The Prime Minister says he will send British soldiers to Ukraine, on a mission that may require them to fight Russian troops, risking confrontation with a nuclear power unlike anything we experienced in the Cold War. Yet Keir Starmer has been asked few questions about his policy.
The PM says planning for the “coalition of the willing” is entering the “operational phase”, when military commanders work out the logistics of deployment. But Ukraine remains a war zone. The Russian constitution now declares Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia parts of Russia, but Ukraine still controls territory in the last four. If the war continues, or Putin accepts a truce and then resumes fighting, what is the plan?
And what is the objective of the coalition of the willing? Ukraine has more than a million men under arms, and Starmer has proposed deploying more than 10,000 troops from different countries. Is the suggestion that this small force would stop Putin if he attacks again? Or is it to show that an attack with Western troops in Ukraine would risk a wider war – fought by the countries of the coalition, Europe or Nato? Is the plan to make this outcome clear, or leave it ambiguous?
If we do threaten war, what are the consequences of deploying our troops beyond Nato borders? Donald Trump says he will not issue an American security guarantee, Putin says he will not tolerate Western troops in Ukraine, and European military and political leaders admit their capabilities are too limited to fight Russia. What resources do we have to form a credible deterrent? Is an American guarantee likely, or reliable?
If the coalition has a clear objective, what is the timescale for achieving it? Is this an open-ended commitment to Ukraine that will go on, whatever the cost or need to meet other threats? What would be the rules of engagement? Would the RAF and coalition air forces defend Ukrainian airspace? Doing so would require a willingness to shoot down Russian aircraft and attack missile batteries, risking wider war. And we know the Russian modus operandi involves hybrid warfare, in which plausibly deniable attacks are carried out. So how would we respond to attacks on coalition soldiers made by unofficial operatives acting for Putin?
Sending coalition troops to Ukraine would of course raise questions about the future of Nato. Would deploying resources to Ukraine come at the price of reducing support elsewhere on the Eastern European border?
Nato member states never allowed Ukraine into the alliance, did not deploy troops during the war, and will not allow Kyiv to join even now. With ambiguity about the response to Russian attacks on Nato soldiers in Ukraine, the risk of such an attack would be greater, and the burden of responding would fall disproportionately on Britain. A failure of Nato countries to respond collectively – and indeed, a clear statement from some member countries that they would not in these circumstances be drawn into conflict – risks undermining Nato itself, and the Article 5 commitment that “an armed attack against one … shall be considered an attack against them all”.
For Britain specifically, there are very serious questions that need to be addressed. The Government says we need to rearm. But will our rearmament programme be driven by the perceived need to send ground troops to Ukraine – which defends a border with Russia almost 1,500 miles long – or by an assessment of the wider and more direct threats we face?
Rearmament driven by the need to man and supply an expeditionary force in Ukraine – or elsewhere in Europe – would distort our future defence policy and budget. With our geography, and the nature of the threats we face, sea and air power are more important than a big army. In future wars, against countries of similar strength or more, modern tech and military hardware will matter as much as manpower. We must be at the forefront of drone and missile technologies, apply artificial intelligence, data science and cyber capabilities, and make strategically ruthless calls about our needs.
So to what extent is deployment to Ukraine driving our new defence policy? What additional spending is needed to rearm to defend our interests and follow the PM’s Ukraine policy? What is the speed of the increase in spending, and how will it be funded? Why should Britain send thousands of troops to Ukraine – and distort its defence budget – when European countries closer to the Russian border are not prepared to do so?
Given the other threats we face – and that the principal threat to us from Russia is not invasion – what is the appropriate balance in our ability to project power and force by air, land and sea? If Russia is a “menace in our waters”, as the PM has said, why is government policy leaving us dependent on vulnerable interconnectors for electricity imports? Why is nothing being done about Putin using our offshore wind turbines to monitor British submarines?
Why are we making ourselves dependent on another hostile state, China, for the finance and construction of so much of our national infrastructure? Why do we continue to deny the clear threat – increasingly social and political, not just violent – presented by Islamists? Why are we so passive when our border is open to anybody who would like to come here?
Many other questions remain. How can we rearm without reindustrialising? How can we reindustrialise without changing energy policy, and without saving British steel production? Is the Prime Minister considering making commitments to other countries about using British nuclear weapons in their defence? Do we support countries like Poland seeking to acquire their own nuclear weapons? And what are the risks and opportunities in seeking stronger alliances and deeper co-operation with countries like France and Poland, and further afield, Australia, Canada and New Zealand?
The casual ease with which our political leaders and commentators are discussing decisions that could lead us to armed conflict should alarm us all. History tells us the most disastrous of wars often start with small and apparently harmless steps. The Prime Minister should be prepared to answer these very serious questions.
