Our young are too fat to fight in a war

The effects of the Ukraine War are spreading. Led by Sweden, previously neutral countries have been applying to join NATO. Denmark has just announced that it is bringing back conscription. In France Macron has suggested that western boots might tread on Ukraine’s soil. Orban, Prime Minister of Hungary, has been ‘financially persuaded’ to be more cooperative. In general military budgets have been increased.

And here? It is clear that we have neither the personnel nor the equipment to fight a modern or large-scale war. We have relied too heavily on the nuclear deterrent and American support.

Our land, sea and air personnel have shrunk to under well 100,000. One of our best ships, ‘The Prince of Wales,’ has been incapacitated by an engine fault just before a NATO exercise. A test missile went into the wrong stretch of sea.

General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, and Tobias Ellwood, former Defence Secretary, have energetically recommended increasing the number of service personnel. Ben Wallace has described our armed forces as ‘hollowed out.’ Conscription has been proposed. After all, we had it in World Wars I and II and between 1947 and 1963. Organising and financing a vastly improved and updated defence force would present difficulties but not in themselves insuperable ones. It would be better than becoming a province of an alien state.

The basic problem is psychological. In the wars mentioned above most men were willing to fight. They felt their families and culture threatened. But the social environment has changed. As several journalists have pointed out, many of the young are too fat to fight. Their skills are limited to video games. And for two generations they have been taught that militarism is wrong. In past times schools and universities had cadet corps. Now Bristol University Students’ Union has barred army recruiting stalls at its careers fairs. The Territorial Army seems to have disappeared.

An attempt to turn a generation which has never known physical stress, privation or acute fear into soldiers would defy the new culture. Would it be successful? Would it be a way out inertia and uselessness for hundreds of thousands neither working nor looking for work? Or would it make matters worse? How can we make such people see that, if they benefit from the support of society, they have a duty to defend it? Any answers to these questions should be sent to the gentlemen listed above?

Margaret Brown