The whole of the UK – not just its armed forces – needs to step up to deter the threat posed by Russia of a wider war in Europe, Britain’s military chief will say.
In the kind of nation-wide call to action that has not been heard since the height of the Cold War, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton will use a speech in London on Monday evening to urge the British public to make defence and resilience “a higher priority”.
He will say Russia’s war in Ukraine shows that Vladimir Putin’s willingness to target his neighbours “threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK. The Russian leadership has made clear that it wishes to challenge, limit, divide and ultimately destroy NATO”.
Yet there was nothing in excerpts of the speech – released in advance by the Ministry of Defence – that pointed to any push by Sir Keir Starmer’s government to increase defence spending faster than planned, despite the flashing warning signs and concerns among senior military officers that the budget is currently set to grow too slowly.
In a further articulation of the threat, Blaise Metreweli, the new head of MI6, will use a separate speech on Monday to warn that the “front line is everywhere” in a new “age of uncertainty”.
“The export of chaos is a feature not a bug in the Russian approach to international engagement,” she will say, in her first public comments since becoming the first female chief of the Secret Intelligence Service in October.
“We should be ready for this to continue until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”
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Defence and security chiefs across the NATO alliance are increasingly sounding the alarm about the potential for Russia’s war in Ukraine to ignite a much wider conflict.
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Mark Rutte, the head of NATO, last week said Europe must ready itself for a confrontation with Russia on the kind of scale “our grandparents and great-grandparents endured” – a reference to the First and Second World Wars.
At the same time, Al Carns, the UK’s armed forces minister, said Britain is “rapidly developing” plans to ready the entire country for the possible outbreak of war.
Sky News revealed last year that the UK had no national plan for the defence of the country or the mobilisation of its people.
By contrast, a detailed blueprint for the transition from a state of peace to one of war existed throughout the Cold War, setting out not just what the armed forces, emergency services and local governments had to do in the event of conflict, but also wider society, including people working in industry, schools and public transport.
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However, this Government War Book was quietly shelved after the Soviet Union collapsed and successive governments took a so-called “peace dividend”, shifting investment out of defence and into other priorities such as health and welfare.
Sky News and Tortoise have documented the hollowing out of the UK’s armed forces and wider national resilience in a podcast series called The Wargame.
The expected comments by Air Chief Marshal Knighton in an annual lecture at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) appear to signal an attempt by the government to put the country back on more of a war footing in the face of rising threats.
But military insiders have warned that a timeline set out by the government of 10 years to boost defence spending to 3.5% of GDP from 2.3% is far too slow.
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The chief of the defence staff will say: “The situation is more dangerous than I have known during my career and the response requires more than simply strengthening our armed forces. A new era for defence doesn’t just mean our military and government stepping up – as we are – it means our whole nation stepping up.”
He will nod to the planned uplift in spending, noting “the price of peace is increasing”.
He is set to say: “The war in Ukraine shows that Putin’s willingness to target neighbouring states, including their civilian populations, potentially with such novel and destructive weapons, threatens the whole of NATO, including the UK.”
This is a threat that wider society needs to prepare for as well as the military.
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“Our armed forces always need to be ready to fight and win – that’s why readiness is such a priority,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.
“But deterrence is also about our resilience to these threats, it’s about how we harness all our national power, from universities, to industry, the rail network to the NHS. It’s about our defence and resilience being a higher national priority for all of us. An ‘all-in’ mentality.”
It is a highly unusual intervention that has echoes of the Cold War when the UK last involved all of society in a programme of national defence and resilience against the threat of World War Three and potential nuclear Armageddon posed by the then Soviet Union.
“We are heading into uncertainty, and that uncertainty is becoming more profound, both as our adversaries become more capable and unpredictable, and as unprecedented technology change manifests itself,” Air Chief Marshal Knighton will say.
