[This article was first published by The London Times]
Britain’s complacency about defence is outdated and dangerous, as Russian aggression shows
On our current form, Russia would beat us, the war games suggest. Britain’s military doctrine is decades out of date. Our equipment is clapped-out, stockpiles (especially of vital war-fighting munitions and spare parts) skimpy. Our air defences are too patchy to defend the home front. Inadequate logistics mean our soldiers cannot move abroad quickly. We long ago stopped the big, hard exercises needed to make our forces fighting fit; instead our officers are busy sending emails and filling in forms. As things stand, our army cannot field even one fully equipped war-fighting division.
The most skilled and able people leave the armed forces because life there feels boringly second-rate and rule-bound, worsening an already acute manpower shortage. Our safety rests on our allies, chiefly the United States. But the Americans and other Nato members are furious in private, and increasingly in public, about Britain’s chronic habit of over-promising and under-delivering.
It is not just our ill-preparedness for future war that is troubling. We are in alarming danger right now. The co-ordinated, well-targeted attacks on the French railway system timed to disrupt the Paris Olympics exemplify the vulnerability of high-tech critical infrastructure everywhere. The perpetrators are unknown, but shortly beforehand French intelligence arrested Russians allegedly involved in a “large-scale” and “serious” disruption project.
Elsewhere, Russian military decision-makers, taking their cue from blisteringly anti-western Kremlin rhetoric, are increasingly reckless. We’ve already had a nasty scare in the Black Sea in 2021 when Russia’s navy fired live rounds to chase HMS Defender away from occupied Crimea. Much worse was a standoff, previously unreported, between American and Russian nuclear submarines in the Arctic in the spring of 2022. The Russian commander went as far as to order his crew to arm his vessel’s torpedoes. The American captain (alerted to the Russian move by his sub’s sensors) had to decide whether to arm his own weapons, which might provoke the Russians into opening fire.
I hope the steely-nerved US commander, who chose to slip away, gets a medal. The Soviet-US “safety-at-sea” agreement of 1972 eased such dangerous naval confrontations in the Cold War. It urgently needs reviving.
Russia’s war in Ukraine is spreading into Nato countries. Three Russian kamikaze drones breached Romanian airspace last week. At this month’s Nato summit, Poland said it wanted to start shooting down Russian planes and missiles over Ukraine. The Biden administration vetoed the move.
China is increasingly visible too. Chinese and Russian troops have conducted manoeuvres in Belarus, Russia’s western client state, rehearsing the seizure of a Nato airfield in an “anti-terrorist operation”. Chinese and Russian bombers have been patrolling together off Alaska. A Russia-provoked crisis in Europe could give China the chance to blockade Taiwan, or vice versa.
The most dangerous hotspot is around the Kola Peninsula in Russia’s far north, home to its core nuclear weapons arsenal and main naval bases. The US this month for the first time sent B-52 nuclear-capable bombers over neighbouring Lapland in northern Finland. Russia said its warplanes made the Americans change course. Some allies such as Norway worry American pressure will trigger Russian paranoia and prompt even more aggressive behaviour.
Both sides have a point. It would be a disaster if Russia responded by moving to a hair-trigger nuclear posture. It will be no comfort that Armageddon came by accident. But routinely bowing to fears of escalation hands the Kremlin the advantage. Ukraine is paying a colossal price for that now. If Russia wins there, countries like Poland will pay it soon. And that’s with a (supposedly) seasoned, Atlanticist US president. Donald Trump’s return to power would add even more uncertainty.
Outside the military sphere, war is already raging. Russian cyberattacks are increasing. An investigation by the Danish cybersecurity firm Heimdal last week revealed a huge spike in attacks on government and business networks, using “brute force” — relentless repetition — to guess weak passwords and logins for Microsoft software. The aims, it said, were destabilising and disrupting critical infrastructure in Europe, stealing sensitive data, extorting money to finance other operations, and planting “malware” for future use.
Also rocketing is sabotage, with arrests of Russian agents who allegedly plotted attacks against military targets in Germany and against Czech railways, and of thugs hired to carry out arson, beatings and murder. Other Russian mischief never makes the headlines. Sometimes the authorities fail to recognise the political implications. Or they see all too clearly what is happening but are afraid of acknowledging it.
Britain’s public discussion of our plight combines hand-wringing and happy talk. Yes (the new government says) things are in a mess, but (say defence chiefs) the prospects for modernisation of the armed forces are glowing: agile and digital, robust and resilient, faster and punchier, operating over longer distances with doubled and then tripled “lethality”, whatever that means. But we have been showcasing these reforms for years. If buzzwords could keep us safe, we would all sleep easily.
Discussing secret war simulations that show Britain loses against Russia, military sources stress that the assumptions were unrealistic. Faced with a real conflict, we would push through all the necessary changes at lightning speed. So why not make them now?