Latest / The Fourcast / Take Kharg Island and US risks becoming a sitting target - ex-head of UK army

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Take Kharg Island and US risks becoming a sitting target - ex-head of UK army · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  When you hollow out the deep states, the security state, as
• 0:03
  President Trump has done, you get confirmation bias.
• 0:06
  You don't have people challenging you.
• 0:07
  What? You're saying is fundamentally
• 0:08
  the leadership structure in Washington in the court of King
• 0:12
  Donald the 1st is such that he's not getting pushback from the
• 0:16
  experts who might say, hang on, Mr. President, let's think about
• 0:19
  this. Well, if he is, he's not
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  listening to them. Cargo Island doesn't allow you
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  to open the Strait of Hormuz. It brings it brings economic.
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  Pressure. It gives you leverage.
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  It's all about leverage. It's an extraordinary difficult
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  task to undertake and having then seized an island like this,
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  you then become a a static target.
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  Khog Island could become a trap, couldn't it?
• 0:41
  Hello and welcome to the forecast.
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  Is President Trump on the cusp of abandoning his war with Iran
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  or about to double down with boots on the ground?
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  He's lashed out again at his NATO allies, threatening to
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  abandon the alliance, raising questions not only about the
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  future of the war, but the future of Western security
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  itself. Well, joining me today is
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  General Sir Patrick Sanders, who's had a 40 year career in
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  the British Army and rose to Chief of the General Staff in
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  2022. He retired two years later.
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  He spent his career thinking about the hard realities of
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  modern conflict, the limits of Western military power and what
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  happens if and when the United States waivers.
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  Sir Patrick, welcome to the forecast.
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  Thank you, ma'am. Looking at the number of troops
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  that Donald Trump is sending and has sent to the Gulf, is that
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  enough to actually take Hague Island or to fight your way
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  through the Strait, which they may have to do?
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  Or is it performative? Is it part of the negotiating
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  tactic? As a military planner, what do
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  you think? Well, it's it's reactive because
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  what does that mean? Well, if you if you thought that
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  these objectives were going to be necessary, the set of the
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  outset of this conflict, you would have them in theatre
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  already at hand. And they don't.
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  And it's been incremental. You know, first of all, they're
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  deployed a Marine Expeditionary unit redeployed from Japan.
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  They're now bringing one across from California.
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  And they've got elements of the 82nd Airborne being being being
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  flown in as well. So they're having to react to
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  what's going on on the battlefield, which which
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  suggests that in many respects they've lost some of the
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  initiative. Now, it's possible that these
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  were part of the original build up of forces.
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  I mean to, to, to get to your question, the answer, as in all
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  things, is it depends. It depends what objectives
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  you're trying to seize, how long you're trying to hold on for
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  them. What they offer most value for
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  at the moment is as a as a negotiating tactic, as a lever,
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  because they they're a threat that the American that the the
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  Iranians have to take into account.
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  OK, that's interesting. So if he decided if he wanted to
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  not just use them as a lever, but actually get his men and
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  women to try and occupy this one island, and there are lots of
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  other islands on the way to Hague Island, as you know, could
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  they do it with the with that force considering what they're
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  facing on the other side? Yes, because the United States
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  military are as we're seeing playing out in front of us
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  exceptionally what they what they do in terms of achieving
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  tactical success and indeed operational success of the
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  battlefield. What we're not seeing is those
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  that tactical excellence leading to political outcomes.
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  And you know, I don't want to try and predict which of these
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  objectives they might, they might take.
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  It could be that they seize Carg Island as as a, as a long term
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  negotiating tactic to put pressure, economic pressure on
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  the Iranian regime. But it's also possible that
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  there might be some more limited objectives or raids where they,
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  you know, they don't stay, they don't linger.
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  They it's a, it's a, it's a RAID in and out to achieve a limited
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  objectives and they move on. But, but if they move in and out
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  and they leave, the Iranians are still there.
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  I mean, they're, they're resilient and they've hunkered
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  down and, you know, they've shown, you know, a surprising
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  ability to still throw stuff at people.
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  It doesn't really end the crisis, does it, Around the
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  Strait of Hormuz. No, the, the confidence, So the
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  international community's confidence in being able to put
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  shipping through the Strait of Hormuz is only going to change
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  when the Iranian regime either falls or it changes its
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  behaviour. Because it can produce enough of
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  a threat to be a nuisance to be a risk to shipping without in
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  spite of all of the degradation and destruction that Israel and
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  and the US have have imposed on them.
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  So that's why I think this is more of a negotiating strategy
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  than it is a practical option at the moment.
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  Interesting. So as a military planner, given
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  what you're seeing, you know, you know, in, in the American
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  Navy, the mass massing of troops and so on.
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  If you were in charge of this operation, you would say I would
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  not, I would not want to launch a full scale invasion of these
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  little islands or even 1 little island with what I've got
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  available. This is just there as a ploy, as
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  a bargaining tactic. Would you, I mean, would you go
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  ahead with the military operation given the number of
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  troops that you've got there? So again, the answer is it, it,
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  it depends. I mean, we are, we have been
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  very quick to write off the, the, the achievements, the
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  military achievements that that the IDF and the United States
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  military are are securing at the moment.
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  Because although it's, it looks less and less likely that these
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  will lead to regime change. What is very clear is that the
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  the destruction of Iran's ability to export violence, to
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  threaten its neighbors is being fundamentally undermined.
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  And this is a campaign that that still has some weeks to run.
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  And it's probably a little bit too premature to judge whether
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  or not it's going to be a complete failure, you know, for.
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  As far as the land forces are concerned, in that context, it's
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  conceivable that you could secure these objectives.
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  As part of you know, once you have further destroyed lots of
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  these capabilities, it's, it's it's simply too early to tell.
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  In case you need them or if you want them.
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  So, so the job of Ministry A. Couple of weeks time when you
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  know they've depleted their their ballistic, you know
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  capabilities even more on on all the other stuff that they're
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  firing at people you might want to go in you.
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  You, you might. And I, you know, I haven't seen,
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  I mean, I saw, I saw earlier iterations of the plan because
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  we've been planning this for on and off for two decades for what
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  would happen if in this case, I don't know where we are against
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  the target list, the, the military objectives they're
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  trying to be perceived. I don't know whether they're
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  turning from red to amber to green.
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  I suspect more and more of them are going green.
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  Well let me put it this way then, because you said earlier
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  that it was the number of troops in the way they've been
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  deployed. It looks to you as if it's
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  reactive rather than pre planned.
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  And I just wonder. And as you said, you know, for
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  decades now you've been planning similar scenarios.
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  And I'm sure they've been doing the same in the Pentagon.
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  There must be entire cupboards full of what to do if the Strait
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  of Hormuz is blockaded. So do you think that they
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  weren't listening to these plans, although they never got
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  them out of the drawer, or that Trump thought he can do it
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  without the plans because, hey, I just managed to decapitate the
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  leadership of Venezuela in 24 hours and everything's fine.
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  What's going on there? I, I think it's the latter.
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  So as you yes, and and a sequel to Venezuela and an
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  overconfidence in in what military force can achieve and
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  underestimating the Iranian resolve, the resilience of the
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  regime, the effect that the drones can have despite being
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  able to take out the missile launches.
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  So it is definitely gone on for longer, I think.
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  And it's been much harder than anyone was anticipating.
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  But there are, as you say, you know, there's a whole family of
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  plans. It's, you know, everybody
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  anticipated the straits of warm buys.
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  I just don't think that those plans were necessarily
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  introduced. And you know, when you hollow
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  out the deep states as the security state, as as President
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  Trump has done, you know, the the National Security Council,
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  you know, all, all of that has been fundamentally.
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  Sort of hollowed out and you appoint.
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  People like Tulsi Gabbard as your director of national
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  intelligence, you get confirmation bias.
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  You know, you don't have people challenging, you don't have
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  people pointing. Well, that's interesting enough.
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  She's one of the few people who has challenged him, you know, on
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  the floor of Congress. So she's actually one of the few
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  people who stood up and said, no, that was not the case, they
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  were not an imminent threat and so on.
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  But I guess So what you're saying is fundamentally the
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  leadership structure in Washington in the court of King
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  Donald the 1st is such that he's not getting pushback from the
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  experts who might say, hang on, Mr. President, let's think about
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  this. Well, if he is, he's not
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  listening to them. And you know, the, the, you
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  know, the other thing that you would do, you would, you know,
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  in any, in any event, with a, you know, with a strike on Iran,
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  the the Strait of Hormuz was always going to come into play.
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  So the smart thing to do would have been to build up resilience
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  in the region so that it gave the military more time to
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  achieve it's task. And that means ensuring that
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  your allies are part of it, that energy stockpiles have been
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  built up around the world, that we weren't quite as dependent on
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  the straight as we have become. You know, these would all have
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  been smart things to do in advance, but this feels like
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  something that was that was quite abrupt.
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  And just one more on this. I mean, Hague Island, this, you
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  know, and everyone seems to be obsessed with a place that they
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  couldn't locate on a map until a few weeks ago, and that includes
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  me. Hague Island could become a
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  trap, couldn't it? Well, any amphibious operation
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  brings with it enormous risks. You know, there are the the
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  number of amphibious operations in history that have been
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  successful are much smaller than those that have failed.
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  And it's an extraordinary difficult task to undertake.
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  And having then seized an island like this, you then become a a
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  static target. So this is not an undertaking to
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  be done lightly. But if I was to choose a set of
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  armed forces to do it, who would be the best in the world at
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  doing it? It would be the United States
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  Marine Corps and the 82nd Airport.
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  But even if you seize it and you open up the Strait of Hormuz for
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  a bit, who's to say that the Iranians won't fire a drone from
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  a, you know, 500 kilometres away of whatever the range is that
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  will hit a single tanker on a Wednesday and suddenly everyone
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  is running scared and the insurance premiums go sky high
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  again. Yes, but cargo island doesn't
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  allow you to open the Strait of Hormuz.
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  It brings it brings economic pressure.
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  It gives you leverage. It's all about leverage.
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  But at the end of the day, so it's about pursuing a deal with
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  the Iranian regime. Exactly.
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  It's about, it's about changing the regime's behaviour in
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  calculus and biting to negotiations in a deal.
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  But it will take time for that to achieve.
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  If you want to directly secure territory that allows you to
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  control the Strait of Hormuz, then that's going to be much
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  closer to the Strait itself. And you're absolutely right.
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  You know, absent Iranian compliance with some sort of a
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  deal, you're always going to be at risk from a drone that can be
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  launched from hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.
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  If Trump declares victory in a television address is 1 tonight
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  and walks away in a couple of weeks time, the Strait is still
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  effectively blockaded or a Tehran toll booth.
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  What would you say to that victory?
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  Well, it depends on how you, how you frame it, and what you're
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  measuring. So if the if the objective was
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  to remove Iran's nuclear capabilities, no.
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  If it was to reduce its ability to threaten others with
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  conventional forces and missiles, yes.
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  If it was to ensure that there's free passage through the Strait
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  of Hormuz, no. If it was to remove the regime,
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  no. So, so that that looks on those
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  terms, it looks like a defeat. But but what Trump could point
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  to is a more limited set of objections saying, look, we were
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  just trying to weaken them. You know, that was that was all
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  just negotiating stuff that I said.
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  And by the way, the real business is going to be in the
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  in the Indo Pacific. We know that the threat to our
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  our partners in the region increases from 2027 onwards.
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  So it was important to deal with Venezuela, Iran, you know, so
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  that we could sequence that before bringing force to bear or
• 12:31
  pressure to bear against China. Oh, and by the way.
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  That's why we need to keep Russia sweet because we can't
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  deal with those two. But I doubt that sort of long
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  term strategic thinking is necessarily going on in the
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  president. 'S I don't think so.
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  It doesn't look like it. And also by not really telling
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  us why he went to war, it kind of it's it's fuzzy enough for
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  him to come up with different explanations, although not very
• 12:52
  convincing. Quite a lot of news around about
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  NATO. So again, Trump has insulted his
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  NATO allies. He's also again threatened to
• 13:00
  pull out of the alliance. And more importantly, perhaps
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  his his rather calm, calmer Secretary of State Marco Rubio
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  has said something similar. How dangerous is this for NATO?
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  Well, it's not good because although, you know, in process
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  terms, the president can't unilaterally withdraw from an
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  alliance that requires Congress to endorse that.
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  Of course, what it does do is it undermines what the alliance is
• 13:26
  really underpinned by, which is this sense of confidence that
• 13:30
  it's all for one and one for all but the United States.
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  And any ally, as we did after 911 would step up if an Article
• 13:38
  5 declaration was in was invoked.
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  But it's not good for the United States either, because, you
• 13:44
  know, if you, if you're sitting in the US, you rely on NATO for
• 13:50
  access, for basing, for overflight.
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  And that's been undermined a little bit by recent events.
• 13:55
  We can come back to talking about that, but NATO amplifies
• 13:59
  your your power, your authority. You know, you have you have the
• 14:03
  world's most powerful, the world's most successful alliance
• 14:06
  and that is to a very large extent supported the American
• 14:09
  becoming as dominant as it is. And from a, from what the United
• 14:13
  States would lose, you know, they would not only lose if you
• 14:17
  like security over the back door to the United States, I mean,
• 14:20
  the North Atlantic, the Kola Peninsula, all these threats are
• 14:23
  secured for the US by NATO allies.
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  So it's not good for NATO, but nor is it good for the US.
• 14:31
  How do you think President Trump regards NATO?
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  What does he see it as compared to previous presidents?
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  I I think. He regards NATO as a group of
• 14:40
  relatives who come round and use your pool.
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  He he, you know, he's. And don't pay enough to use it.
• 14:47
  Yeah, exactly. You know, pay very little or, or
• 14:49
  or no rent. And you know that because he is,
• 14:54
  is fundamentally, he's not an internationalist, he's not a
• 14:57
  multilateralist. He doesn't really see the
• 15:00
  strength that alliances bring. He only sees things in
• 15:03
  transactional terms. And so he he's always
• 15:07
  instinctively reached for criticizing NATO.
• 15:11
  It's not the first time we saw it in the, in his first
• 15:14
  administration as well. But NATO has also given him a, a
• 15:17
  real success story because of course he's been able to point
• 15:20
  to the fact that because of his pressure, you know, he's been
• 15:24
  the 1st president and we should give him credit for this.
• 15:26
  He's been the 1st president who has actually forced NATO to move
• 15:30
  from a very small number of countries who spent 2% to now
• 15:33
  almost all of them and a declaration that will move to
• 15:36
  5%. With a little help from Vladimir
• 15:38
  Putin. Yes, yes, a little help from the
• 15:41
  world, from from the world becoming a much more dangerous
• 15:43
  place. That's true, but but the the the
• 15:47
  2% pressure came in his first administration.
• 15:50
  But I mean, getting back to his vision of NATO, I mean, the only
• 15:54
  time that Article 5 of NATO was ever invoked was in support of
• 15:57
  the United States after 911. He is very upset that NATO
• 16:01
  partners aren't rushing to the Strait of Hormuz to help him out
• 16:05
  with something that he may not have foreseen.
• 16:07
  Is he right to be upset with us? No, because first of all, as you
• 16:11
  say, after 911, Article 5 was invoked and then a very large
• 16:19
  number of NATO countries committed to operating alongside
• 16:23
  the US as part of the global War on Terror.
• 16:26
  And many of those countries took very significant levels of
• 16:29
  casualties, not least our own, and in some cases a much higher
• 16:33
  proportion of casualties per capita than the United States
• 16:35
  did. So.
• 16:36
  So NATO has backed the US before in in this case here.
• 16:40
  You know, if you want allies to fight alongside you, then you've
• 16:44
  got to ensure that you have explained clearly what the
• 16:48
  objectives, the strategic objectives of the war are.
• 16:51
  You've you've you've allowed them to take decisions about
• 16:54
  whether or not they're going to put their men and women in
• 16:56
  harm's way in pursuit of that and given them feel that they've
• 17:00
  got to stay a stake in this. What you can't do is expect
• 17:03
  allies to come along after you haven't done any of those
• 17:06
  things. The only area where I think we
• 17:11
  could have done things perhaps a little differently is around
• 17:14
  access basing an overflight. OK.
• 17:17
  But now we're in a position where the French, the Spaniards,
• 17:20
  the Italians have said no American planes that are on
• 17:23
  bombing missions to Iran flying through our airspace.
• 17:27
  Things have got quite a lot worse just in the last few
• 17:29
  weeks. But I wonder, getting back to
• 17:31
  the original question, do you think that that this fractured
• 17:35
  relationship has already hollowed out NATO to such an
• 17:38
  extent that it is no longer an effective alliance, even if the
• 17:42
  Americans don't just walk out of the exit door?
• 17:45
  No, I think it's a little early to, to start writing NATO's
• 17:48
  obituary because you know, what you see in terms of the US
• 17:56
  European relationship is, is and it's been described as an
• 18:00
  iceberg, you know, very, very choppy on the surface.
• 18:04
  But particularly for the UK, you have this, you know, hidden
• 18:08
  depth beneath it where everything actually is quite
• 18:11
  calm. And the MIL to MIL
• 18:13
  relationships, the security relationships are actually very
• 18:16
  strong. So is that?
• 18:18
  Still the case because I read just the other day an
• 18:20
  Intelligence Report saying that they're still strong on paper
• 18:24
  but getting a little bit more sticky.
• 18:26
  So it takes just a little bit longer for the Brits to give
• 18:28
  permission to American bombers to fly from RAF Fairford in
• 18:32
  Gloucestershire. Brits have been asked to leave
• 18:35
  intelligence meetings chaired by Americans Well.
• 18:37
  It has happened before and and these things and, you know,
• 18:40
  there have been worse crises in in the transatlantic
• 18:43
  relationship. You know, you can point to
• 18:45
  sewage, you can you can point to the invasion of of Grenada.
• 18:48
  You know, there've been moments in the past where we really have
• 18:51
  had, you know, higher levels of tension and we've fallen out
• 18:54
  more than this. But there is no doubt, you know,
• 18:56
  I wouldn't deny it that that the confidence that the US had in,
• 19:01
  you know, in the case of the UK, that we would provide access to
• 19:05
  RAF Fairford and to Diego Garcia in, in all circumstances, pretty
• 19:10
  much in a, in a, in an Iran contingency that's been shaken.
• 19:15
  And so that has. That was a mistake from the
• 19:17
  Prime Minister. Well, I think so.
• 19:22
  I think so, yes. I think that I think that is
• 19:25
  that has been such a fundamental underpinning.
• 19:28
  You know, we we have been involved in very different
• 19:31
  iterations of planning for contingencies in the Gulf and
• 19:35
  Iran. In some scenarios we wouldn't,
• 19:39
  we would have committed naval assets, air assets.
• 19:43
  But the thing that has been constant through all of that is
• 19:47
  the assumption that we would provide that that access basing
• 19:50
  and overflight. And I think that I think we
• 19:53
  should have done. So the kind of not been taken
• 19:57
  too much store by the language used by Trump, some of the
• 20:00
  words, some of the adjectives, was he essentially right to be
• 20:03
  as upset with us as he was over the base?
• 20:07
  In that narrow question, yes, over the bases, I think he was.
• 20:11
  But generally speaking, kind of humiliating your allies and
• 20:14
  friends and insulting them. Doesn't work well, it it it's
• 20:18
  not it's not the best way of you know, when you sooner or later
• 20:22
  the United States is going to need allies.
• 20:24
  It would have been a lot more convenient for him if he could
• 20:27
  turn to allies now. And in alienating them you, you
• 20:30
  leave yourself weaker and more exposed.
• 20:32
  Do. You actually think that he will
• 20:34
  walk out of NATO? Well, he he doesn't get to, but
• 20:38
  he can. But he sends that signal you
• 20:41
  won't get the the votes in Congress.
• 20:43
  Unlikely to. No, I don't.
• 20:45
  I, I think this is, I think this is noise.
• 20:48
  I think that, that, you know, the signal is, is reasonably
• 20:50
  constant. What that doesn't mean though,
• 20:53
  is that we shouldn't, we shouldn't recognise that the
• 20:56
  United States are probably going to commit less to NATO over time
• 21:00
  because they've given us fair warning that they they would and
• 21:02
  that they're going to reprioritise as their national
• 21:05
  security strategy sets out towards their own hemisphere and
• 21:10
  to the Indo Pacific and, and for preparing for a confrontation
• 21:13
  with China. So Europe certainly has to do a
• 21:16
  lot more to take responsibility for our own security, but I
• 21:19
  don't think there's going to be a rupture in the alliance.
• 21:21
  Where does this leave us in Britain?
• 21:24
  Yeah, our so-called special relationship has been rattled to
• 21:26
  say the least. I'm told that we're we rely more
• 21:30
  on on America for our security than other European nations do.
• 21:33
  Is that correct? It it it leaves us uniquely
• 21:38
  exposed in Europe. Uniquely exposed.
• 21:40
  Because we have, you know, we have on the one hand we have
• 21:43
  severed our relationships, our formal relationships with, with
• 21:47
  the European Union. And at the same time we have
• 21:50
  become over dependent on the United States.
• 21:53
  Now a lot of that's that relationship, that security and
• 21:57
  defence relationship that we have with the US, which is,
• 22:00
  which is very easy and actually plays to both countries, both
• 22:03
  nations advantages is, is it keeps us safe every single day.
• 22:09
  I mean, just look at counterterrorism and, and you
• 22:11
  know, the, the benefits we draw from that relationship, look at
• 22:14
  our access to, to, to space and space based surveillance.
• 22:17
  There's a phenomenal amount that we get from that relationship.
• 22:20
  And the US do too. But we are also more dependent,
• 22:24
  you know, our our nuclear deterrent.
• 22:26
  This this just in very practical terms, describe that dependence.
• 22:30
  What can we, what can't we do without the Americans giving us
• 22:33
  the green light? No, that's, that's not what I'm
• 22:36
  saying. I, I, I'm not saying that we
• 22:39
  have a lack of sovereignty. So if you if you look at the the
• 22:44
  nuclear deterrent, it is genuinely independent.
• 22:47
  We can use our nuclear weapons if we want to, whether the
• 22:49
  Americans like it or not. Exactly.
• 22:50
  So it is a truly independent nuclear deterrent in terms of
• 22:53
  its operation, but it's development, the warheads are
• 22:57
  done in conjunction with the United States.
• 23:01
  Ah OK, so we so we need. The kit is basically sorted out
• 23:04
  in the with the US in the US and without their help it can't
• 23:09
  function. Well, we would have to go it
• 23:11
  alone, and that is a, that is a very, very challenging
• 23:14
  proposition and an unbelievably expensive one.
• 23:17
  It's not really an option then. Well.
• 23:20
  You know, but you don't rule, you don't rule anything out.
• 23:23
  But is that the bottom line for us?
• 23:24
  Is it such a costly option that we don't really want to
• 23:27
  contemplate going that far down the road of rupture?
• 23:31
  I mean, I can't see in the current fiscal environment, I
• 23:34
  can't see any government wanting to do that.
• 23:36
  But we did do it before. You know, we, we developed our
• 23:39
  nuclear weapons ourselves when the United States didn't support
• 23:42
  us. So we have, there is precedent.
• 23:44
  We've done it ourselves before. The French have done it
• 23:47
  separately. They drew different lessons from
• 23:49
  from the Suez crisis. So it is feasible, but it's very
• 23:53
  expensive. I mean, you mentioned Suez, and,
• 23:56
  you know, British troops didn't fight in Vietnam.
• 24:00
  And, you know, Grenada was a problem between Ronald Reagan
• 24:02
  and Margaret Thatcher. But this strikes me as being
• 24:06
  different because of the language used and also because
• 24:10
  we're more exposed to some extent by being alone.
• 24:13
  You know, we don't have a gang anymore.
• 24:15
  Yeah. I mean, we do have a gang
• 24:16
  because we're part of NATO. So we have an alliance structure
• 24:19
  that we're part of and we've, you know, that that provides our
• 24:22
  collective security and you know, a.
• 24:24
  Gang in some trouble? A game that is getting stronger.
• 24:29
  You know, NATO is stronger. I mean, I don't want to be
• 24:31
  argumentative, but but it's, it is.
• 24:33
  This is why I say it's too soon to start writing NATO's
• 24:36
  obituary. NATO is significantly stronger
• 24:39
  than it was before 2022. Of the money spent in part.
• 24:42
  Well, because of the money spent, but also because we've
• 24:44
  had Sweden and Finland join and, and they are, they are net
• 24:48
  providers of security. They, they offer more to the
• 24:51
  alliance than they take. So, so NATO is, is, is stronger.
• 24:56
  But there's no doubt that that with the US first of all
• 25:00
  expressing or saying things that that sow doubt about Article 5
• 25:05
  commitments, Europe has to take more responsibility.
• 25:08
  European members of NATO have to take much more responsibility
• 25:11
  for their own security. But but getting back to the tone
• 25:14
  of the relationship, does it strike you as someone who's got
• 25:17
  a, you know, a long memory who's been through these crises?
• 25:20
  Does it strike you as being different?
• 25:22
  Or are we all a bit too hysterical about the kind of
• 25:24
  language that comes out of the White House?
• 25:26
  Well, the president is unique. You know, he, he, he operates in
• 25:30
  international relations and diplomacy in a way that that no
• 25:33
  one has done before. And he breaks China by doing so.
• 25:38
  But it's quite, it's, you know, it's really important to
• 25:40
  distinguish between the president and the man and the
• 25:43
  United States and the country. And they are not the same thing.
• 25:47
  And he breaks China, but not right, but he breaks the China
• 25:49
  but not China as it were. That's another question.
• 25:51
  Yeah. Anyway, the Can NATO survive as
• 25:56
  a kind of European rump without the United States in an
• 26:00
  effective way? Yes, because it will have to,
• 26:03
  but it will very much depend on how the the United States
• 26:07
  disengage from, from NATO goes. You know, we, we are, we're
• 26:12
  assuming that there will be a drawdown of US assets committed
• 26:17
  to NATO or certainly based forward in Europe.
• 26:20
  But we're also assuming that that, that, that will, that draw
• 26:23
  down will be graceful in a way that allows us to, to increase
• 26:27
  the number of, you know, to step, to fill the gap, to step
• 26:29
  up the capabilities. If it was done overnight, if
• 26:33
  there was a rupture, there was a divorce, then it would put you,
• 26:37
  it would put Europe in a very difficult set of circumstances
• 26:40
  and we would have to go much further and faster than we're
• 26:42
  doing even at the moment. And if that were to happen, to
• 26:45
  what extent do you think of Vladimir Putin could exploit
• 26:49
  that just, I mean, in military terms?
• 26:52
  Well, Putin could can. So it's important to think about
• 26:55
  what Putin's aims are. And you know, he's got 3 aims as
• 27:01
  it relates to the war at the moment.
• 27:02
  The 1st is clearly to reduce Ukraine to a vassal state.
• 27:06
  The second is to expand the territorial, the territorial
• 27:10
  influence that Russia has over what you would describe as
• 27:13
  Zruski mere, the Russian speaking world, what he would
• 27:15
  call historical Russia. But the third aim, which is the
• 27:17
  most important and the most pertinent is to drive a wedge
• 27:21
  between the United States and Europe and to dismantle the
• 27:24
  European security architecture. So.
• 27:27
  He. He.
• 27:28
  Because Putin is a is a tactician, he's an opportunist
• 27:33
  that the risk that we have to address is that he would he
• 27:37
  would move against NATO territory or he would pose a
• 27:41
  question about Article 5 that the alliance fails to answer.
• 27:45
  And at that point, that begins to look like a strategic win for
• 27:51
  Russia. Because once you have proven
• 27:54
  that Article 5 doesn't count, then alliance cohesion and the
• 27:58
  alliance itself begins to to look meaningless.
• 28:00
  And that could be a Russian attack on one of the Baltic
• 28:04
  states. I mean, cyber attacks are taking
• 28:05
  place all the time, but it could be something in that corner of
• 28:08
  Europe. I mean, that is the scenario
• 28:10
  that is most often pointed to and.
• 28:12
  That's a likely 1 you think. I think it's, I think it's a
• 28:16
  reasonable possibility. And, and I think that the, the
• 28:18
  time frame is the key. You know, we have to, we have to
• 28:21
  keep in mind, and there are plenty of intelligence
• 28:23
  assessments to point to point to this, that that Russia retains
• 28:27
  the capability to embark on a separate operation at the
• 28:29
  moment. That in order to pose a limited
• 28:33
  challenge, taking a limited amount of territory.
• 28:36
  It wouldn't need that much combat power if it was able to
• 28:40
  surprise us, because he could then just sit back behind its
• 28:43
  nuclear umbrella and say, you know, come on, what are you
• 28:45
  going to do about it? And, and the, the time frame
• 28:51
  that we're talking about here is a three to five year time frame.
• 28:54
  So I was talking to the minister of the armed Forces on on my
• 28:56
  podcast, the Journal and the journalist just a few weeks ago
• 29:00
  and he said, he said three years.
• 29:02
  OK, let's move to a subject that is very close to your heart,
• 29:04
  which is the state of our defence here in this country, on
• 29:08
  this island. If there was to be a really a
• 29:12
  nasty shooting war, you know, whether it involves the Iranians
• 29:15
  or the Russians that that kind of got close to our shores, how
• 29:18
  well equipped are we to fight? Well, we're, we've got armed
• 29:23
  forces that are, and I, I say this because I'm not as a sort
• 29:27
  of because I'm advertising, but are among the most professional
• 29:30
  in the world and certainly the most among the most professional
• 29:32
  in, in, in in Europe and NATO. But they are configured for an
• 29:36
  era of crises, not of conflict at this scale.
• 29:42
  So we are operationally excellent in all kinds of areas,
• 29:47
  different domains, different technologies, but we are no
• 29:51
  longer at the scale or the capacity or have the readiness
• 29:55
  to deal with the sort of conflict that you're describing.
• 29:58
  And how do we get to that place? Well, in 20 seconds.
• 30:04
  Well, we could start by implementing what the strategic
• 30:08
  defence review pointed to because the government very
• 30:10
  sensibly had a review. It pointed to the risks that we
• 30:13
  were we were facing and the need to change.
• 30:16
  And since then we've had nothing but a deafening silence.
• 30:18
  And the defence investment plan, which is supposed to deliver
• 30:22
  means behind that is still nowhere apparently near
• 30:26
  publishing and and, and our forces are atrophying as as we
• 30:31
  speak and defence industry is is starting to give up in despair.
• 30:36
  So the first thing to do would be give meaning to the review
• 30:41
  that you carried out, because. It's.
• 30:44
  It's certainly clear to the British public that we're living
• 30:46
  in a more dangerous world. Why isn't?
• 30:48
  Why isn't it clear to the government and why aren't they
• 30:49
  acting? Let's say we did get into a
• 30:51
  nasty shooting war with Russia, maybe Iran on their side, Who
• 30:55
  knows? I mean, how many days or weeks
• 30:58
  would we have before we got into real trouble?
• 31:02
  So I'm not going to get into the, the limits of our
• 31:05
  stockpiles because I don't think that would be helpful.
• 31:08
  And, you know, I should point to the fact that we would not be
• 31:11
  fighting alone. We would be fighting as as part
• 31:14
  of NATO. But it's, it's, it's, it should
• 31:18
  be very clear to people that that, you know, deterrence comes
• 31:23
  from not only being able to be there and fight on the first
• 31:27
  day, but being able to demonstrate that you can sustain
• 31:30
  that effort. Because wars historically tend
• 31:33
  to be long, not short. You can sustain that effort.
• 31:36
  And that means having a strong industrial base.
• 31:39
  It means having deep stockpiles of ammunition.
• 31:41
  And the truth at the moment is that we will be able to fight
• 31:44
  for a matter of weeks. And no.
• 31:46
  Weeks, I mean, the other question, I guess is that if
• 31:50
  you, if you tell the public that, you know, there's a real
• 31:54
  problem here, we have we, you know, we, we're done after a
• 31:57
  couple of weeks, we can't carry on.
• 31:59
  There has to be a much bigger commitment.
• 32:01
  We've got to think about things like national service, etcetera,
• 32:03
  etcetera, whatever that is. The the question that will come
• 32:06
  back from the public is what exactly is that imminent threat
• 32:10
  for us here on the island? I don't think people can
• 32:13
  imagine, you know, Russian troops landing on, you know, on
• 32:16
  the White Cliffs of Dover or maybe, you know, Iranian
• 32:20
  missiles actually flying into London or whatever combination
• 32:23
  of menace we might get. And so tell us about the actual
• 32:28
  threat beyond the kind of collapse of NATO and, you know,
• 32:33
  and confidence all that the actual threat to people living
• 32:35
  on this island. But we experience it every
• 32:38
  single day. So Russia sees itself, Putin's
• 32:42
  Russia sees itself as being at war with the West now.
• 32:46
  And we see this coming through, you know, what we might describe
• 32:50
  as hybrid or sub threshold threats, but you know, as an
• 32:53
  example, what matters most to the British people, probably the
• 32:56
  National Health Service would be at the top of the list.
• 32:58
  Every single NHS Trust has been attacked by Russian cyber
• 33:02
  actors. Every single one, you know,
• 33:04
  where where does our source of strength come from?
• 33:06
  It's from our financial services sector in, in, in the city.
• 33:09
  It's probably the, you know, greatest, greatest asset we have
• 33:12
  in the UK that is under constant threat.
• 33:15
  So we're already at risk being attacked by Russia.
• 33:20
  And these are probing attacks to weaken our society, to attack
• 33:26
  our infrastructure. You know, look at what's.
• 33:28
  Going on in Ukraine at the moment, Russia isn't necessarily
• 33:32
  trying to achieve its strategic outcomes on the battlefield.
• 33:35
  And if it is, it's failing, isn't it?
• 33:37
  But what it is? Doing is consistently and
• 33:39
  persistently attacking critical national infrastructure in
• 33:42
  Ukraine. But it's doing that mostly with
• 33:43
  drones and missiles flying into, yes, into power stations.
• 33:46
  To which we have. Almost.
• 33:48
  But that's not going to happen here.
• 33:49
  Or. Why?
• 33:49
  Why wouldn't it? OK, so that is a possibility
• 33:52
  here of. Course, of course it is they.
• 33:54
  Have the range, they could do it.
• 33:55
  They they absolutely have the range and we don't have the air
• 33:59
  defence systems to and. We're not going to have them for
• 34:02
  a long time to be able to defend the whole of the UK.
• 34:05
  What? Do we have, in terms of, you
• 34:07
  know, our equivalent of an Iron Dome or David's arrow and sling,
• 34:12
  what the Israelis have much wanted?
• 34:14
  What do we have? Well.
• 34:14
  We have the Type 45 destroyers that that is and and we also
• 34:18
  sit. This is the benefit of being
• 34:21
  part of NATO. But if you have the collapse of
• 34:23
  NATO, the capabilities that NATO allies bring, which do protect
• 34:27
  us, are no longer available to us.
• 34:30
  So even if the threat isn't directly to the UK
• 34:33
  territorially, it will be in our waters, it will be to our
• 34:36
  infrastructure. And if you know, if a Baltic
• 34:40
  state or one that we're responsible for defending
• 34:44
  Estonia does fall and does collapse, that directly
• 34:48
  undermines our safety and our security too.
• 34:50
  The the trick is not to have to fight.
• 34:53
  Build up your, I mean, build up your defences so that you don't
• 34:57
  have to, so you can deter by denial and the costs of this,
• 35:01
  you know, we forget, you know, because we've been so lucky to
• 35:04
  grow up in, in peace. We forget that, you know, in
• 35:06
  1937 we're spending about the same amount on GDP of defence as
• 35:10
  we are at the moment. By 1940, it's 10%.
• 35:12
  Yeah, by 145 it's 50. Percent.
• 35:15
  In order for people, in order for governments to make that
• 35:17
  case and persuade people that they have to tighten their bills
• 35:19
  to, you know, to spend more money on defence or maybe even
• 35:22
  send their kids to some kind of national service, the government
• 35:25
  needs to make a very clear argument.
• 35:28
  And part of that argument is a very clear understanding of
• 35:31
  where the threat lies. And I've not heard that yet from
• 35:34
  the government. No, I so that I agree with.
• 35:37
  And that's really important, isn't it?
• 35:39
  Because. So, so we've heard.
• 35:40
  Have to believe that there is a credible threat there.
• 35:43
  We've heard it occasionally. So the the Prime Minister has
• 35:47
  made, you know, some, some good speeches.
• 35:49
  You know, he talked about defence being the central
• 35:51
  organizing principle of government about a year ago at
• 35:54
  the Munich Security Conference. He, you know, he, he was very
• 35:57
  strong on needing to step up and, and pointing to the threat.
• 36:01
  But if you contrast the position in the UK with the with the with
• 36:04
  the position in, say, the Nordics or the Baltics, if you
• 36:06
  live in those countries, through a combination of historical
• 36:10
  experience and your geography, you absolutely understand that
• 36:14
  Russia is a threat. And those countries have have
• 36:18
  created a an awareness where there are very, very high levels
• 36:22
  of support for conscription, for defence spending, where the
• 36:26
  whole of society understands how to become more resilient, how to
• 36:31
  respond if there's an attack, how not to panic.
• 36:34
  And that's because the government is honest with them.
• 36:37
  It points to the threats. It doesn't treat them like
• 36:40
  children. It points to.
• 36:41
  Geography also and it. Gives them the tool, but they're
• 36:44
  right. Next door.
• 36:44
  So geography, you know, acts in their favour.
• 36:47
  I mean, it's both a problem and it's an opportunity.
• 36:49
  So point to me, point to me an era when the UK was insulated
• 36:54
  from threats in Europe. I mean, there are none.
• 36:57
  We, you know, our, our, our geography makes us as as vital.
• 37:01
  You know, our security depends on the European security.
• 37:03
  We can't you know, the channel is no longer this Moat.
• 37:06
  I mean self evidently. OK.
• 37:09
  But this again, this is important, isn't it?
• 37:11
  Because so I'm sure you'll say let's not frighten the horses.
• 37:16
  We don't want to create panic. We don't want Sir Patrick
• 37:19
  Sanders to come up with headlines that will appear on
• 37:21
  the papers. But actually, a degree of fear
• 37:24
  is important in this argument, isn't it, to be credible?
• 37:27
  So let me ask you specifically if if a Russian missile you
• 37:33
  know, comes for the UK, what will shoot it down?
• 37:36
  A a a NATO asset, a NATO fantastic.
• 37:40
  If you know, there's a there's a rain of missiles, you know,
• 37:43
  maybe some Iranian drones or they're not that they won't go
• 37:46
  far enough, but Iranian missiles into the mix, the kind that they
• 37:49
  were lobbing at Diego Garcia the other day.
• 37:52
  Is it possible that we will be overwhelmed by the number of
• 37:56
  missiles coming in and we won't be able to shoot them down?
• 37:59
  So I think because the United States and Israel have have
• 38:02
  worked so effectively at the Iranian ballistic missile system
• 38:07
  that that that that threat is much reduced, but not with much.
• 38:10
  You know, the point is, I mean, when I took over as chief of the
• 38:12
  General Staff, I made AI made a historical comparison, which got
• 38:17
  a lot of publicity and I talked about this being a 1937 moment.
• 38:20
  The point I. Was trying to make is it's not
• 38:21
  1939, it's not 1940, but look around you, you know, it seems
• 38:26
  to be very clear to the British public. 40% of whom think that
• 38:30
  we will be engaged in a war in the next 5 years, that the world
• 38:35
  has changed. But we're not doing enough to
• 38:38
  address those and we're not doing it fast enough.
• 38:40
  So. So to go to your point about
• 38:41
  being alarmist. 37 I thought was an important date to I I, you
• 38:46
  know, technically I was wrong because that was that was what,
• 38:49
  four years ago and. We'd now be in the middle of.
• 38:51
  We've been out to 19. 41 But the reason we aren't is because
• 38:55
  Ukraine has been buying US time. Yeah.
• 38:58
  But but as each year go by it, we get a little bit closer to to
• 39:03
  the edge, a little bit closer to the precipice.
• 39:05
  So, you know, don't don't listen to me.
• 39:07
  I mean, I'm just a general and will probably be accused of
• 39:10
  being a Cassandra. Listen to George Robertson, the
• 39:12
  Architect. No one ever said they are just
• 39:14
  the general. The strategic, the architect of
• 39:18
  the strategic Defence Review, who said we are not safe and we
• 39:22
  need to be much, much more honest with the British people.
• 39:25
  We aren't safe and we don't have much time.
• 39:31
  One of your colleagues, another former chief of the General
• 39:35
  Staff, said that we are in the foothills of World War Three,
• 39:39
  are we? I'm not sure I'd buy the World
• 39:45
  War metaphors because I still think that we have agency to to
• 39:50
  prevent this. What we are in is in an era.
• 39:52
  Where the use of force by authoritarian states is become
• 39:58
  normalised, has become, if not acceptable.
• 40:01
  And two members of the UN Security Council have gone to
• 40:04
  war on the basis of some pretty patchy international legal
• 40:09
  justification. You know, the United States and
• 40:12
  Russia. That's just a fact.
• 40:14
  This is the world that we we live in now.
• 40:17
  And so if you want to restore an order that isn't based on multi
• 40:21
  polarity and might makes right but goes back to multilateralism
• 40:26
  and international cooperation. Then what we do in the present
• 40:30
  really makes a difference. So Ukraine matters enormously,
• 40:35
  not just for the Ukrainians but for us, because this is the
• 40:38
  fulcrum. If you can't achieve a Russian
• 40:40
  defeat in Ukraine, then the world is going to look very,
• 40:44
  very different in four or five years time.
• 40:46
  It'll be much, much more like the law of the jungle.
• 40:49
  And by defeat, I mean denying Putin those 3 objectives that we
• 40:52
  described earlier on. And we can do that if we choose
• 40:55
  to do so. Europe, which has, you know,
• 40:58
  immense power in one dimension, economic power, but has very
• 41:04
  limited power in terms of technology or hard power, but a
• 41:08
  lot of potential. If we can turn Europe into a
• 41:10
  three-dimensional power, and I include ourselves in that
• 41:13
  geographical European description, we can shape the
• 41:15
  future. And this is what?
• 41:16
  Mark Carney was talking about, you know, it's.
• 41:20
  At the Munich security, you know, Davos so, so I don't buy
• 41:25
  that there is an inevitability about some form of global
• 41:29
  conflict on World War Three scale, but you can see the risks
• 41:34
  of it emerging. This is why it feels like the
• 41:36
  1930s. We still have agency.
• 41:40
  Why aren't we acting on it? And in and in this world, in
• 41:44
  this new world disorder, what is the most disruptive element?
• 41:49
  Is it Russia becoming aggressive?
• 41:51
  Is it China sitting on the sidelines building up a vast
• 41:54
  military that hasn't yet been used, and maybe Xi Jinping is
• 41:59
  careful when he's seeing what's going on?
• 42:02
  Or is it the United States Uncle Sam channelling Dirty Harry?
• 42:08
  So, you know, first of all, we should, we should bear in mind
• 42:11
  that. The, the 80 years of relative
• 42:14
  peace that we have enjoyed in this, in this international
• 42:17
  system, international order has been largely achieved because
• 42:21
  the United States has been prepared to underwrite it.
• 42:23
  And we owe them an immense debt of gratitude for that burden
• 42:26
  that they have carried. You know, they are in Thomas
• 42:28
  Hobbes's Leviathan, but they no longer have the economic, the
• 42:32
  relative economic or hard power that they used to have.
• 42:35
  And it's just become too hard for them to.
• 42:37
  To sustain it. So, you know, President Trump is
• 42:41
  an extreme expression of a set of views that the United States
• 42:45
  often has in its political cycles.
• 42:49
  He's accelerated that process of transition, but we shouldn't be
• 42:53
  surprised by it arguing in some respects, President Biden was
• 42:57
  the anomaly. And this is more continuity from
• 43:01
  Obama and. We can't expect it to go back to
• 43:03
  what it was before. We should not expect the United
• 43:05
  States to to, to resume its international leadership role.
• 43:08
  And arguably, confidence has been so shaken in the United
• 43:11
  States's statements and over the last President Trump's that that
• 43:17
  it'll be difficult to regain that sort of moral authority,
• 43:20
  that and legitimacy that the that the US had.
• 43:23
  But it's not EU s s fault that we're here.
• 43:26
  It is because you've had you've had a, a rising power China
• 43:31
  challenging the status quo. You've had a collapse of
• 43:35
  legitimacy in that system that everybody believed in.
• 43:39
  You've had extraordinary technological shifts.
• 43:44
  So AI as a foundational technology is accelerating
• 43:50
  change at a pace that is incredibly disruptive.
• 43:54
  And then we haven't adapted to those.
• 43:57
  So this, this, this, this transition, this flux that we're
• 44:01
  in depends on, you know, the future of the how we shape that
• 44:06
  future depends on what we do now.
• 44:07
  And by now, I don't mean in 2035, I don't mean in 2040, I
• 44:12
  mean now. Just one final one, the, it's
• 44:16
  always struck me, you know, whether it was Iraq, the first
• 44:19
  Gulf War with Kuwait or especially with Iraq in 2003,
• 44:23
  that America relies very heavily on the smartness of its weapons.
• 44:27
  They've got incredibly smart weapons.
• 44:28
  They've got some very smart soldiers.
• 44:30
  But what we're seeing in this war in Iran is that even if you
• 44:34
  have cheap and not very smart weapons, if you have a clear
• 44:36
  idea of what you're fighting for and this regime is clearly
• 44:39
  fighting for its survival. And you can also tell yourself a
• 44:44
  story based on mythology and history and all these other
• 44:47
  things that really matter. You know, the battle of Kabbalah
• 44:49
  in their case, which is a glorious defeat for the
• 44:52
  Persians. These things ultimately decide
• 44:56
  the outcome of a war or can do because you measured along those
• 45:02
  particular lines. And the trouble with being
• 45:06
  relying on smart bombs but not having very smart ideas about
• 45:09
  going into war is not good. So I'm going to get a little.
• 45:12
  Bit military philosoph, militarily philosophical on you,
• 45:15
  but but there are you look at war through 2 dimensions.
• 45:18
  The nature of war never changes. It's constant, it's violent,
• 45:21
  it's primordial. It's the extension of politics
• 45:23
  by the means so that always is the same.
• 45:26
  The character of war, how things play out on the battlefield,
• 45:29
  depending on technology, geography, who the combatants
• 45:32
  are that that that evolves all the time.
• 45:36
  Warfare, you know, Klaus Fritz tells us, is a is a battle of
• 45:39
  wills. So your, so your strategy, if
• 45:42
  your strategy is to destroy the enemy's forces, then it's only
• 45:47
  going to get you so far. But if your strategy is to break
• 45:50
  the enemy's will, that ultimately is what decides the
• 45:53
  outcome. And at the moment, what you have
• 45:56
  is one side for whom this is an existential struggle and who
• 46:00
  have an ideology that is based on resistance of martyrdom.
• 46:03
  And you have another side for whom this is a war of choice.
• 46:06
  And in Israel's case, just one more cycle of of mowing the
• 46:11
  grass in Iran, which you know, they've been expecting to do and
• 46:14
  will continue to expect to do if they get regime change, great.
• 46:17
  But they don't necessarily expect it and.
• 46:20
  The the, the the. Technologies you're talking
• 46:22
  about largely based around the exploitation of artificial
• 46:27
  intelligence in the targeting process, but crucially the
• 46:31
  autonomous systems which can be produced at vast scale, which
• 46:35
  give. You know.
• 46:37
  Smaller countries, the ability to offset these exquisite
• 46:40
  technologies and to survive through doing so.
• 46:44
  This is the future of warfare that we have to adapt to.
• 46:47
  But it also, and I'm going to bring this back to the UK, gives
• 46:51
  us a tremendous opportunity because if we're serious about
• 46:53
  this, this deadline of three to five years, none of the existing
• 46:58
  defence programmes are going to have us ready in three to five
• 47:00
  years. They're all decades long
• 47:02
  programmes. You're not going to see, you
• 47:05
  know, the, the the the global combat Air programme, the
• 47:08
  aircraft until the mid twenty 30s.
• 47:09
  You ever see submarines till the mid twenty 40s?
• 47:11
  We've got a 20-30 timeline that we need to address.
• 47:14
  Take a leaf out of the Ukrainians.
• 47:16
  Book. Listen to the defence technology
• 47:18
  companies who are saying we could vastly enhance your
• 47:24
  lethality, your capability on the battlefield and we could do
• 47:27
  it in the next two years. That's what I'd like to.
• 47:30
  See the Defence Investment Programme investing in.
• 47:34
  We'll be watching General Saint Patrick Sanders, thank you very
• 47:36
  much indeed. Thanks, Matt.
• 47:38
  Well, I hope you enjoyed that. That's it from the forecast.
• 47:41
  See you next time.