‘Time for a return to National Service?’

WE HAVE all seen photos and video clips of the build-up of forces in Ukraine.

The Russian government has been showing off its armaments and manpower-everything from the latest small-scale nuclear weapons to well over 100,000 infantry, oldstyle but bristling with modern devices.

The Ukrainians are rising to the challenge. The well-publicised picture of a Ukrainian granny squinting through rifle sights shows their determination.

Invasion would not be a quick and easy conquest and it could, as many have warned, lead to a European conflagration on a scale not seen since 1945.

Of course, if nuclear weapons were deployed, any such war would be brief.

What happens if all involved keep their fingers off the nuclear button? In western Europe conflict tends to be static. In World War I, the western front moved only a few miles and it moved slowly.

But in the east in both World War I and World War II huge swathes of territory changed hands with dizzying speed.

We do not know what form a Russian-ukrainian war, especially as it widened out into a general war, would take. The whole definition of war is changing. Technology has expanded the definition and possibilities of propaganda, economic pressure, infiltration, security disruption, hacking into businesses and welfare departments, espionage, assassination and many other tools.

If this is the end of a period of relative peace, we should be preparing our defences. The soft life is over anyway, as covid and violent weather fluctuations have demonstrated. Perhaps we need some modern equivalent of National Service, to include some kind of military training, first aid skills, capacity to organise and willingness to accept organisation, general alertness etc.

It would make people aware that their survival depended on acting as a unit and avoiding panic.

As it is there seems to be too much self-indulgence, complaints of hurt feelings and desire for a high place in the social pecking order.

We are frighteningly unprepared for real conflict.

The basic reason for people to group together is protection against animals, enemies, natural disasters and starvation.

The defence of the UK, not its undermining, should be our chief concern.