Let’s anticipate new attacks in darkening world, says General
BRITAIN and its allies face a “darkening” world where they are repeatedly surprised by their enemies, a former head of the Armed Forces warned yesterday.
General the Lord Richards of Herstmonceux said Britain must rediscover the mentality that won the Cold War to cope with growing threats from Russia, Iran and Islamic State.
He was backed by a senior fellow at the Policy Exchange think tank, Gabriel Elefteriu, who attacked Britain’s “strategic drift” and said the West had been taken by surprise by every Russian initiative in recent years and by the rise of IS.
He warned that the West spends its time “firefighting” rather than anticipating new threats.
They both called for the creation of a small Office of Net Assessment to try to predict future threats and “increase the bang for bucks” Britain gets from new military capabilities.
A Policy Exchange report, a Question of Power, said UK military prowess can be one of the biggest assets in shaping the post-Brexit “Global Britain” agenda thanks to “worldclass Armed Forces and deep alliance networks”.
But it can only achieve this if underpinned by “a hardheaded assessment of the changing strategic environment”.
In recent years, the report says, the West stood powerless to thwart the rise of IS, which swept across Syria and Iraq and came within 12 miles of the gates of Baghdad. Britain and its allies then had to work with local forces in a brutal war to drive back and destroy IS forces. The West was also caught on the hop by President Putin’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea, which involved “hybrid” warfare, a mix of conventional forces and more covert tactics. In the foreword to the Policy Exchange paper, Lord Richards revived memories of the phrase “the darkening storm”, which was used to point to the threat posed by Nazi Germany.
He wrote: “Together with the West as a whole, the United Kingdom is facing a darkening strategic picture.
“After a post-Cold War interval of hope in a world finally free of great-power conflict, we in the West must now revisit some of our core assumptions.
“Britain needs to rediscover the mentality that helped to win the Cold War if we are to deal effectively with emerging threats like Russia and Iran.”
Defence Secretary Gavin Williamson welcomed the report. He said: “Greatpower competition has returned and it is important that UK strategy maximises the contribution that our world-class Armed Forces can make.”