General Sir Patrick Sanders is clearly a man who believes in a bang rather than a whimper.
The recently retired chief of the general staff delivered a chilling warning to Britain’s defence establishment yesterday, saying the West has only until the end of the decade to rearm sufficiently to fend off a Russian attack on NATO territory, which would trigger a World War III-style conflict.
The former British army chief also claimed that the “new Axis powers” Russia, China and Iran posed a greater threat to the free world than Hitler and the Nazis in 1939 because “they are more interdependent and more aligned than the original Axis powers”.
Destruction from yesterday’s Russian missile attack on the Okhmatdyt Children’s Hospital in Kiev, which specializes in treating victims of childhood cancer
Adolf Hitler. Are those who say that Putin is a 21st century version of the Führer just scaremongering?
Of course, not all of the top brass are speaking in such apocalyptic terms. British defence chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin chose the 80th anniversary of D-Day last month – a time for sobering reflection on the horrors of war – to reassure the nation.
He claimed that Britain was unlikely to be drawn into another major conflict, this time with Russia. ‘Putin does not want war with NATO,’ Radakin declared. ‘Putin does not want nuclear war.’
He must hope he is right – although I am far from certain that he is. Are those who paint Vladimir Putin as a 21st century Hitler merely fear-mongering? Or is the threat of a Russian attack on, say, Poland or the Baltic states, which could trigger a full-scale conflict with NATO that could easily go nuclear, a contingency whose risks we would not want to downplay?
To underscore this danger, China and Belarus began joint military exercises just a few kilometers from the Polish border, just as the latest NATO summit in Washington DC was getting underway.
The day after Russia carried out a horrific attack on a children’s hospital in Kiev, our new foreign and defence ministers, David Lammy and John Healey, co-wrote a newspaper article saying they would use the summit to urge other countries to increase their defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP.
They can talk the talk, but can they walk the talk? While Rishi Sunak promised the Tories during the election campaign that they would reach that figure by 2030, Labour will only promise to increase spending to 2.5 per cent “as quickly as possible”.
With President Joe Biden in crisis and NATO-skeptic Donald Trump increasingly likely to return to the White House, it is more important than ever for NATO to announce a timetable for member states to achieve the new objective.
Because Ukraine is just one of three major flashpoints threatening the world order as we know it. China remains a constant threat to Taiwan, and the Israeli conflict in Gaza could easily escalate into a broader regional war.
Nevertheless, Russia’s war in Ukraine is the clear and present danger. As someone who covered conflicts around the world as a foreign correspondent for three decades before becoming a military historian, I firmly believe that Putin, when cornered, is capable of anything.
The Kremlin has long been spreading the narrative that a confrontation with NATO is inevitable and that an attack on Poland in response to some imagined provocation could rally the nation behind it.
Young patients are being cherished after yesterday’s rocket attack in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin wants to leave his mark on history as the restorer of Russian power
US intelligence already believes there is a real chance that Putin will order the use of battlefield nuclear munitions if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates significantly. And I for one am convinced that, given the prospect of defeat and disgrace, Putin is perfectly capable of going off in a Hitlerite Götterdämmerung – a catastrophic act of mass destruction.
Since the beginning of the war, state propaganda has been preparing the Russian people for the nuclear transition. Just last month, a military analyst boasted on Russia-1, the main state television channel, that “in just 10 or 15 minutes” 30 to 40 Russian nuclear weapons “could make the state of Poland and the Polish people disappear.”
We can comfort ourselves with the thought that missile launch protocols do not allow a leader to start a nuclear war on his own, and that wiser people further up the chain of command would refuse to carry out such an order.
But who knows? The inner workings of the Kremlin remain remarkably opaque, even to our security services.
Optimists like Sir Tony Radakin are convinced that Russia will ultimately lose in Ukraine. The war has put enormous pressure on the Russian economy and its position in Europe and America, as it was, has fallen to a low point. If peace were declared tomorrow, it would take Moscow decades to repair the damage to its reputation and restore normal relations with the West.
And then there are the half million casualties suffered by the armed forces since the invasion began. Russians are masochistically proud of their ability to suffer, but even they have limits.
Public unrest will only grow as recruitment agents turn to major cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg in search of new cannon fodder.
So logic, ostensibly, seems to be on Radakin’s side. But, as he surely knows by now, Putin does not operate on reason alone. After 24 years in power, he is not interested—if he ever was—in mundane considerations of what is best for his people.
His main concern is to make his mark on history as the restorer of Russian power, an achievement that would earn him a place in the textbooks alongside Peter the Great and Joseph Stalin.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the recently retired Chief of the General Staff, is clearly a man who believes in a bang rather than a whimper.
History teaches us that it is always wise to take dictators at their word and not dismiss their wilder statements as fantasies.
No one can predict with certainty what the outcome of the current conflict will be, but Radakin is probably right that Russia will probably lose in the long run. This is a war of attrition. The Kremlin’s move to a war economy and its ability, at least for the time being, to replace losses in men and equipment are worrying for the West.
But the financial and human costs are colossal and will eventually lead to political problems for Putin. Even in a society fueled by lies, certain truths are impossible to hide.
Putin believed that democracies cannot walk in step for long and that the rough consensus that Europe and the US have maintained since the beginning of the war in Ukraine must sooner or later fall apart. Time, he believed, was on his side.
Just this week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, leader of the world’s largest democracy and a traditional friend of the West, greeted Putin with a hug when he arrived in Russia for a two-day state visit, much to the chagrin of Ukrainian President Zelensky, who described the gesture as a “huge disappointment.”
Apart from this episode, Putin’s calculation now looks shaky. The West has kept its nerve and, in an exhausting battle of economies and resources, is vastly stronger than Russia. NATO’s stance is hardening, as evidenced by the decision to allow Ukraine to use foreign-supplied weapons to strike inside Russia itself.
But a tilt in Kiev’s favor could make the world a more dangerous place. Ukrainian success would shatter Putin’s dream of historical immortality and likely deal a fatal blow to his leadership.
Admiral Radakin undoubtedly meant well with his words of comfort. But as a historian I prefer General Sanders’ analysis.
The world has become a very dangerous place and it will take a ‘whole country effort’ to protect ourselves, and that starts with a massive investment in our armed forces.
We can only hope that our NATO colleagues also see the urgency.
Patrick Bishop is a military historian and co-host of the Battleground podcast.
