Sir Richard Shirreff: ‘The time has come for the UK to start gearing up to be ready for war in every respect’

As warnings come of a third nuclear age, the former senior British Army officer and author Richard Shirreff argues that the Kremlin has been at war with Nato for 10 years. Now, in its ‘shaping’ phase, if we don’t act now to get ready for what Russia might do next the cost could be devastating

Last week, the UK chief of defence, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, warned us that we are at the dawn of a third nuclear age. He misses the point. The nuclear threat is deadly, but it is our conventional weakness which will invite attack by Russia. We must recognise that Russia’s war in Ukraine is more than a cynical and genocidal assault against a democratic neighbour by a permanent member of the UN Security Council, a signatory of the UN Charter prohibiting the use of force in international relations.

It is a war against the West and all that brings. It is also a war against Ukraine joining the West and it started, not with the full-scale invasion in February 2022, but in 2014 with the annexation of Crimea. As Dmitri Trenin, former head of the Carnegie Moscow Centre and an ex-senior Soviet Army officer, wrote in 2016: “The Kremlin has been at war with Nato since 2014.”

And if you need evidence of this look no further than at the steady drumbeat of hybrid or asymmetric attacks against the West: the alleged interference in the Scottish and Brexit referendums in 2014 and 2016, and the US presidential election in 2017; the Salisbury Novichok attack in 2018 (a weapons-grade nerve agent attack which, but for the grace of God, could have killed tens of thousands of people); regular acts of sabotage and arson, most recently in DHL warehouses and probably on the DHL freight carrying aircraft which crashed in Lithuania last month; drone activity around RAF and USAF air bases in eastern England and blatant attempts to manipulate elections in Romania, Moldova and Georgia in recent weeks.

In Russian military doctrine, this is the shaping phase, the undermining of the integrity of the target state or states through the manipulation of minorities, psychological operations, cyberattacks, use of special forces, assassinations and sabotage below the threshold of conventional war. Does this presage war with Russia? Not necessarily. It all depends on us. Respond with strength and the Russians will back off. Show weakness and Russia will press ahead.

We must recognise Russia under Putin for what it is, rather than what we would like it to be. Rightly, we respect, admire and love Russian music, literature, ballet and culture. However, Russia is also a cruel, vindictive and murderous state which has only ever been an empire.

Imperialism is woven into its DNA; Russia’s story is one of expansion, of taking over neighbouring states, forcing them into colonial submission until it overreaches itself and contracts, and then starts again. Integral to Russians is the notion that Ukraine has no right to exist as a sovereign state and that Russia can never be the country it has the right to be if Ukraine is independent.

Putin’s Russia will not stop at Ukraine. If the Russian president achieves his aim of annexing its four eastern oblasts and establishing a puppet government in Kyiv which will do his bidding, expect him to move on to other former Soviet states, as he is already doing in Moldova, Georgia and even Romania, never part of the Soviet Union but part of the Soviet empire under the guise of the Warsaw Pact.

A British soldier takes part in a Nato attack simulation in Drawsko Pomorskie, Poland (Getty)

In time, it will be the turn of the Baltic States, all reluctant colonies of the Tsarist and Soviet empires. Putin is, after all, the man who described the breakup of the Soviet Union as the greatest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century and who has stated that the most appropriate security settlement for Europe is a new Yalta.

In addition to dominating Eastern Europe, as Stalin did thanks to the first Yalta agreement of 1945, Putin wishes to see the destruction of Nato, an alliance he sees as a direct threat to Russia. It is his intention to decouple America from European defence, which is why the champagne corks were no doubt popping in the Kremlin when Trump was re-elected president of the USA.

Right now, the only thing stopping Putin from achieving his aims is that he is fixed in Ukraine. But Russia has the strategic initiative in that campaign and, despite the mass casualties it has suffered, is inching forward incrementally in the eastern Donbas and in Kursk Oblast.

Chief of the defence staff Tony Radakin warned recently that we are at the dawn of a third nuclear age (PA)

Ukraine continues to put up a valiant fight but has been dependent on the support of Nato and its other partners to avoid defeat. Its partners have given much, but without any clear strategy designed to achieve an agreed end state, and many partners have no more to give.

Any Nato strategy to support Ukraine and defeat Russia in Ukraine would have required a mindset shift and degree of sacrifice from comfortable and complacent Western democracies, which has proved too much for Nato leaders and electorates.

“For as long as it takes” is an easy slogan, a cliche. It is not a strategy, and the consequence has been the cautious, incremental dribbling of support by individual nations on a bilateral basis. It has been too little, too late and has brought Ukraine to the brink of defeat.

The return of Trump to the White House is likely to compound this. He has promised to end the war in 24 hours. Any Trump-brokered “deal” which allows Russia to hold on to significant Ukrainian territory will allow Putin to declare victory. He will then regenerate his armed forces for another attempt at completing his work in Ukraine within five years. Then, I believe, he will make moves to achieve his other European targets: the Baltic States and eastern Poland.

(AFP/Getty)

Trump has also put the final nail in the coffin of the Pax Americana with his February 2024 announcement that he would encourage Russia to attack any European country which has “failed to pay its dues”.

In future, European members of Nato, and Canada, can make no assumptions that Trump would honour Nato’s doctrine of collective defence under Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. Truly, European and Canadian reluctance to share the burden of Nato’s defence spending with the USA over decades has come home to roost.

If we are to deter a third world war, Europe must step up to the mark, but the omens are not good. Germany and France, the engines of the EU and major economies within Nato, are in political and economic turmoil. In his speech, Admiral Radakin said “wild threats of tactical nuclear use” by Russia, China’s nuclear build-up, Iran’s failure to cooperate with a nuclear deal, and North Korea’s “erratic behaviour” were among the threats facing the West.

But while the new UK government talks of defence being the first priority, notably it did not figure in the prime minister’s recent “top six” priorities.

Vladimir Putin will not stop at Ukraine. All the former Soviet states are at risk (Getty)

Any pretence of the United Kingdom being a leader in Nato is rendered hollow by the reality that with the unusable nuclear deterrent gobbling up 40 per cent of the defence budget, the UK is spending no more than about 1.6 per cent of GDP on conventional defence, a long way down the league table of member states.

In contrast, Poland, the Baltic and the Nordic States are the exemplars in Europe and have much to teach those five G7 Nato members (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Canada) which could and must do more.

We must recognise that what Putin’s Russia has done to Ukraine it will, unless deterred, do to other European states if Nato fails to put in place an effective deterrent. We will only achieve peace for ourselves, our children and grandchildren and prevent a third world war between Nato and Russia with a band of deterrent steel from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

(AFP/Getty)

This is something that we now have to be ready to do without the US lead and it means gearing up to be ready for war in every respect: increasing the size and capability of our armed forces (potentially reintroducing conscription); defending our cities and national infrastructure from likely air attack; building a civil defence capability; putting defence industries on a war footing to produce the equipment and ammunition needed; buying off the shelf quickly to fill the gaps – to name just a few measures.

Above all, it needs a Churchillian demand for “action this day” instead of a ponderous defence review which is unlikely to do little but rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic.

And the prerequisite? Moral courage, exemplary leadership to inform, educate and not pull punches and a readiness by Nato populations to make the necessary sacrifices to preserve peace by deterring war. We have to fight a second cold war to avoid a third world war.

If we fail to do this the costs, in terms of blood and treasure, will be appalling.

War with Russia by General Sir Richard Shirreff is out now