Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 25 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

Boris Johnson says the UK defence budget should ‘get to 3 per cent [of GDP] by 2030. 2.5 per cent is not enough’. Hang on a minute. In 2022, when he was prime minister, he said 2.5 per cent was enough and he pledged an increase to that amount. And then two years later, with a flourish, Rishi Sunak unveiled exactly the same promise. So what became of Johnson’s earlier undertaking? Is it possible it was only words rather than the action he now demands?

At the time of Johnson’s alleged increase, Labour’s shadow defence secretary, John Healey, attacked his proposal, claiming the increase was required immediately, not in eight years’ time. He was absolutely right, the more dangerous world that Johnson said justified the increase had already engulfed us, not least with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

But, when appointed defence secretary, Healey’s plans were to get to 2.5 per cent at some undetermined time in the future. Only now, under growing pressure from President Trump, Labour has been forced to bite the bullet and up the budget to 2.5 per cent; still not ‘immediately’, but by 2027.

Even this rise, however, will barely cover the defence equipment black hole between existing commitments and budgetary allocation and will not enable significant additional capabilities.

Those increased capabilities are sorely needed. In the second half of last year we heard two shocking statements from the upper echelons of British defence. In October Healey admitted the armed forces are ‘not ready to fight’. And not long before that the Chief of the General Staff, Sir Roland Walker, said the Army must be ready to ‘fight a war in three years’. The problem with war is that it often comes along when you least expect it and maybe we won’t have those three years. The armed forces should of course be ready to fight and ready to fight immediately.

When it comes to defence our political leaders seem to be like rabbits in the headlights. Even as the war in Ukraine reminded the world how vital conventional defences continue to be, plans to cut our already minuscule Army by over 10,000 men continued apace. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Mail, 22 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

On first impression, the grime rapper Stormzy has little in common with Field Marshal Lord Kitchener.

But should conscription be reintroduced in Britain, it would be the likes of Stormzy, Ed Sheeran and footballing ace Harry Kane tasked with reprising the moustachioed general’s immortal refrain: Your Country Needs You.

Last week, Sir Keir Starmer said he was ‘ready and willing’ to put British boots on the ground in Ukraine. My first reaction was to laugh. Like it or not, our military is on its knees.

Since the end of the Cold War, successive governments have slashed defence spending leaving us with an army that would struggle to defend Dover let alone hold back a Russian advance over the steppes of eastern Europe.

The British Army currently has just over 74,000 full-time personnel of which around just 20,000 are battle-ready soldiers. Russia, on the other hand, boasts close to 1.5 million active soldiers, making it the second-largest fighting force in the world behind its close ally China. Our army is slightly smaller than that of Romania and slightly larger than that of Armenia.

Considering Ukraine shares an unenviable 800 mile-long border with Russia, any Nato force stationed there would need to be formidably large, highly-skilled and ready to combat Russian aggression at a moment’s notice.

Short of discovering a division or two of soldiers behind the sofa, I’m not quite sure what Starmer is thinking. The British Army is already responsible for maintaining a pair of permanent military bases in Cyprus and a garrison in the Falklands, as well as keeping obligations in the Baltics and other parts of the world. That’s before you factor Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Express, 18 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

Sir Keir Starmer is ‘ready and willing’ to deploy British troops in a peacekeeping force for Ukraine if President Trump’s negotiations with Putin lead to an end of the war. He may be willing but his army is not ready. Since the Cold War it has been run down to less than 75,000 regular troops and is desperately short of tanks and ammunition. Even as Putin advanced across Ukraine the British Army was cut even further with political leaders prioritising health and social welfare above the growing threats of aggression.

Starmer refused to match the Tories’ inadequate pre-election promise of an increase in defence spending to 2.5% of GDP. The harsh reality is that if there is no boost this year, capabilities will have to be cut even further.

In its current state I doubt the British Army would be able to sustain even a contribution of 5-10,000 troops to a peacekeeping force which may need up to 100,000 to effectively police the 800 mile ceasefire lines.

America says it’s out of the game, but what about the EU, recently so enthusiastic about creating its own army? Germany says ‘nein’: According to Chancellor Scholz: ‘It is out of the question for us to send German soldiers to Ukraine.’ Emmanuel Macron in France dismisses the idea of ‘a huge force’ to patrol the buffer zone as ‘far fetched’. Poland too has ruled out participation as has the Spanish foreign minister. The rest seem to be firmly perched somewhere on the fence.

All of these armies, except Poland’s, have been run down in much the same way as the British. And they are all totally reliant on the US, a long standing thorn in the flesh for President Trump. Worse still, their political leaders have allowed Putin’s nuclear chest-beatings to deter them, and that is why Ukraine is where it is today. Fearful of sending adequate weapons to allow Kyiv to defend itself, is it realistic that they will now deploy troops with the muscle to seriously enforce a peace agreement? And if they do, what will happen the first time Putin threatens them?

Image: Number 10/Flickr

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 17 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

After warning European Nato members to stop freeloading on the US, President Trump has contemptuously sidelined Europe from immediate negotiations with Russia over ending the Ukraine war. Whether anything will come of this we don’t yet know. Putin told Trump he is interested in peace but that means nothing and Russia has been stepping up the tempo of its operations on Ukrainian territory in recent weeks.

Although the US special envoy for Ukraine, General Keith Kellogg, has said Russia will have to make territorial concessions and give undertakings against future aggression in Europe, any settlement is likely to end with a frozen conflict roughly along current front lines, with Russia in possession of around 20 per cent of Ukrainian sovereign territory.

Sir Keir Starmer and President Emmanuel Macron seem to be contemplating taking the lead on a non-Nato peacekeeping force to police the approximately 800 mile ceasefire lines if the fighting ends. The Nato Secretary General as well as other military experts have estimated a force of up to 100,000 would be needed. Germany seems unlikely to send troops to Ukraine, fearful of an all-out war with Russia, and Poland has ruled out participation.

So the job would fall mostly to Britain and France. France’s foreign minister Jean-Noel Barrot has said ‘Who will bring the guarantees? It will be the Europeans’. Meanwhile at around the same time, Macron dismissed the idea of a ‘huge force’ to patrol the buffer zone as ‘far-fetched’.

Starmer says he will consider putting British boots on the ground. But how can an army of now fewer than 75,000 regular troops sustain a sizeable force on rotation for a protracted period?

Let’s not forget as well: without an immediate increase in the defence budget, there will have to be further cuts to UK forces this year. Since taking office Starmer has repeatedly equivocated on any increase in both size and time-scale and his Chancellor has pretty much ruled it out. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 13 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

The chances of Ukraine pushing Russia back out of its territory are now zero. If that were ever possible it would have required far greater support from the US and Europe much earlier in the war.

Instead a self-deterring West, led by the vacillating former President Joe Biden, failed to provide Kyiv with sufficient arms or the freedom to use them to greatest effect. That was only too obvious when Ukraine launched its failed counteroffensive in 2023. The American defence industry could have generated a lot more munitions, but a sleep-walking Europe, which had lulled itself into believing it had seen the end of war, pretty much exhausted its supplies and lacked the political will to rapidly expand its industrial capacity. Terrified of the economic harm that a proper sanctions regime could also have inflicted on itself, the West’s efforts to damage Russia financially were only ever half-hearted at best.

Meanwhile Ukraine, fighting bravely and hard, while dramatically increasing its own armaments industry, has severely depleted its own manpower resources with heavy casualties leading to a critical shortage of troops. Only now, under US pressure, is Zelensky planning to enlist 18-24 year olds, and even that will be on a voluntary basis.

In this dire situation about the only way to avoid a never-ending war would be to get American and European boots on the ground to fight the Russians. Self-evidently that is not going to happen. Therefore President Zelensky has been contemplating the prospect of temporarily ceding occupied Ukrainian land to Russia as the price he must pay to end the current fighting in which Putin’s forces are slowly but steadily gaining ground. Polling shows around 50 per cent of Ukrainians are currently willing to go along with that.

Enter President Trump, who also wants to broker a peace deal with Moscow. Since taking office he has threatened Putin with greater sanctions to encourage the Russian dictator to come to the table. Given the increasingly difficult state of the Russian economy, Putin has already signalled a willingness to negotiate, though he will undoubtedly play hardball. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 4 February 2025. © Richard Kemp

As international car makers like Mercedes, Nissan and Volkswagen pulled out of Russia, President Putin told top businessmen and officials to drive a Lada instead. It looks like he has now given the same orders to his armed forces fighting in Ukraine. According to American journalist David Axe: ‘the Russian military is normalising assaults in civilian cars’. There are many videos on the internet showing Ladas attacking Ukrainian positions, some with military markings and anti-drone grills fitted.

I remember in the Balkan wars how the opposing military factions pressed civilian vehicles into combat and of course Toyota pickups have long been the preferred battle wagons for jihadists across the Middle East and Africa. But why Russia, with the second most powerful armed forces in the world? Oryx, the Dutch open-source analysis website, estimates Putin’s forces have lost more than 15,000 armoured vehicles and heavy combat equipment since the invasion began.

Axe says that, while Russian industry was unable to come anywhere near replacing an annual loss rate of 6,000 combat vehicles, until recent months it was able to make up the shortfall by fielding aged equipment from Cold War long-term storage parks. The state of those vehicles can only be imagined. I recall seeing rusting tanks and infantry fighting vehicles at Russian bases in East Germany at the height of the Cold War – and they were supposed to be ready to roll across the inner German border at a few hours’ notice. In any case, stocks of what remain of them now appear to be running low, hence the apparently common use of Lada assaults.

Imagine how it must feel for a young Russian soldier driving into the teeth of Ukrainian artillery, anti-tank missiles, drone swarms and land-mines jammed inside a family car. Not to mention rifles and machine guns that would have no problem tearing through the Lada’s paper-thin steel shell. I took part in the invasion of Iraq in 1991 in a Challenger tank. Despite being encased in state-of-the-art Chobham armour, we felt far from invulnerable, although we had air supremacy and our Challengers seriously outgunned the Iraqis’ obsolete Russian tanks. Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 27 January 2025. © Richard Kemp

Sir Keir Starmer’s promise to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP without specifying any timeframe was clearly an attempt to neutralise Rishi Sunak’s pledge of an increase by 2030. It was naked electoral politics rather than any genuine desire to ramp-up our defences. Even if there is any increase at all, the prospects of matching the Conservatives’ undertaking are extremely low. That would require building towards an additional annual spend of £87 billion during the run-up to the 2029 election. With the current prospects for economic growth, the cash would have to be raised by higher taxation, increased borrowing or by transfer from other budgets such as the NHS, welfare, climate change or overseas aid.

That is not in Labour’s creed. The party simply does not care about defending the realm. The nuclear issue is telling. Starmer’s apparent support for Britain’s deterrent is undermined by divisions in the cabinet. One quarter of his cabinet ministers voted to scrap Trident on ideological grounds in 2016. They include his deputy Angela Rayner and Foreign Secretary David Lammy, either of whom might have to make a nuclear call if he becomes incapacitated.

Look also at Labour’s consistent opposition even to the feeble Tory efforts to stop illegal immigration. Then on taking office, Starmer immediately cancelled Sunak’s deal with Rwanda. That was far from adequate, but at least intended to deter, an effect proven vital for halting illegal immigration by Australia and also now under serious consideration by other European countries. Starmer’s solution – ‘smash the gangs’ – is a punchy slogan but slogans don’t secure borders.

Then there is Labour’s eye-watering plan to pay huge sums to Mauritius to take over the Chagos Islands, home to the important US-UK airbase and harbour at Diego Garcia. With Trump about to walk over the threshold of the White House, Starmer managed to combine political ineptitude with strategic illiteracy. It is hard to think of any unforced geopolitical move made in recent years by any UK government to equal that blunder, undermining Western security while handing the advantage to a rampant China. As well as Continue reading →

Article published in The Daily Telegraph, 15 January 2025. © Richard Kemp

Joe Biden’s hurried push for a ceasefire in Gaza before he leaves the White House is a fitting epitaph for his four years of foreign policy disasters. Under his vision, the proposed ceasefire would likely play into Hamas’s hands and disadvantage Israel. But does he really care if it does?

The President’s main interest seems to be his own legacy, and he must think a ceasefire in Gaza would be a success he could brag about. It’s like his disastrous retreat from Afghanistan timed precisely to show how he ended the war on the 20th anniversary of its beginning.

It didn’t quite work out that way, instead consigning the country back into the hands of a brutally repressive Taliban regime, which is again fast becoming a base for international jihadists to threaten the world. Biden’s desertion of America’s long-term ally also flashed a green light to Vladimir Putin, telling him he could invade Ukraine knowing that the administration would not stand up to him. So it has proven, and we now seem to be on the verge of a ceasefire on Russian terms thanks to Biden’s refusal to give Kyiv the tools it needed to repel the invaders.

Biden will of course take whatever credit he can from a ceasefire in Gaza. But if Hamas does go along with the latest deal, it will be down more to the spectre of Donald Trump who has promised ‘all hell will break loose’ if the hostages are not released before he enters the White House. Indeed Trump’s looming presence has been made flesh by the involvement in negotiations of his designated Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff.

What is more, a temporary ceasefire in Gaza, if it does occur, may not turn out to be exactly what it seems to the man in the Oval Office for the next few days. In fact, it is likely to be one part of a wider strategy for the Middle East already agreed between Prime Minister Netanyahu and Trump. That plan will have several far-reaching elements but a primary objective is undoubtedly to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme, which represents an existential danger to Israel and threatens the Middle East and the world. It looks unlikely Continue reading →