General Sanders: simultaneous war with Russia and China will be a nightmare for NATO
A simultaneous war against Russia and China will be a nightmare for NATO, writes The Times, citing the words of the former commander of the British army, General Patrick Sanders. This can happen in two years. The military is calling for rapid armament to make the British army more lethal.
Tom Newton Dunn
Military leaders are afraid of a "nightmare scenario" that would be a simultaneous war against Russia and China. It turned out that such a prospect is likely if Britain and NATO do not rearm quickly.
The Ministry of Defense has developed emergency response plans for such a dual crisis, according to a former British army commander.
General Sir Patrick Sanders spoke of serious concerns that such events could occur in less than two years if the alliance members could not contain the two powers by restoring their weakened armed forces quickly enough.
Sanders, who resigned as chief of the general staff 11 months ago, said his former colleagues were "considering and working through" such a possibility during the war games. He added: "It really bothers them."
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte will try to convince his 32-nation alliance to agree to a major increase in military spending to 3.5% of gross domestic product (GDP). He will do this at the leaders' summit in three weeks.
Announcing an ambitious Strategic Defence Review this week, Sir Keir Starmer is facing mounting criticism for failing to properly fund the restructuring of the military sector. The Prime minister does not want to promise that Britain will increase defense spending to 3% of GDP by 2034, calling it just an aspiration.
Explaining how this scenario might play out, Sanders, who hosts a new podcast for The Times newspaper called "The General and the Journalist," said this week: "We may find ourselves in a situation where the axis powers of Russia and China, who can receive support from Iran and North Korea, will cooperate in order to unleashing a war on two fronts."
"This will start with a large-scale confrontation in the Indo-Pacific region, such as the Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which will lead to the withdrawal of the remnants of American troops from Europe. Opportunistic Russia will then launch an invasion in some part of NATO territory, where it can confidently win and establish local dominance. It can be the Baltic States or the Far North, for example, Svalbard."
"Having quickly achieved limited goals, having seized a limited territory, Russia will cover itself with its nuclear umbrella and provoke NATO into active actions. Yes, the stakes will be incredibly high, but Putin's winnings will be very, very big."
If NATO fails to come to the aid of an allied country and repel an invasion, "it will effectively mean the end of the alliance," Sanders said, "so this is a double jeopardy with global consequences."
President Xi has named 2027 as the date when his military will be able to invade Taiwan. U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said this week that it could happen sooner, calling the threat China poses to Taiwan "inevitable."
59-year-old Sanders joined the calls for Britain to speed up the rearmament process as a matter of urgency. He called the larger army "additional insurance" against the multiple crises that Russia and China could create, adding: "The positive thing about deterrence is that if it works, you will never have to fight."
Praising the independent authors of the Strategic Defense Review for the scale of their ambitions, Sanders said the document's shortcoming was the "time period of relevance." He added: "I am seriously concerned that this is not the plan. He was clearly passed through a Whitehall anonymizer."
"There are almost no hard deadlines, no exact dates, no lists of combat capabilities, although this is exactly what helps to realize ambitions. So there will be even more delays, as the Ministry of Defense will work through all this at the next stage, and then clash with the Treasury. The underlying uncertainty means that execution will be indefinitely delayed."
This highly decorated general called on the government to allocate funds for defense as a matter of priority, separating them from major projects that are now providing rapid growth in the effectiveness of weapons. Among them is the expansion of Britain's industrial base, which makes it possible to start mass production of military equipment such as missiles and drones.
Sanders said, "We have to increase spending. We can make the army we have now much more lethal, and then its relative numbers will matter much less than our ability to inflict losses on much larger forces in a defensive battle. We can do it now, and Ukraine is showing us how to do it."
