Britain must prepare for the possibility of war as the threat from Russia pushes the country into what the UK’s most senior military officer has described as the “most dangerous” period of his 35-year career in the armed forces.
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton has warned of the need for the UK to be ready to go to war, as European security officials increasingly point to Russia’s expanding campaign of sabotage, cyber attacks and other forms of hybrid warfare against the West.
The concern is not simply whether Britain has sufficient military hardware. Academics and former senior officers have also questioned whether the public is psychologically prepared for a conflict in which the first attacks may not resemble a conventional war.
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Historian Margaret MacMillan, author of War: How Conflict Shaped Us, told the BBC: “It’s not the tanks you need to worry about.
“It’s the cutting of cables on the ocean floor. It’s the hacking into systems on which so many things depend. The possibility for asymmetric war, for cyber war, is growing by leaps and bounds.”
She added: “I think we have become used to the idea that peace is the normal state of affairs, that it’s going to last.
“So no, I don’t think we are psychologically prepared… but I do think that we are beginning to recognise that war is something that is closer to us than we’d like to think”.
The warning comes as questions grow over whether the British public would be ready to accept the consequences of a major confrontation, including the possibility of military mobilisation.
Andrew Michta, a Polish-born American academic and professor of strategic studies at the Hamilton School, University of Florida, said: “The UK is also largely disarmed and, most importantly, mentally.
“There is no readiness for what’s happening because the policy elites are not addressing their public’s in a way that would honestly state the gravity of the situation.”
For retired senior British Army officers, the potential threat extends well beyond a conventional Russian attack.
General Sir Richard Shirreff, a former senior British Army officer and author, argues that Russia’s initial invasion of Ukraine in 2014 represented a turning point in the confrontation between Moscow and the West.
“The reality is that Russia believes it’s been at war with NATO since 2014. Not a conventional war, but a war designed to undermine the integrity of target states or alliances.
“I would never take the Russians for granted. It would not be beyond the realms of possibility for them to try to unhinge NATO by, for example, attempting to take over Spitsbergen [in the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard] or something else indirect.
“So that’s what we need to be prepared for”.
His comments come against a backdrop of growing concern among European intelligence services that Russia is intensifying its covert campaign against the West.
Senior security officials across Europe have warned of an escalation in sabotage, cyber operations, influence campaigns and other forms of “hybrid” warfare, raising the prospect of a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO.
The warning has also sharpened concern that Moscow could attempt to test the alliance’s resolve without immediately launching a full-scale conventional assault.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has said intelligence shared with Western partners indicated that Russia could launch a drone or missile attack against NATO territory in the coming months.
Such an assault, he warned, could test whether NATO’s Article 5 mutual-defence commitment was “more theoretical than practical”.
For Britain, the implications extend beyond the battlefield. Damage to undersea cables, attacks on critical infrastructure, disruption to communications and cyber operations could create economic and social consequences long before conventional forces crossed a border.
That prospect is forcing a broader question on European governments: not simply whether their armed forces are equipped for war, but whether their societies understand how quickly the boundary between peace and conflict can disappear.
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