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Chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, General Sir Patrick Sanders, has recently warned that Britain and Europe must prepare for war. This message has circulated in the news and on social media, sparking reactions among the younger generation, to whom it is most relevant. The response has been overwhelmingly negative, and typical to our generation, overwhelmingly cynical.
The fact of the matter is, this isn’t the 1910s anymore—the time when young boys joyfully waved goodbye to their families as the train took them away “til Christmas”. The old lie of war has been forever broken; we are studying war poetry in GCSE English Lit, which paints war as grim and pointless. In this day and age it would be strange to make a movie glorifying war; each one often follows the pattern of “boy looks forward to doing his duty – boy finds out the horrors of war”. This was the case in 1939 as well; the country knew not to rush to the conscription office, but to solemnly enlist. In the present day, I feel this would be the case as well.
So, what exactly is being discussed? Is the government really considering an all-out war with Russia, which would undoubtedly trigger a Third World War, and heaven forbid, MAD? Well, the defense secretary Grant Shapps, Britain’s former top NATO commander Patrick Sanders, as well as countless other analysts have pointed out that Britain’s issue of having a chronically low manpower of the British Army should be resolved by establishing a limited conscription in preparation to build a citizen army.
This does beg the question for many: is the current rhetoric the latest in European brinkmanship, and is war rhetoric being used to scare an adversary into conceding to demands? This isn’t in much doubt. We can see from the Cold War that this is not the first time our country, or the world, has been subject to a war scare, not even close. This was showcased when Nikita Khrushchev, Premier of the Soviet Union, risked nuclear escalation with NATO to advance the Soviet agenda worldwide in the 1950s. He met his match in President Kennedy, who called his bluff during the Cuban missile crisis. Similar to this, NATO tries to intimidate Putin into refraining from escalating the conflict by displaying unity, aiming to scare him into rolling back his war in Ukraine. But this only works if Putin is truly bluffing. This time might be different. This isn’t the ’50s anymore.
Putin has been backed against a wall, and when an animal finds itself surrounded, it will always fight as it has nowhere else to go. Putin can’t back down in Ukraine because he’s put his name to the Ukrainian invasion, and if he does, it would be the end of him. So, he’d prefer to fight and lose, than to surrender and lose. It looks as though we will almost certainly see a continual escalation, with the next step being limited conscription.
What would that look like with our current generation? The best reference point we have is the Vietnam War. Conscription for this war was famously protested nationwide in the United States, with most protestors being young people who didn’t like their country to begin with, so they weren’t willing to die for it. The modern generation of Britain is even more jaded and unenthusiastic about their country than the American youth of the late 60s, so it would likely be a very similar scene. Civil disobedience would be a feature, the seeds of which have already been sown by Extinction Rebellion and JSO. Putin knows this and has banked on division in the West right from the start of his invasion. NATO knows Putin knows this, too.
Because of this, the possibility of war has been discussed in more serious terms in the west. They hope to convince Putin that NATO is indeed willing to go to war to stop any further Russian expansion. Putin continues to hold out, believing Western resolve will crumble as the global economy dwindles and then plummets. I, for one, don’t think either side is going to back down soon, and neither side is laying the avenue for a mutually beneficial dialogue to peacefully de-escalate.
Image = USMC Archives, “War Dogs training, Camp Lejeune” 1943 // CC BY 2.0 DEED
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