubling the size of the Royal Navy, the committee warned, and also defining Britain’s actual strategy in the Pacific and how to achieve it, “the UK may need to curb its ambitions in the region”. As one expert witness, the Professor of Strategic Foreign Policy Greg Kennedy, more bracingly phrased it, the Tilt “is a distraction and costly prestige exercise that will have no significant impact, apart from a fleeting appreciation from the USN (US Navy)… The costs of operating beyond the Straits of Hormuz are not profitable in any sense: pounds, politics or prestige.”
Reading Policy Exchange’s initial argument for the Tilt, one is struck by its divergence from the actually-existing world of 2025. Aside from the scheme’s essential paradox — that of preserving Britain’s trade links with the Pacific, in which China is by far our greatest trading partner, through a policy of confronting China — the proposal rests on planning assumptions that must now be re-examined from ground-up. “To fully globalise Britain,” it states, “the Indo-Pacific region… must become a priority in the UK’s overall foreign and security policies.” Yet what is the advantage of fully globalising Britain in a world of frantic deglobalisation, where over-extended supply chains outside national control have become a major source of strategic anxiety?
The Tilt commits Britain to a project of “reinforcing its commitment to a rules-based international order” by confronting global autocracy, yet this order not only does not exist but is anathema to the Trump administration, happily engaged in carving up the world into civilisational spheres alongside likeminded autocrats. The conceit was that committing the armed forces to a project beyond their abilities, to defend a fictional order that the United States wishes to firmly bury, would boost the Special Relationship; and this conceit must surely now be consigned to the dustbin of bad ideas. Not only are the ends beyond the existing means but those ends are illusory. By any definition this is the antithesis of grand strategy.
Yet the same can be said of the Integrated Review’s hurried, post-invasion of Ukraine update, the 2023 “Refresh”, which, while reverting to Europe as Britain’s prime source of strategic anxiety, rests upon two worryingly dubious planning assumptions. The Refresh states with unshakeable certainty that “NATO remains the bedrock of collective security”, and “The United States remains the UK’s most important ally”, two assertions, made just two years ago, that the entire ongoing European defence crisis now treats as false. With no certainty of success, European leaders are currently engaged in persuading America not to walk away from NATO for the five to 10 years it will take Europe to fill its role. Both the Integrated Review and the Refresh revolve around a “NATO first” defence vision, preservation of global free trade, and a “high cooperation and low-tension Arctic”, all of which now put the UK in direct confrontation with the US, not least because the greatest current threat to NATO’s Arctic possessions in Canada and Greenland is American annexation.
Reading the expert testimony around the Refresh, we see the “dean of British strategic studies”, Sir Lawrence Freedman, tell Parliament in 2022 that we need not worry unduly about the Army’s current state of readiness, as “I find it hard to believe that we will be sending a division into battle because Russia is now a diminished power”. Instead, he asserts, “The hardest thing for us to get our heads around is the implications of a Russian loss.” Three years later, it is precisely the opposite fears now driving Whitehall’s mounting sense of strategic panic, with the same voices that condemned any talk of peace negotiations while Ukraine had the upper hand now condemning Russia for not coming eagerly to the table when it is winning.
While Freedman’s repeated analyses of Russia’s inevitable defeat in the intervening years have not weathered well, the aim here is not to mock him for his lack of a crystal ball. Rather, it is to underline the observable fact that Britain now finds itself in a situation where the resources at hand are vastly below its commitments, because those commitments were made through faulty analysis regarding achievable ends, available resources, and probable outcomes. To have presided over two failures of grand strategy in half a decade might be considered unfortunate. To bolt on a third, at this perilous juncture, could prove fatal.
There is an old Irish joke where a driver stops to ask a weathered countryman directions to a nearby town: the response, that “First off, I wouldn’t start from here,” characterises Britain’s current search for a grand strategy. In normal times, as James states, “Decisions over commitments, as well as military capabilities and force posture, are rarely taken at rapid speed”: yet, overshadowed by the Ukraine peace talks to which Britain is not a party, this is precisely what is happening. The last two documents setting out Britain’s grand strategy were made under the planning assumption that what was always probable, a second Trump term and waning commitment to European security, was unthinkable. That failure of imagination is now a strategic threat of the highest order.
Yet the terms of reference of the ongoing strategic defence review, which promises “a root and branch review of British defence” also pledges “a ‘NATO-first’ defence policy”, asserting that “NATO will remain the cornerstone of UK Defence…” Its guiding hand, Lord Robertson, confidently assured the Commons Defence Committee back in 2022 that the Ukraine war had led to a firm American recommitment to Europe and the Atlantic alliance. As ever, the British state’s incapacity to distinguish wishful thinking from reality remains its greatest strategic deficit. Just as the engine of tragedy is an inbuilt and overriding character flaw, Britain’s material shortages of men, munitions and industrial capacity all flow downstream from this willed blind spot.
For Britain to rearm now, given the perilous security environment, is essential. Regarding a land war in Europe, James accurately warns: “Not only does the UK currently lack the necessary depth for such an engagement, but its military-industrial base is ill-equipped to fill any gaps in the short-to-medium term.” Yet the basic work of ensuring economic, industrial and political security and stability necessary for such a deployment — the testing of foundations and fixing of the roof that precedes choosing wallpaper for the nursery — must come first. Despite two great societal and strategic shocks in 2020 and 2022, this work simply was not done, while Britain instead piled greater and greater foreign commitments onto an unstable base, in a frenetic, and still accelerating burst of directionless activity.
We must hope that the forthcoming review displays a ruthlessness Labour have yet to display in other areas. The Indo-Pacific Tilt, we may assume, will be consigned to the graveyard of Johnsonian optimism. As the Defence Secretary, John Healey, has rightly observed, there needs to be “a realism about military commitments into the Indo-Pacific” and a renewed focus on our near abroad. If America, as is its right, does not wish to underpin Europe’s security, then the British goal of supplementing US power at the furthest edge of the Earth can likewise be laid aside.
Since the Suez humiliation, a guiding principle of British strategy has been that “we must never allow ourselves to be put in a position where we have to make a final choice between the United States and Europe”. Yet events now appear to be forcing that choice, with the hurried quest for a role in the Ukraine settlement occluding cool, long-term strategic thinking. Britain is fortunate enough to be a collection of North Atlantic islands, far from Russia, whose home defence ought to be a trivial matter. Instead of distant long-term commitments that cannot currently be met, a genuine root-and-branch rethinking of British defence would radiate outwards, establishing a sense of security within Britain’s borders that few currently feel, before extending outwards to Britain’s Atlantic near abroad, and onwards only as far as material conditions allow. The Spring Statement will bring an increase in defence spending, but nothing that will be transformative. This is, perhaps, the work of decades.
Yet those most insistent of a British role at the forefront of world events are too often eager to overlook the growing insecurity and instability of the home front. As James observes, “The ability to mobilize and allocate resources depends on a stable domestic political environment.” Denmark’s social democratic Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen addressed this problem with rare frankness last week, telling Politico that while Russia remains Europe’s greatest threat, “security is also about what is going on in your local community… Do you feel safe where you live? When you go and take your local train, or when your kids are going home from school, or whatever is going on in your daily life?” Devoid of both domestic stability and expeditionary capacity, perhaps Britain’s current weakness is a hidden opportunity. The risks of underresourced adventurism are greater than the immediate risks of inward-looking withdrawal from world affairs. Until the structure is solid and watertight, the need to make harder and more expansive geostrategic choices can be deferred as a future luxury.
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SubscribeIt cannot help all those responsible for formulating the UK’s defence strategy in the 21st century that they do so in buildings whose high-ceilinged ornamented rooms once witnessed the deliberations of Victorian and Edwardian statesmen conducting the affairs of an empire that ruled over palm and pine and a great deal else in between.
A more realistic view would settle on them if they were housed in portacabins in Mablethorpe and empty commercial buildings in Ramsgate.
Instead of lunching in Westminster pubs boasting connections with Wren, they could breathe in the present condition of the country as they walk along the Mablethorpe seafront amid the closed businesses bearing faded marks of their past history, and chalets now serving as permanent housing, while trying to find a chip shop that was still trading.
The large bins outside houses whose yards are nevertheless rubbish-strewn, and the absence of human activity even at midday, would remind the strategic planners of what resources they have to draw upon. The brave display of just hanging on in the neighbouring resorts of Chapel St Leonards and Sutton-on-Sea the extent of the capacity of resilience even in the state of peace known as the welfare state.
Instead of walking to their place of work along central London thoroughfares where on turning a corner one can be surprised at meeting a statue of a Victorian military hero, and under classical facades displaying commercial and intellectual wealth of generations whose ghosted images only remain in Edwardian postcards, the planners had to perambulate through the desiccated Ramsgate town centre, what a sobering dose of present-day reality they would experience.
There, among the art deco remains of the promenade garden set up by a titled lady in the 1920s that now resemble ancient Greek ruins on Sicily, the planners could join the other DFLs (Down From London) who, like the small strata of the very rich in Third World countries, are the only ones who can afford the high-end apartments now sited where the magnificent 1930s lido used to welcome hordes of holidaymakers.
The planners could move among those they plan for; the Thanet youth whose unemployment is at 10%; the children a third of whom are defined as living in poverty; the JAMs whose pre-Covid economic fragility was increased by one third in number of Universal Credit claims thereafter.
Living and planning in such places, the planners would be very clear about what jealous power should want to covet such a powerful, rich, and global country.
Marvellous. I rarely agree with your comments. But you can certainly write and this might be developed into an article of its own.
Britain’s “empire” was a ramshackle thing which was indeed acquired in a “fit of absent mindedness”.
The jewel, to use the cliché, was India which reluctantly taken over by Britain from the East India Company because of the “Mutiny” and rampant corruption. Britain originally made profit from India…then it didn’t. In fact, latterly Britain made more profit from Argentina…not part of the empire.
It was only called an empire because the Kaiser became an Emperor on Germany’s unification. Victoria was annoyed so Disraeli humoured her by calling India an empire.
The Edwardians got all pompous about it, but the empire should have been dumped in the 1920s.
The rot set in during the late Victorian age…prior to that it was about profit…not civilising others who wanted to be left alone.
That cliché would be better applied to Ireland and the halcyon days of the Ascendancy.
Parliamentary interference in India on behalf of the ‘Oxford movement’ missionaries plus the arrival of the dreaded memsahibs thanks to steamships, wrecked the place. Profit and plunder were replaced by evangelical drivel and odious snobishness.
We should have dumped the whole thing in 1934 when we defaulted on our US debt repayments.
The brutal truth..
Yes 1934 at the latest.
Of course the now sanctified Churchill was at that time even against self rule for India (and I think Ireland previously…?) let alone independence.
But he was an imperialist first and foremost.
He only actually spent 22 months in India whilst serving with ‘The Peoples Cavalry’* Thus in his opinion he was now an India expert.
As to Ireland he was predictably more erratic, sometimes advocating appeasement and on other occasions violence.
All in all a bit of a ‘Curate’s egg’!
* The 4th (Queen’s Own) Hussars.
He was also with the Cavalry of the 31st Punjab wholly dominated by Punjabi Muslim soldiers and the 35th Sikh. No wonder he was so pugnacious as that’s also a Punjabi trait.( And the use of vigorous language)
“Britain originally made profit from India…then it didn’t”
And that itself, tells a story.
Forget the politics, human rights etc.
In purely economic terms, the British made a royal mess of India, both for India and themselves.
There was no reason for socio economic standards in India to be as horrible as they became by 1947 – not about morality etc, just purely in practical terms – but the British upper class elites just refused to invest and plan long term.
Investing “capital” to educate and industrialise India would have both improved Indian living standards and made it highly “profitable” for the British.
It’s in a way a predictor for how those same British elites, over the past century, mismanaged and damage Britain’a domestic industry and tech.
Britain should have made more profit from India, AND it’s own excellent industries, automobile, aviation, shipping.
The reason they didn’t is simply mismanagement of both economies by the British ruling classes.
The British ruling classes aren’t particularly good at management…as is self evident.
They are however particularly good at survival and maintaining their status and wealth. In India they simply supplanted the Indian ruling class which also hadn’t improved the lot of the people.
Presumably the people didn’t much care, one boss being the same as the last one. It was the Oxbridge educated Indians who drove independence (possibly because they disliked being treated as, well, Indians whereas they were in fact upper middle class English by education…). The British class system and the Indian caste system were made for each other.
It seems in both places the “drive” is by the lower middle class who “aspire to better things”…in particular status acquired by having wealth.
The Oxbridge educated Indians might have floated to the top of the movement, but no, the independence movement was as broadbased as could be.
For several decades, the Indian independence movement was not about full independence but rather a sort of “home rule” where local representatives managed affairs such as education, local infrastructure, etc – mainly because the British leaders were woeful at a any kind of development – while continuing to be part of the empire, ruled by the Queen etc.
Ironically, that would have made the empire a lot more “profitable”.
It only morphed into a full fledged independence movement after WW1 when it became clear that such modest delegation of local self government wasn’t going to happen, and the only way to gain even limited self government was through full independence.
Absolutely. The post 1858 Crown rule was selfish and survived largely on placating Islamists – one of the reasons Britain is paying a price today on its own shores.
This is nonsense! Victoria always urged her Governments and vice regents to respect. and develop native rights and successive Vice regents did, but recognised that it would take time to develop sufficient capacity for independent rule, as proved to be the case. The blood letting of partition was a product of the cultural history of India, not of British rule. It would have happened earlier and been and ongoing bloodbath if there had not been British rule.
The irony is that the Victorian and Edwardian Statesmen who conducted the affairs of this nation under those same coffered ceilings on Whitehall did so in a contrasted spirit of exemplary sobriety, seriousness, practicality, and uncozened realism.
Open any page of the assorted memoirs and recollections of Palmerston, Gladstone, Salisbury or Grey and you will breathe the pure serene of what ‘adults in the room’ really means.
Particularly Lord Cupid.
The conclusion to this has to be what air stewards tell you to do in the safety briefing before every flight: put on your own oxygen mask before helping other people. Save yourself before trying to save (or meddle) with others. Certain countries need to take that message to heart on a national scale when it comes to defence, geopolitics and immigration/asylum.
Re: the house renovation analogy. It was always my dream to renovate a house. Was never possible due to lack of resources and lack of a partner who shared the same goal. So I watched every single episode of Restoration Home with Caroline Quentin, Fixer Upper, and too many episodes of Good Bones to count as a kind of compensation.
And came to the conclusion in the end that observing the process was far better than actually getting into it myself.
Like it or not, isn’t what you say in your 1st ppg precisely what Trump has been espousing from day one, “America First”?
Katharine, I recall you from old times here; I wish I was that partner in renovation of a grand home with you (I have done it) as you have such sense and I am sure, the strength of character it needs.
But few do, and I know this sick man of Britain government has not. But my thing on this silly article I skimmed through was from:
”Brexit Global Britain into defence policy, vastly understated the approaching risks to Europe’s security. ”
My contention is that there was No risk to Europe or UK but those they do to themselves. As the first poster put it – WHY? Would Russia want Europe and UK? Would they want a total mess to conquer and then try to hold with huge armies. What is in it for them? Maybe 3 million Russians billeted onto us, getting harassed, getting home sick, costing a fortune to the Russian tax payer – and for what? The very idea is insane.
Russia wanted to trade. Like Canada and USA – a huge resource market beside a huge consuming market. Win-win. They had asked to join the EU, and even to join NATO previous – they should have been welcomed – all would prosper hugely. But no….
Alexander Mercourious (‘The Duran’ on youtube and Rumble) talks all the time about UK’s insane hatred for Russia – he puts it back to the ‘Great Game’ time, and that UK is not no longer a great empire, yet Russia is – so sheer jealousy.
Anyway – if USA and UK had not created the Ukraine/Russia war of 2022 it never would have happened. This is 100% an ‘Own Goal’ of a war. This is the West making endless war for profit and weird and nefarious political and economic goals.
Before we do anything else we need to ‘purge’ the High Command, although not quite as drastically as Comrade Stalin did in the late 1930’s.
Just to consider the Army, currently we have about 5 Generals,17 Lieutenant Generals, 43 Major Generals and 190 Brigadiers. So to use a technical term some 250 ‘one stars’ and above, and this for an Army of approximately 75,000.
By comparison the circa 210,000 United States Marine Corps gets by with 84 ‘one stars’ or above.
The circa 170,000 Israel Defence Force manages with a mere 50 odd ‘one stars’ and above.
Figures for the (Royal) Navy and (Royal) Airforce are broadly similar. Thus this is ‘jobs for the boys’*on a simply epic scale and MUST stop.
*And a few girls now it must be said.
In peacetime, the services are bound to become top heavy, because if promotion opportunities are too rare and restricted, as they would be in a lean, mean, more pyramidal structure, then the services will be unable to recruit talented people. But that doesn’t invalidate your point that when it comes to the crunch, as it may be doing now, then some trimming must be done.
Indeed, in a war situation you could hopefully lose a few high ranking officers, especially if you shoved them closer to the front lines as the Russians do.. that also results in fewer rash decisions by an otherwise callous high command!
No, it is not that, not in USA anyway, and I doubt in Europe or UK. In USA the entire point of becoming a General is political and economic. You do as told, say as expected, and buy arms and service contracts which please the Politicians and Arms Industry. THEN you retire and serve on boards of the Arms industry and get rich and get prestige.
Officers who fight and lead effective soldiers peak at Colonel, and mostly Major.
A General is not a fighting man, but a conman and part of the Military Industrial/Political Complex. They are huge Ticks on the body of the military, sucking the blood and money and effectiveness out of it.
I’m glad you used the word “odd” in reference to Israeli generals given their amazing abilities to kill women and children
I seem to recall the IRA was rather adept at killing women and children, or have you forgotten that?
The IRA were not in our army, or any army for that matter. They did not operate under orders from any civil power, indeed the total opposite. So the comparison is silly.. but I know you Charlie, and you know that is true too! Yer a divil forit! Additionally, bad as they were the IRA never targeted children not engaged in the other heinous crimes your allies are guilty of..
Approximately 250 children were murdered, the vast majority by IRA/Republican killers. Fact.
Fiction.
The IDF is specifically NOT targeting children and other civilans. However, if said civilians put themselves in harm’s way by agreeing to shelter, support and succour an enemy then collateral damage will happen.
The IDF is committing Genocide! Yes, they kill women and children intentionally, by the hundred thousand. The USA (and less UK, but only because they are a military joke and broke) provides the aircraft, bombs, missiles, and $$$$$$$$$$$$, so America is involved in genocide too.
Platoons commanded by Generals, this is where we are now.
We are an island state that has left itself dependent on foreign suppliers for all the basics – electricity, food, steel. Nevertheless we remain nuclear armed, with some air and high tech capability and (amazingly) still one of the world’s major economies.
Germany rearms, France lobbies for position, the US withdraws, Poland re-emerges as a European power, Russia makes its hostility to the liberal order unmistakable and China watches, while growing every capability.
In this mix, if Russia (or anybody else) decides to remove, or limit, Britain as a piece on the chess board, it doesn’t have to roll tanks through Europe. Undersea cable cutting and cyber attacks, through to ICBM’s, are methods easily predictable by a layman. No doubt there are many more.
Aris is absolutely right. We live in very uncertain times and should be focusing solely on the defence of these islands, in the widest possible sense.
Absolutely right! We need to defend our islands, our offshore (and underwater) infrastructure and our trade routes.
What is required is a credible nuclear deterrent, a strong Royal Navy, world class intelligence and air defences capable of stopping conventional and nuclear attack.
We already have a lot of these things or are currently building the capacity.
We are already spending a lot on nuclear deterrence. Four new Dreadnought class SSBNs are under construction. We are increasing the number of warheads to 260 and they will be the new Aldermaston-built Astrea type and or course we are maintaining Trident II as the delivery system.
We have a decent plan for the Royal Navy with the final Astute SSNs, the type 26 and type 32 frigates and two Multi-Role Ocean Surveillance Ships for underwater infrastructure protection all under construction. We also have the rest of Tranche 1 of the F35Bs arriving in the next couple of years.
Where we are lacking is in air defences. It is well known that we lack Ballistic Missile Defences and long range conventional missile defences. Britain has long been discussion about acquiring Aegis Ashore and Patriot. Hopefully this will be the focus of the strategic review and not some fantasy about increasing land forces.
Oh Come ON!
Hypersonic missiles (say Oreshnik), AI Drones, tech we have no inkling of are being used in this war – Your talk of Aegis and Patriot – they are like knights in full metal body armor on horseback –
Then look at AI! in 3 years LLMs in the form of ‘AI Agents’ will collapse the Western job market – doctors, lawyers, all computing facing jobs – gone within 10 years max as they can do better at almost all work than humans. In a couple years AI Agents will be piloting autonomous war devices and can be produced in the millions for almost nothing.
Maybe try peace, you will not succeed at war.
It is a different world.
Ye should never have assisted in blowing up NS2 ..the Russians have long memories!
”’Russia makes its hostility to the liberal order unmistakable”’
No – we do.
CIA, MI6, Biden, Obama and about everyone in Western Politics since 2008 has been forming up this war against Russia. In 2022 we got it, planning on the vast army we created in Ukraine (poorest country in Europe, biggest and most modern Army) and the corrupt tools we created in the Maidan revolution to destroy Both Russia And Ukraine so we could sweep in, Blackrock, Vanguard et al, as Carpetbaggers of old, and by our pretense of ‘Rebuilding them’ plunder them.
It failed.
Then Globalism tones too – we could demographically engineer them with migrants of the sort we use to destroy ourselves for them to ‘rebuild. we could ‘De-Christianize’ them too. We could make them into paotmodernist wreckage and get all their wealth….
But the snag was we forgot how our degenerate societies are so weak, as degeneracy is weakness, and so we lost the game. Europe will be destroyed instead – the cracks are getting huge, same as UK – it is breaking under its cultural sickness. USA will be fine though. Vast wealth, resources at home, and will just say ‘Oh Well, that did not work out and leave you all to your disaster, and go home.
England needs to immediately turn its attention to its own affairs. Right now, Labour ‘rule’ over a country that very few men under the age of 40 would consider dying for. When you’re government rule over you, instead of governing for you, you lose that collectivism very quickly. Mix in massive immigration and totally incompatible cultures and you’ve already got a country on the brink. On top of that you have a country that is frighteningly reliant on foreign nations to keep the lights on and the people fed. In a time of European crisis, neither of these essential imports can be guaranteed.
The only blessing the England has is that is geographically far removed from any hostile foreign power (if you discount the Scots). The last thing England needs is to get involved in a war thousands of miles away with a pitifully small army. The first thing English do is try desperately to get its own shop in order.
Agreed but the FIRST thing England needs to do is scrap the Barnett Formula and cease massively subsidising the ever needy and greedy, Northern Irish, Sc*tch and Welsh. ‘Charity begins at home’ or have we perhaps forgotten that?
Frankly our form of ‘representative democracy’. needs thoroughly overhauling. Voting for a bunch of political muppets who can promise anything during an Election but are in no way duty bound to execute their promises/lies is patently absurd. So too is the system of elections every five years.
We should try and emulate the glorious days of the Roman Republic* where elections were held every year for nearly all Public Offices at both national and local level.
Then at least if politicians fail to perform they are summarily dismissed at minimum cost to both the exchequer and society at large. SPQR.
*509 BC – 27 BC to use Christian chronology.
Oh sure, now that you’ve pillaged the Scottish oil! ..and gone all greeeen!
“We should try and emulate the glorious days of the Roman Republic” …spot on! I always figured Charlie was a Republican at heart.
You didn’t mention us Irish as a hostile power.. sure, we’ll feed ye no problem, especially now the Yanks are screwing us with tariffs! But ye’ll have to pay us the going rate! ..not like in the past!
Rotten potatoes? Not bloody likely.
With the exception of citrus and salads, Britain and Ireland could easily be self-sufficient in food. We would have to change (not increase) subsidy regimes and some environmental regulations. We would have to incentivise animal feed production (probably peas or legumes). And people would ideally eat more fish and seafood than they do now. But without very much effort, we could be fully self-reliant if that was the objective.
Likewise, if we exploited the coal deposits of Yorkshire, Wales and Scotland, the frackable gas fields of northern England and the North Sea and gas fields, we could easily supply both country’s energy needs (and that is not to mention nuclear plants and wind farms).
That isn’t to say energy and food would be cheaper, but the supply would be safe and the revenues would go to British and Irish producers.
Britain once bestrode the world like a colossus, but three generations of feckless, incompetent, and venal politicians pissed it all away.
..it’s just the natural cycle of birth, healthy life and inevitable death.. it applies to empires as well; it always has done, since the dawn of history. No point in being in denial or yearning for past (doubtful?) glories. It’s enough the US is in the throes of that as it is well on its way…
Not sure you’re right about the USA…yet.
Trump looks like he understands “imperial overreach” and is withdrawing from the territory which is too costly…Europe.
The more useful territory, the Pacific, is to be the focus. But then he understands the costs and benefits of real estate.
I’m just reading John Harris’ great novel about the battle of the Somme: “Covenant with Death”. Essential reading for all those advocating for a continuation of the meat grinder in the East.
Great book. Enjoyed it in my teens and recently reread it.
“As ever, the British state’s incapacity to distinguish wishful thinking from reality remains its greatest strategic deficit.”
The Mandarins find purpose in fantasy.
An important aspect of British military might in World War One and Two was the contribution of the soldiers of the Empire. This aspect needs to be kept in mind in any current analysis of British military woes.
The soldiers of the Commonwealth. What is the view from Mozambique?
What cohesion of purpose would be present in the Commonwealth if the UK refused to make some sort of reparations for transatlantic slavery?
Maybe Britain could agree to consider “reparations for slavery” when the US does the same.
Can the English then have reparations for diversity?
Don’t the Indians get anything? Pretty racist.
Which ‘Indians’ exactly?
Hey what about us Irish? 50,000 slaves sent to the Carolinas by Cromwell, and a million starved to death in the 1840’s.. while tonnes of foodstuff were exported at gunpoint!
Forget this “reparations” nonsense. The UK has already paid the bill in cash and blood in ending the transatlantic slave trade. Perhaps it would be more relevant to address the current slavery still going on all over the world in Asia, Middle East, Africa, and even Europe.
Something like patrolling the sea lanes and taking over any slave ships after imprisoning the slavers and releasing the slaves? Even if the cost was so great it took literal centuries to pay off.
We can’t rely on any commonwealth countries with the exception of the Antipodes and Canada I expect.
Attempting to right a moral evil with finances never actually changes anyone’s feelings on the subject.
Actually quite a few of our soldiers now come from Commonwealth countries. I take the point you are making though.
Including Wales, or so I have heard.
As well as the merchant marine, war bonds financing, foodstuffs, raw materials and industrial production. That’s gone. Canada, Australia, South Africa (not to mention India) have cold blooded calculations of their own to make in this revisionist world. I think the UK would be lucky if they provide help to hang on to global territories that still act as force multipliers. Imagine the hit to the UK’s status if the Falklands or St Helena can’t be defended.
I’ve already said so.. even Ireland (ROI) is beyond your reach now, let alone empire! And most of the home grown lads have far too much sense these days to die for banksters, MIC CEOs and shareholders, and the depraved Zionist lobby! Best grasp reality and beg for Russian forgiveness!
What would an invasion do to us which we are not already well on the way to doing to ourselves.
The UK’s political class resides in such a frenzied state of post-imperial hubris that the focus may well be upon human resources to wage war on Russia. Given the example of Moscow emptying the prisons to take on nationalist Ukraine, we younger Britons might again find ourselves conscripted to fight in foreign trenches, lions led by neoconservative donkeys.
I love my country and in light of the wanton destruction it has suffered at the hands of ignorant, myopic, vandals I ask : what would we be fighting for? Who would do the fighting? All this before considering our military resources (they’re a joke). What would we be protecting, whose way of life? Is it a shared common belief? Unless this is confronted and answered , best leave it to robots, drones, quantum AI hackers…..
A very thought provoking article which to my mind makes the hugely important point that without rejuvenating, reinvigorating and repurposing ourselves as a nation we can forget being a military power ever again. First you have to have something truly worth protecting and if necessary, fighting for. We need to regain some sense of pride in what we do, who we are and what we are seeking to achieve. Frankly, the majority of us haven’t had much of any of that since Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister. I fully realise that many – including many Tories- intensely disliked her but the truth is the vast majority outside the Westminster bubble appreciated her and what we managed to achieve under her leadership. I for one yearn for someone with even a fraction of her qualities to appear on the scene. Sadly there is absolutely no sign of that happening. We instead have a field of braying donkeys.
“Aside from the scheme’s (the Tilt’s) essential paradox — that of preserving Britain’s trade links with the Pacific, in which China is by far our greatest trading partner, through a policy of confronting China …” A paradox that escaped the genius that was Boris Johnson.
Anyway, a bunch of men in frocks would have those Ruskis running all the way back to Moscow.
A good analysis although, to be fair to Boris, we haven’t seen any massed tank battles in Ukraine have we, Aris?
The last part about the home front is interesting. No amount of expensive equipment is going to help, if nobody is willing to fight. Thus, Britain will probably need a number of new recruits, especially young men. I am not sure about the numbers in 2025, but it seems that in 2015 British Muslims were rather reluctant to serve in the British Armed Forces (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/magazine/her-majestys-jihadists.html). This indicates that most of the new recruits would have to be white men. Why should these people join the Army? To protect what? A state that regards them as “toxic” and sweeps grooming scandals under the rug?
Defence starts in.Kent. Everything else is for the birds.
Would it be helpful to distinguish between genuine Defence needs and what should more accurately be called Attack needs? The piece swings wildly, from defending our islands to Pacific Tilts (ie attack)..
How about separating them out for clarity. For once thing nuclear, viral and chemical attack weapons have no place on home turf.. That’ll help to save a good bit, surely?
Isn’t it Ironic that NATO, set up after WW2 (to avoid a repeat?) INcludes our arch enemy Germany but EXcludes our gallant Russian allies who, arguably, won WW2 for us with some help from the US et al? And now, that other main ally is turning against us, the US!
If anyone still thinks the US is friendly I suggest the reread the leaked Signal emails!
Looking back, admittedly with hindsight, wouldn’t it have been smart to ditch the US and admit Russia to NATO when we had the chance?
It isn’t arguable that Russia “won the war”, it’s the plain truth. Russian blood and US money were the key factors. I wonder if Russia is invited to the VE celebrations…?
And yes Russia should have been admitted to NATO but by that time NATO had become the military arm of Neocon foreign policy ie the Wolfowitz Doctrine.
Hindsight is wonderful thing, but I do wonder what alternate history would have played out in the instance you describe. Can’t be much worse for the normal working man I imagine
Surely it is quite impossible for GB, now that it’s economically bankrupt – as well as morally so given it’s aiding the genocide in Gaza – to build up a strong military? If there was an empire to exploit, of its resources, wealth and manpower it might still be possible, but that too is gone. And with our best friend, big bully US now abandoning us, maybe we should instead focus on our daily bread, (go cap in hand and beg Russia to) forgive us our trespasses and not let the EU lead us into temptation? Amen..
Usual ‘we’re all doomed Captain Mainwaring’ from one of Unherd’s Putin apologists. It’s the same stuff rehashed each time.
Author always fails to mention the parlous state of the Russian forces. This is not the Red Army c1980 any more with a 100+ well equipped Divisions lined up on the eastern side of the Iron curtain. This is a force that can’t repair it’s own tanks and helicopters, can no long set sail to patrol the Black Sea, is reliant on convicts and pressganging, is unable to get the better of a Country of less than 40million and can’t go for mass conscription because that would be an admission of failure and sow seeds of own demise.
UK, in concert with European allies, thus has a bit of time and has and will have more strike force than sometimes appreciated. Poland, Germany, France, UK and Baltic states more than a match for what Putin has left.
The problem for Roussinos and other apologists is they never contemplated that Trump’s actions might galvanise Europe and the UK, nor draw them closer together – both outcomes their world-view detests. Thus the need to say ‘bah it’ll never happen etc’ whilst drinking once more from the cup of cynicism that hydrates each one of his articles.
Yes indeed, Europe and the UK have been galvanised into…talking a lot. And disagreeing…
Probably it would be more appropriate to say they have been vulcanised…
One of Aris’s better articles in my view (and his video pieces are pretty good). But he’s far from a Putin apologist. And this wasn’t an article really about Ukraine or Russia.
Let’s get back to his central point – that the UK has no coherent defence strategy and arguably hasn’t for decades. I think this is indisputable. Certainly since the end of the Cold War. You read here about Boris Johnson’s “Indo-Pacific tilt” and wonder how this was ever taken seriously.
As a navy man, you’ll surely recall our own use of convicts and press-ganging. With some success I believe.
Oh no, for heaven’s sake! You’ll be tellin’ us Russia is losing the war next! Look, Russia defeated the combined might of Ukraine/Nato,, inflicting the heaviest losses (a million+) despite overwhelming odds.. Get real fgs!
There is little point in Britain worrying too much about what lies East of Suez. Britain needs to refocus on defending against Russia, the barbarians at the Eastern edge of civilisation. That said, they need to keep one eye on the Falklands. Who knows when Argentina will have another go.
Yes…those Russians might just march West across Poland, Germany, France…swim the Channel…and then we sure do have problems.
Oh…err…they’re stuck in Ukraine…oh well…you never know…
I think they might have some nuclear missiles that would reach Britain with ease (assuming they still work).
No army fighting Russia can stop those …an Iron Dome will. That’s where the money should be spent, protecting Britain.
If the EU wants to fight Russia let it…it has never done Britain any favours. Possibly the EU can regulate Russia away…
During the Cold War the USSR had approximately 80 nuclear weapons targeted on the U.K. It was thought only about one third would ‘arrive’ and only about a quarter actually detonate properly.*
Thus only about 20 ‘strikes in all, but enough to bomb us back to 43 AD**
*Source: NBC ‘school/facility, Winterbourne Gunner, Wilts.
** To use Christian chronology.
The BBC interviewed a young man yesterday. Having previously been convicted of GBH, he is now campaigning against knife crime.
This young man declared, “There’s a ‘war’ going on in this country, never mind another”.
I’m guessing he is not a veteran of any actual wars.
I’m also guessing that his particular conflict had no DEI imposed on it…