Putin's threat and parallels with 1914 are all too real/General Sir Nick...

Putin's threat and parallels with 1914 are all too real



Once upon a time, when Britain ruled nearly half the world and the Royal Navy dominated the seven seas, our forefathers took it for granted that this country was the target of jealousy and hatred.



Thus, we built dreadnought battleships and sent soldiers to garrison far-flung shores, to protect our national riches.



Today, however, this country has shrunk, its people ask only to be left in peace to get on with our lives and watch The Crown on Netflix.



To some, it thus seems monstrously unfair that we should have to spend tens of billions of pounds defending ourselves against foreign foes to whom we wish no ill.



We have got used to the menace posed by Islamic fanatics. But why should we have to go head-to-head with the Russians, of all people?



What is the head of the British Army thinking of, delivering a speech in London last night in which he warned that President Vladimir Putin's nation presents 'the most complex and capable security challenge we have faced since the Cold War'?



General Sir Nick Carter, probably the ablest Chief of the General Staff so far this century, declares that 'the parallels with 1914 are stark'.



He also warns, with the direct sanction of his political boss, Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson, that Britain's Armed Forces are today in no state to face the threats; nor will they be, unless the Treasury finds money to plug the yawning chasm in the defence budget.



Some cynics will say the service chiefs are playing a familiar game of crying wolf, warning of a 'Red Peril' in Moscow as they have done so often before, in order to secure expensive new weapons and platforms with which to posture on the international stage.





Yet anybody who knows anything about defence and national security on both sides of the Atlantic understands that General Carter's depiction of the Russian threat, and of our weakness in the face of it, are all too true. Indeed, General Carter's speech was one of the toughest by a military leader for many years, and he used some chilling language.



A very senior American officer said to me in the summer: 'The British Armed Forces are no longer big enough to command credibility either in Washington or with our enemies.'





I told him that I hoped the next time he saw our Prime Minister, he would say as much to her, because American top bra*s are often too polite to British leaders for our own good.



In 2018, the RAF's centenary year, its fast-jet resources are strained to the limit to sustain a tiny contingent operating over Syria and Iraq.



The Royal Navy is crippled by its mad commitment to two giant aircraft carriers — we lack the cash to arm these with anything more than a token force of aircraft.



The Army and Royal Marines, already relatively small and under-recruited, are threatened with further severe cuts.



All this is because, with the NHS and welfare budgets almost devouring the State, a weak British government flinches from responding realistically to the challenges to our national security.



The Treasury lavishes resources only on the intelligence services, because terrorists represent a daily threat to ordinary British people on our streets.



Yet, as General Carter said last night, terrorists cannot destroy our society, whereas the Russians pose a major threat to the West's stability.



Nobody supposes that Putin's soldiers are about to launch an amphibious a*s*ult on East Yorkshire. But the Russians have mastered an extraordinary range of cyber, fake news, military and guerrilla tactics to destabilise the Western alliance and threaten its most exposed regions, such as the Baltic states.



The clear distinction between peace and war is gone: the world henceforward must exist in an uneasy and permanently perilous limbo between the two.





The Russians — like the Chinese and North Koreans — have, says General Carter, 'become masters at exploiting the seams between peace and war'.



One reason for taking the 1914 comparison seriously is that the Great War broke out not because either Germany or Russia wanted a big war, but because both miscalculated.



Carter points out that 'whether we like it or not', in the eyes of the Russian people, we Westerners 'have been made to appear as the enemy'.



The Russians have shown again and again that they respect strength and exploit weakness. Thus we must protect our capabilities — or, though General Carter was too tactful to say this baldly — rebuild them from the sorry decay into which they have fallen.



We must convince our European allies, of whom only the French have war-fit Armed Forces, of the need to work much more seriously together.



It is weakness that makes Russia dangerous: its population is shrinking and its economy would be a basket case but for oil and gas.