Are we ready for war? Welcome to The i Paper\u2019s new opinion series in which our writers tackle the unexpected question that has suddenly become unavoidable in recent years.<\/p>\n
\u2022\u00a0Ray Mears: This is the golden rule of preparing for war<\/a> The last time Britain went to war on its own was in 1982 to recover the Falkland Islands after an Argentinian invasion<\/a>. That was unusual. Modern British defence planning has always been based on the notion that if the country went to \u201cwar\u201d in the way we normally understand the term, it would always be with our Western allies.<\/p>\n Britain\u2019s long-standing defence policy therefore assumed that \u201ccollective war\u201d might arise in Europe through a challenge to Nato\u2019s famous Article 5<\/a>, that an attack on one is an attack on all. Or else, we might fight with our Nato allies even if not for Nato , as in Iraq in 1991 where the whole alliance effectively decamped to the Gulf and fought together as if its members were fighting for European defence.<\/p>\n That collective expectation persists. The Labour Government updated the National Risk Register<\/a> in a comprehensive way this year. It covers nine different categories of risk, of which one is coping with \u201cconflict and instability\u201d. It lists potential threats to the country, including the possibility of a separate and direct attack on Britain or one of its overseas sovereign territories. And the calculation of an attack\u2019s anticipated \u201cimpact\u201d is conspicuously omitted. The possibility of a direct nuclear attack on Britain is acknowledged but \u201cheld at a higher classification\u201d than this document can mention.<\/p>\n The scenarios in which Britain is most likely to end up going to war are therefore conceptually clear, even if the real politics of any war-crisis would probably be very murky. A war somewhere in Nato territory \u2013 the \u201cArticle 5 area\u201d, from the Arctic to North Africa and the Eastern Mediterranean is becoming more plausible as Russia has become committed, not just to conquering Ukraine, but somehow to reversing the post-Cold War security order in Europe. The prospect of going to war with Nato and for Nato sometime before 2030 i<\/a>s now a working assumption for British defence planners, who can only create an effective deterrent to the war they want to avoid by being genuinely prepared to fight it.<\/p>\n That was an alarming enough prospect in the old days, but now defence planners have to reckon with the prospect that the US might not be fully committed to Nato. It might even stand apart completely. The old \u201cindispensable ally\u201d now hovers in European planning somewhere between the unreliable ally and the insufferable ally. And that makes the prospects of more aggressive Russian policy before 2030 all the greater. So the biggest responsibilities in a collective Nato war might fall on Britain, Germany, France, Poland and perhaps Finland too<\/a>; the big military powers of Europe \u2013 all \u201cbig\u201d in their own different ways.<\/p>\n The scenario of a European war beginning with an outright Russian invasion into Nato territory was regarded as unrealistic after the 1960s. In light of the unprovoked attack on Ukraine in 2022, that doesn\u2019t seem quite so impossible. Far more likely, however, would be a Donbas style Russian-inspired campaign to create domestic instability, say in one of the Baltic states, or perhaps in south-eastern Europe or the western Balkans.<\/p>\n This would be followed by the insertion of Spetsnaz forces \u2013 the \u201clittle green men\u201d \u2013 claiming to protect Russian-speakers or nationals, and then regular Russian troops to protect a new puppet government seizing power. Whether or not Moscow has any intention of doing this in Nato territory, or next door to it, Russia has certainly set in motion a great deal of the subversion that lays the groundwork.<\/p>\n \t\tYour next read<\/p>\n The objective of a political gamble like this would be to demonstrate that the US is not prepared to act, and that Article 5 is, after all, meaningless even among the Europeans. That would be a powerful message to the smaller members among the 32-nation alliance that Nato will not protect them and they would do better to adjust to the new reality of Russian influence across the territories of the old Soviet Union. And the European Nato tough guys, like Britain, Poland and Finland, would be forced to justify fighting over something less than an outright military attack.<\/p>\n These scenarios could be provoked by what is already happening. The threat of military incidents occurring in and around Nato airspace and even more in the waters of the North Atlantic, the Baltic and the Mediterranean is rising all the time \u2013 drones and \u201cghost-fleet\u201d ships are just the current worries. Then too, any European involvement in backing up a ceasefire in Ukraine<\/a>, or more direct aid for Kyiv in the event there is no ceasefire, increases exponentially the possibility of militarised incidents with Russian forces. In the present climate, any flashpoints risk serious escalation, either deliberately or through straight miscalculation.<\/p>\n
\u2022 I\u2019ve seen the state of our weaponry \u2013 helping Ukraine has left us exposed<\/a>
\u2022 Our nuclear weapons are no longer enough to keep us safe<\/a>
\u2022 Not enough people want to die for Britain \u2013 and who can blame them?<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
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