The UK faces mounting security risks and is failing to take them seriously enough, former NATO Secretary General Lord Robertson has warned.
Speaking on the Lord Speaker’s Lord Speaker’s Corner podcast alongside former First Sea Lord Lord West of Spithead, Lord Robertson argued that Britain is falling behind in resilience and national defence. “We are under-prepared, we’re under insured, we’re under attack and we’re not safe,” he said.
Their joint appearance followed growing debate in Parliament about the UK’s readiness to withstand cyberattacks, sabotage and wider geopolitical shocks.
Lord Robertson raised concerns about Russian activity across Europe, saying Moscow is increasingly outsourcing operations. “They can’t do it themselves. So they are now contracting out, a good capitalist principle, to organised crime… Our undersea cables, which carry 99 percent of all the data we use, are vulnerable and they’re watching them and, in some cases, attacking them.”
He also pressed for realism about China. “We’ve got to engage with China, but recognise that it is going to be the future challenge… I think it’s probably better to call the Chinese a problem rather than a threat at the present moment.”
The peer described global power alignments hardening, noting the image of Xi Jinping, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and India’s prime minister together in Beijing. “It should have put a shiver down the back of pretty well everybody… They are collectively getting together essentially to diminish the power of Western values and the West as a whole.”
Lord West warned that the Russia-Ukraine war carries a genuine nuclear risk. “Would they then make that stupid mistake of going nuclear?” he asked, arguing that a defeated Russia could take extreme decisions. He said any eventual peace deal would need enforcement by credible forces: “You can’t just have them there watching or you get massacres like we had in Rwanda.”
West also recalled a moment during 9/11: “I remember getting a phone call from our nuclear firing cell… ‘Sir… the Americans are starting to move to immediate readiness for nuclear weapon release… What do you want me to do?’”
Both peers called for more serious public debate. Robertson warned that if critical infrastructure fails, citizens will demand answers: “When the lights go out, and the hospitals close down, and the data centres melt… people are going to say… ‘why did you not do something about it?’”
The full conversation is available via the Lord Speaker’s podcast.
UK MOD is too busy worshiping at the alter of woke to be fussed with that yucky fighting stuff.
Well if this is all true its time for the UK and the MOD to truly wake up and get its act together! Is it that hard? The experts should know whats needed by now. Where’s GBAD at, options for increased availability of ships, subs, planes, missile stocks, drones? Measures of societal resilience?