Britain’s former ambassador to US admits UK is ‘woefully underprepared’ for war

Former national security advisor Lord Darroch believes we are “woefully underprepared” for a potential conflict with Russia amid widespread geopolitical turmoil

The UK’s former national security advisor has said that the British do not have the ‘resilience’ to fight a war with Russia. Ex British ambassador to the USA Lord Darroch claimed that as a nation we are ‘woefully underprepared’ for a conflict.

This, he said, is due to a lack of spending on defence. But is also because we do not have the resilience of other countries, such as Finland, which shares a border with Russia.

Speaking to Iain Dale on the All Talk podcast, Lord Darroch said that the government has spent poorly on defence for the last 20 years and that will need to change to protect the country’s future.

When asked about the potential for World War Three, Lord Darroch said: “I don’t think that we are close, but I do think it’s less distant than it was five years ago.

“And I do think the important point here is we are woefully underprepared.

“We need not just to spend a lot more on defence, because we haven’t spent anything like enough for the last decade or two. But we’re also poorly prepared as a society. And the model here is Finland.

“Swedes are quite good but the Finns are best in terms of how everyone in Finland has been prepared for war, what they do, civilians, in terms of an attack from Russia.

“Russia feels very close to them of course. Russia did attack them in the 1939-1945 war.

“So it feels much closer to them but should be following the Finnish example.

So year, there’s reason to be concerned about this.”

When asked about national resilience, he said: “We haven’t got it. And if you look at that recent example of that power cut in Spain and just how much chaos that created and realise that we will be just as vulnerable as they are, you realise how much we have to do.

“And resilience, it’s a very important point.

“Do I think the threat from Russia is imminent? I don’t really. But I do think there is a building threat from Putin’s Russia.”

It comes after we reported how Donald Trump has said he has no intentions of sending US troops into Ukraine to figure out the peace deal – but the UK will. During a comprehensive Fox News interview, the US president made it abundantly clear that Ukraine would “not going to be a part of NATO” whilst maintaining that European forces, including British personnel, would be dispatched to ward off any future Russian hostility.

He said: “(Ukraine) are not going to be a part of NATO but we’ve got the European nations, so they’ll front-load it and they’ll have – some of them, France and Germany, a couple of them, the UK – they are going to have boots on the ground”.

“I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, to be honest. I think Putin is tired of it, I think they are all tired of it, but you never know. We are going to find out about President Putin in the next couple of weeks, that I can tell you.”