General Sir Patrick Sanders is clearly a man who believes in going out with a bang rather than a laugh.
The recently retired chief of the general staff yesterday issued a bloody warning to British defense in which he said that the West only has until the end of the decade to save again to prevent a Russian attack on NATO soil that would trigger a World War III-style conflict.
The former head of the British Army also claimed that the ‘new axis powers’ Russia, China and Iran are a greater threat to the free world than Hitler and the Nazis in 1939 because ‘they are more dependent and more aligned than the original Axis powers were’.
The devastation caused by the Russian missile attack yesterday at the Okhmatdyt children’s hospital in Kyiv, which specializes in treating children’s cancer victims.
Adolf Hitler. Are people who say Putin is the 21st century version of the Fuhrer just scary?
Not all top brass speak in such apocalyptic terms, of course. British defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin last month chose to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day – a time for sobering reflection on the horrors of war – to calm the nation.
He claimed the chances of Britain finding itself in another major conflict, this time with Russia, were small. ‘Putin does not want a war with NATO,’ Radakin declared. ‘Putin does not want nuclear war.’
He has to hope he’s right – although I’m not sure. Is describing Vladimir Putin as the Hitler of the 21st century just scary? Or the threat of Russia attacking, say, Poland or the Baltic states, triggering an all-out conflict with NATO that could easily be nuclear, and the eventuality of risk which we would be foolish to downplay?
As if to highlight this danger, China and Belarus began joint military exercises a few miles from the Polish border as the latest NATO summit began in Washington DC.
The day after Russia launched a deadly attack on a children’s hospital in Kyiv, the new Foreign and Defense Secretaries, David Lammy and John Healey, wrote newspaper articles to say they would use the summit to urge other countries to step up. defense spending up to 2.5 percent of GDP.
He can talk the talk but can he walk the walk? While Rishi Sunak committed the Tories to achieving this figure by 2030 during the election campaign, Labor still only promised to cut spending to 2.5 per cent ‘as much as possible’.
With President Joe Biden in crisis and NATO skeptic Donald Trump looking more likely to return to the White House, it is crucial for NATO to announce a timeline for member states to meet new targets.
For Ukraine is only one of the three key flashpoints that threaten the world order as we know it. China remains a threat to Taiwan and Israel’s conflict in Gaza may turn into a wider regional war.
However, Russia’s war in Ukraine is a clear and present danger. As someone who spent three decades covering conflicts around the world as a foreign correspondent before becoming a military historian, I believe that – backed into a corner – Putin can do anything.
The Kremlin has long peddled the narrative that a showdown with NATO is inevitable and that an attack on Poland in response to some false provocation could rally the nation behind it.
A young patient is cradled after yesterday’s missile attack in Ukraine
Vladimir Putin wants to leave his mark on history as the restorer of Russian power
US intelligence has been convinced that there is a real prospect of Putin ordering the use of battlefield nuclear munitions if the situation in Ukraine worsens. And I, for one, believe that, given the prospect of defeat and humiliation, Putin is quite capable of going out in Hitlerian GötterdĂ€mmerung – a catastrophic act of mass destruction.
From the beginning of the war, state propaganda had been preparing the Russians for nukes. Just last month, a military analyst boasted on Russia-1, the main state TV channel, that ‘in just 10 or 15 minutes’ 30 to 40 Russian nukes could ‘make the Polish state and the Polish people disappear’.
We might console ourselves by thinking that the missile launch protocol does not allow a leader acting alone to initiate a nuclear war and that wiser heads down the chain of command would refuse to carry out such orders.
But who knows? How it works in the Kremlin remains unclear even for our security services.
Optimists such as Sir Tony Radakin are convinced that Russia will lose in Ukraine. The war has put great pressure on the Russian economy and its position in Europe and America, for example, has reached rock bottom. If peace were to be declared tomorrow, Moscow would need decades to repair the damage to its reputation and restore normal relations with the West.
Then there are the half a million casualties that have been suffered since the invasion began. Russians take masochistic pride in their ability to suffer but even they have their limits.
Public unrest can only grow as recruiting sergeants head to big cities like Moscow and St Petersburg in search of fresh cannon fodder.
So logic might seem, of course, to be on Radakin’s side. But, as we should know by now, Putin does not act only for reasons. After 24 years in power, he is not interested – if he ever was – in ordinary considerations of what is best for his people.
His great concern was to leave a mark on history as the restorer of Russian power, an achievement that would give him a place in school books alongside Peter the Great and Joseph Stalin.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the recently retired chief of the general staff, is clearly a believer in going out with a bang rather than a whimper.
History tells us that it is always wise to take dictators at their word and not discount their wilder utterances as fantasy.
No one can predict with certainty the outcome of the current conflict but Radakin may be right when he says that Russia will lose. This is a war of attrition. The Kremlin’s shift to a war economy and its ability, at the very least, to replace the loss of men and material are worrying for the West.
But the financial and human costs are enormous and, at the time, will be a political problem for Putin. Even in a society fed on lies, certain truths cannot be hidden.
Putin believes that democracy cannot work for long and the rough consensus that Europe and the US have been building since the Ukraine war started will sooner or later disappear. Time, he believed, was on his side.
Just this week, Indian prime minister Narendra Modi, the leader of the world’s largest democracy and a traditional friend of the West, greeted Putin with a hug when he arrived in Russia for a two-day state visit – much to the chagrin of Ukrainian President Zelensky. , which marks a ‘big disappointment’.
Apart from this episode, Putin’s calculations now seem shaky. The West has kept its nerve and, in the struggle for economy and resources, is greater than Russia. NATO’s stance is getting stronger, as evidenced by the decision to allow Ukraine to use foreign-supplied weapons to attack Russia.
But tilting the scales in Kyiv’s favor can also make the world a more dangerous place. A Ukrainian success would shatter Putin’s dream of historical immortality and also deal a fatal blow to his leadership.
Admiral Radakin no doubt meant well with the word comfort. But as a historian, I prefer General Sanders’ analysis.
The world has become a dangerous place and an ‘effort of all nations’ is needed to protect themselves, starting with massive investment in the armed forces.
We can only hope our fellow NATO members see the urgency as well.
Patrick Bishop is a military historian and co-host of the Battleground podcast.
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