PUTIN A ‘CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER’
VLADIMIR Putin could start hostilities against the West ‘sooner than we expect’, the head of the Army said last night.
Warning of Russia’s ‘eye-watering’ military capabilities, Sir Nick Carter laid bare the scale of the threat.
The Chief of the General Staff said the Kremlin was a ‘clear and present danger’ and predicted a conflict would start with something we did not expect.
‘They are not thousands of miles away, they are on Europe’s doorstep,’ he said
in a speech at the Royal United Services Institute. Britain’s ability to pre-empt or respond to the threat ‘will be eroded if we don’t match up to them now,’ he said, adding: ‘Russia could initiate hostilities sooner than we expect.’
Using the dire warning to make the case for more money for the armed forces, General Carter said:
Britain could scale back its military withdrawal from Germany to allow personnel to race to Eastern Europe if war breaks out;
Syria’s civil war was exploited by Moscow to get its troops combat-ready while testing long-range missiles and other equipment;
Russia’s conventional forces give it a ‘calculable military advantage’;
Hostile action would be hard to predict and the time to address the threats was now.
General Carter’s major speech came as experts issued their own warnings about the threat from Russia and the need for Britain to spend more on defence.
Former defence secretary Sir Michael Fallon
THE migration crisis could worsen in future years, the head of the Army suggested yesterday. Sir Nick Carter said the longer-term implications of population movement could affect the ‘stability and cohesion’ of UK society.
He pointed to United Nations figures showing that Africa is expected to account for more than half of the world’s population growth between 2015 and 2050.
General Carter said the number living in sub-Saharan Africa was on track to reach two billion by 2045. Warning of growing migration to richer countries, he said: ‘Without economic growth matching population growth it is inevitable that we will see more movement.’
said the Prime Minister must increase the military budget by billions of pounds, saying the UK’s security was at stake. He told a defence and security forum last night that Theresa May should set a new target of spending 2.5 per cent of national income on defence by the end of the next parliament.
The head of the National Cyber Security Centre warned that a major attack on the UK was a matter of ‘when, not if’.
Ciaran Martin said Britain had been fortunate to avoid a ‘category one’ hacking attack. This is defined as one that could cripple infrastructure such as energy supplies and the financial services sector.
He suggested one was likely in the next two years, telling the Guardian: ‘It is a matter of when, not if, and we will be fortunate to come to the end of the decade without having to trigger a category one attack.’
And the former head of spy agency GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, told the BBC he was seriously concerned about Russia’s growing aggression in cyberspace. He said: ‘It’s the single country that’s kept me awake, because their intent has changed over the years.’
In his speech in London yesterday, General Carter said there were stark parallels between the situation before the First World War in 1914 and how Russia might view things now.
He said: ‘Our generation has become used to wars of choice since the end of the Cold War. But we may not have a choice about conflict with Russia. And we should remember Trotsky’s advice that “you may not be interested in war but war is interested in you”.’
Showing a Russian military propaganda video, he said Moscow was developing an ‘eye-watering quantity of capability’. He cautioned that hostilities would not start with ‘little green men’ – a reference to conventional ground troops in camouflage.
‘It will start with something we don’t expect. We should not take what we’ve seen so far as a template for the future,’ he said.
The Army chief said Russia’s doctrine for war utilises ‘all of the instruments of national power, not just the military’. He added: ‘The character of warfare is making it much harder for us to recognise true intentions and distinguish between what is peace and what is war.’
He said credible deterrence could be underpinned only by genuine forces and commitment ‘that earns the respect of potential opponents’.
To deter Russia in Eastern Europe, Britain and its Nato allies must improve their speed of recognising what was going on, speed of deciding what to do and speed of assembling forces if needed, he said: ‘The time to address these threats is now – we cannot afford to sit back.’
General Carter said there were no longer two clear and distinct states of peace and war.
He said: ‘The risk we run in not defining this clearly, and acting accordingly, is that rather like a chronic contagious disease it will creep up on us, and our ability to act will be markedly constrained. And we’ll be the losers of this competition.’
General Carter said he was ‘actively examining’ keeping supply bases in Germany open once British personnel are brought home. This would enable troops to return at short notice with equipment already in place. At one point 55,000 UK personnel were stationed in Germany but the latest figure is no more than 17,000.
Comment – Page 18