LONDON — Further meetings and discussions with a range of British politicians, senior military and defense officials and academics were rather depressing for several reasons perhaps less visible on the other or our side of the Atlantic.
Keir Starmer’s Labour Government, in trying to make its case to the British public and resolve two unresolvable problems at once, has coined the unusual phrase “defense dividend.” What it means is that the proposed defense spending increases in 2027 to 2.5 percent of GDP will create a multiplier effect and stimulate greater economic growth. And this increase will deal with the need for added military capability to deal with as seen as an alarming Russian threat to Europe in light of its attack and aggression against Ukraine.
The reality is that the UK military, down to a fraction of what it once was — an army shrinking to about 70,000, a Royal Navy with sixteen major surface warships, and an Air Force with about 140 Typhoon jet fighters — is not a formidable force. And as a number of active and retired senior officers have said to me privately, these increases are insufficient to maintain even the current force let alone increase it. Further, Number Ten seems focused on the wrong threat.
That Ukraine has been valiantly waging a one-sided war against Russia aggression is noble, brave and costly. Few in the UK can deny that. But the reality is that the Russian military has been exhausted and depleted in this war, with estimates of about one million Russian dead and wounded. The so-called defense buildup is aimed at restoring conventional deterrence against this now diminished threat.
As it took about a decade for the U.S. military to restore its confidence and capability after losing in Vietnam, there is little reason to think that the Russians could do better in repairing and rejuvenating its forces. Hence, the Russian conventional military threat to NATO and Western Europe is minimal. Further, when Russian President Vladimir Putin first threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, his military was privately advised what the U.S. could do in destroying most of his forces in Ukraine. Although there is no hard evidence, it appears the Russian realized that if invoked, the U.S. could deliver on this threat.
From my perspective, the threat from Russia is not a conventional military attack west or even grabbing a few islands in the Baltics or the Arctic claimed by NATO states or part of their sovereign territory. Putin lacks the means and will not take the risks as what would this accomplish besides infuriating the allies. He has a better plan.
Putin has the cover not only of his strategic nuclear forces but about 7,000 theater or on-strategic nuclear forces. And he is using Lenin’s “active measures” to disrupt the West through the threat of infrastructure and actual cyber attacks; disinformation, misinformation and skillful use of diplomatic and communications skills to alter Western thinking and attitudes.
So what are the UK and the West doing to counter these attacks? And how much of the 2.5 percent defense increase actually go to what Lenin called “active measures,” an old but devious and often effective means of waging war without resorting to force of arms?
And about a defense dividend generated from a modest increase in military spending, this is what George H. W. Bush meant by “voodoo economics. When the U.S. increased its defense spending during the wars it lost in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, that did not stimulate growth but added to inflation. The reason GDP was not increased for the simple reason that this funding could have been applied elsewhere to generate real growth.
Unfortunately, the failures in Vietnam and for the UK as well in Afghanistan and Iraq cast long shadows on how and when the public would trust its government. And that the current U.S. president, supported by his cabinet for blaming Ukraine for starting the war, was not credible to the public who knew better. So, to quote Lenin, what is to be done?
Most governments are simply not trusted by their constituents — mainly for not governing. And governments too often rely on power points and slogans as replacements for real strategy and decisive strategic thinking. Until governments are prepared to be objective and accept reality as it is and not how it should be, it is hard to see how public trust will be restored.
Harlan Ullman is UPI’s Arnaud deBorchgrave distinguished columnist and senior advisor at the Atlantic Council.
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