During an episode of the Lord Speaker’s podcast, Lord West delivered an extended warning that the UK now sits inside what he called an undeclared conflict with Russia, arguing that the scale and persistence of Moscow’s hostile activity places Europe in a precarious strategic position.
He said, “It is extraordinary that we are in this grey zone warfare now. I mean, effectively we are at war with Russia.” He pointed to persistent attempts to probe undersea infrastructure, the arrival of Russian-linked drones, and elevated military pressure in the Arctic.
According to him, “the huge pressure they’re putting up in the Arctic region… is causing real problems for the Scandinavian countries, which is why Norway bought some of our frigates and is very involved with us.”
West stressed that the situation is both volatile and difficult to unwind. “It’s quite difficult to see how one’s going to get out of this because one doesn’t want a full war between NATO and Russia. They would lose it. And the danger with them losing it is would they then make that stupid mistake of going nuclear?” He said that possibility hangs over any scenario where Moscow perceives existential defeat.
He framed the broader confrontation as a continuation of miscalculations in Ukraine. “Thank goodness we are supporting Ukraine. Putin made a major error there,” he said. West argued that China’s leadership recognises the scale of that misstep, recalling that Putin assured Xi Jinping the conflict would be a short operation. “He said, ‘Well, I’m doing a special operation. It’ll go on for three weeks.’ Well, it hasn’t, has it? He’s completely made a major, major strategic blunder.”
Despite this, West noted China remains willing to support Russia in limited ways, which he tied to long-running geopolitical patterns. “The Chinese can spot that, although sadly they’re still willing to support him. And again, these links and linkages, they come out over the years, years and years of working and operating.”
He also placed current tensions in a longer historical arc, contrasting the present with his experiences during the withdrawal from Hong Kong in the late 1990s. He described Chinese naval behaviour at the time as confrontational and recalled later visits as Chief of Defence Intelligence where surveillance was so overt his wife joked “Good night everyone” when the lights went out.
Lord West of Spithead is a Labour Peer and a former Head of the Royal Navy. He joined the Royal Navy in 1965 and served as First Sea Lord and Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy from 2002 to 2006. From 2007 to 2010, he was Minister for Security, Counter-terrorism and Police. The full conversation is available on the Lord Speaker’s podcast here.
And in the time he was ISL he was one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for reductions in navy hull numbers and equipment and personnel. Sits his well padded arse on plush upholstery in the Lords, pontificating as if he had nothing to do with the mess he created.
Exactly.
GB has detailed this before, as well as what a compete arse he seemed to be with his men from his own personal recollections of him.
It amazes me how often people like West and Carter get quoted or interviewed about defence matters. Carter was on months ago bemoaning a lack of Tanks FFS…the same Tanks he wanted gone when he was CGS then CDS.
Luckily, Ajax was so delayed the KRH never converted.
West oversaw the cutting of a dozen or so vessels, maybe more.
Strirup is another, gravely confering on military affairs in the Lords and condoned the 2010 SDSR with words which I recall were long the lines of “shaping the forces for an uncertain world.”
General Saunders seems to have been an exception to the yes men.
Morning Mate,
I share your sense of frustration at the evident hypocrisy being demonstrated by many, but to be fair the strategic situation has taken a big change for the worse. True these people should have been arguing for caution and making the point that it would be very easy to cut and a damn site harder to rebuild, but…
The point is right now any voice with any kind of perceived authority is welcome because very few folk out there will remember the details of defence decision making from 20 years ago – ancient history to most people 🙁
The more noise for increased defence spending the better.
Now where is the bloody Defence Investment Plan..?
Cheers CR
The DIP is due this Autumn. That means before December 21st. That’s a weekend, so they’ll aim for Friday December 19th. Something will go wrong because something always does. The following week is Christmas. So I reckon DIP will come around the third week in January, next year.
You optimist..!
Yep this is the man who oversaw the plan of 12 AAW destroyers moving to 8 in 2003 and finally 6 by 2008… as well as the reduced of the frigate fleet from 20 to 17 and the constant delay of the type 23 replacement.. so this is the man who oversaw the escort fleet officially dropping from a planned 32 to 23 and played an equal part in the mid 20s type 23 crisis.
another defence cut that should be made
trouble is, these twats keep b being used to f*** up everything time and time again
The UK has quite a history of this, Churchill was only too happy to gut the armed forces when chancellor then as soon as he was on the backbenches he called for war time spending in peace time.
Russia lacks the capacity to form any kind of conventional threat to the UK much less NATO and no amount of UK spending will protect us from an unconventional threat.
The period of hostilities with Russia will only end when Putin leaves office which is likely only going to happen when he dies. That could easily be in a year or twenty years from now.
No amount of frigate or tank procurement on the UK’s part will hasten that.
another defence cut that should be made
We need more voices in government to raise defence issues. I don’t believe we are at a ‘Call Wolf’ moment. Putin’s armour may have been depleted, but Russia is far from beaten and can step up the electronic offensives to the point that general disruption to our lives could become unbearable. We have little idea what Starmer’s Government is doing behind the scenes to counter this threat. I just hope it’s been given the urgency it requires.
I say frankly we should take care of the invaders that constantly cross the channel first, but yes I would love to see a stronger royal navy.
An enlargement of the RAF would also be great or if failing that, more ground based AA systems. I doubt either will happen, but a man can dream
We face myriad external and societal challenges. Among the long list is illegal Channel crossings, which seems to so dominate the minds of certain elements of the UK populace. But really, ‘first’ priority??
We are in the midst of a determined attack on and undermining of civil society by.totalitarian actors, including sabotage, murder of uK-domiciled regime opponents, cyber strikes, relentless industrial and military espionage, clandestine.foreigm funding of any group that will weaken the UK and Western unity e.g.Brexit, Scottish independence, no doubt anti-immigrant parties, heavy web disinformation tactics,.amd so on. And on the military plane, cable.cutting, emerging space satellite threats,.growing drone overfligjtd etc.
Next to that massive set of serious societal and defence challenges, immigration is hardly the ‘first’ priority for the state. It is a civil political issue that will need to be fought out between the two sides of the debate. It is not however a defence and security issue, so not that germane to a defence site like this.
We can rightly chastise these former senior officers, but as good historians we also need to put the past defence decisions in context.
Like all Western nations, the UK has been cutting defence spending for nearly 40 years, ever since the Berlin Wall came down
That has been the political orthodoxy of all the main parties, with the enthusiastic backing of a large proportion of the population.
Governments decide defence spending allocations and priorities, not heads of the armed forces; they are told how much/little budget they are getting and have to make hard decisions and cut their cloth accordingly. I can’t think that any head of service did not fight behind closed doors against scrapping x number of fighter jets y number of escorts or one-third of the Army’s strength.
Even more damaging than this steady decline, we have to factor in the disastrous financial crash of 2008. (For which we have to thank US mortgage companies and careless, supine financial markets here and elsewher). Many countries are only now recovering from that crash. It dictated major cuts in public expenditure across all departments and defence took a serious beating.
I doubt the heads of the services could do anything to prevent the cuts of 2010 and probably also 2015. Thereafter is a different matter, where the Conservative Government chose not to restore defence spending and indeed to continue with further ruinous cuts.
I personally think Gen Carter and his predecessors went down a US-
inspired rabbit hole with the whole FRES distraction and the ensuing erroneous army force model. The last CGS, Gen Saunders, dared to say a few cautious words of dissent publicly about defence shortcomings and promptly found his tenure in post terminated by what looks to be a vengeful civil service or HMG. It was a reminder that service chiefs have to follow the party political line or face a freeze on promotion or a premature end to their service career.
It is right and proper that, freed from their political and financial bonds, they can speak freely in the Lords and help to put defence up the public and political.agenda..So basically, I feel we need to cut these guys some slack. They actually got to make very few defence decisions, nearly everything is dictated by the MOD civil servants, not ny uniformed personnel or even their political masters.
It’s worth pointing out that it’s not just western nations that cut defence spending over the last 40 years.
Russia made far far bigger cuts than anyone in the west as did China as a percentage of their economy.
This cut is the reason the world enjoyed so much economic growth since 1991 and its reversal is the reason the world economy is now in such a fragile state.
Neither China nor Russia can afford the relatively modest expenditure they are currently making nor can the USA.
Europe having lower debt and low defence spending can afford to go up but not much passed 2.5%.
The truth is china has not cut its military expenditure it’s vastly increased it china hides what it it doing behind layers and layers of government loans, business support, civil structures that are actually military in nature etc. China is and has been spending a vast fortune and its parity spending power means it gets far far more for each dollar equivalent spent than the U.S.. China gets a high end ASW for 350 million a high end AAW destroyer for 500,000 ect.
A stinking hypocrite who should just be ignored. Talk is cheap from your retirement post.
Lord West is uninformed. Putin believed that his ‘Special Military Operation’ would take 3 days, not 3 weeks. He is also very slow to pick up on the fact that Putin’s Russia has been waging hybrid war against the UK….and has done so for many years.