British Army Chief Calls for Permanent Mobilization of British Army for War

June 29, 2022 (EIRNS)—General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the British Army’s General Staff, delivered his first public speech since taking office yesterday, which was about three things... Russia, Russia and Russia. In an address to the Royal United Services Institute’s Land Warfare Conference, Sanders characterized this moment in history as Britain’s 1937 moment, a reference to a statement by then Brigadier Bernard Montgomery who wrote at that time that “We have got to develop new methods, and learn a new technique...” as opposed to doing things because they had always been done that way.

“For us, today, that ‘something else’ is mobilizing the Army to meet the new threat we face: a clear and present danger that was realized on 24 February when Russia used force to seize territory from Ukraine, a friend of the United Kingdom. But let me be clear, the British Army is not mobilizing to provoke war—it is mobilizing to prevent war....

“This is our 1937 moment. We are not at war—but we must act rapidly so that we aren’t drawn into one through a failure to contain territorial expansion.”

But it’s not just about Russia. “In meeting a revanchist Russia, we cannot be guilty of myopically chasing the ball. Defense cannot ignore the exponential rise and chronic challenge of China, not just within the South China Sea but through its sub-threshold activities across the globe,” Sanders said. “Beijing will be watching our response to Moscow’s actions carefully. But ceding more territory to Putin could prove a fatal blow to the principle of national sovereignty that has underpinned the international order since 1945.”

“In Ukraine we’ve seen the limitations of deterrence by punishment. It has reinforced the importance of deterrence through denial—we must stop Russia seizing territory—rather than expecting to respond to a land grab with a delayed counteroffensive,” Sanders went on. To succeed in this, “the British Army, in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners, must be in-place or at especially high readiness—ideally a mix of both. Tripwires aren’t enough. If we fail to deter, there are no good choices given the cost of a potential counterattack and the associated nuclear threat.”