The Not Guilty Man
Britain’s top general says you can’t face down Putin on the cheap
[This article appeared on my Substack newsletter — Conflict & Democracy — yesterday for subscribers. Amid the Twitter rationing/outage I’m releasing it also here 24 hours later.]
The omens are not good for Britain’s forthcoming Defence Command Paper. General Sir Patrick Sanders, chief of the general staff, is to quit the role early, after apparently losing a fight within the Ministry of Defence over the priority of land warfare rearmament.
I’m told by two reliable ex-military sources he “resigned in protest” at decisions taken in the DCP2023 review, though over exactly what remains unclear. The Times reports:
“Sanders has lost the battle to reverse cuts to the number of main battle tanks and decision to shrink the army to 73,000 soldiers, decisions he has described as ‘perverse’.”
Though I have no doubt there are personal frictions between Sanders and his bosses at the MoD, the essential problem is political.
- The Conservative government has refused to commit to increased defence spending in response to the Ukraine crisis, instead holding out the prospect of 2.5% of GDP (up from 2.2%) as an “aspiration”, when fiscal conditions allow.
