Dr Robert Seely MBE is author of ‘The New Total War’, ConservativeHome foreign affairs columnist and a former Conservative MP.
I arrived late on Monday in Kyiv and just made it to an ever-popular Crimean Tatar restaurant to grab a late supper before their curfew-induced closing time. After a spiced kebab, I stepped out onto the semi-deserted and darkened streets – electricity is rationed – when the first of a series of thumping bangs echoed around the city.
These were different from those I’d heard before; ballistic missiles, the first of about ten or so to hit Kyiv that night, accompanied, I think, by outgoing Air Defence. I normally keep calm and carry on, to use the old expression, but such was the scale of the sound, and my inability to assess whether it was in or outgoing, that that I waited a few minutes in a shop doorway before making my way cautiously to my flat.
I say all this because it was the Budget yesterday. A few months ago, John Healey, then Defence Secretary, resigned over lack of funding for defence. In The Sun yesterday, Ukraine’s President Zelensky warned us to spend more on defence. In the Budget, Healey announced a little bit of money for defence, but not a lot, and still no idea how to systematically increase spending. You’d think there was no imminent crisis.
I am not someone who thinks we should do Kyiv’s fighting for it. Ukrainians need to fight their war – and by and large they do. But let’s be clear, Britain should support Ukraine not only out of a sense of moral purpose, but because it is in our selfish, national interest to do so. Learning from them should be part of our core defence strategy.
Part of that takes money – and the extra money offered for Ukraine is useful. In fact, by doing this, we do something we have done for centuries, pay and support our allies to weaken our enemies. So yes, some of our defence spending should be to support Ukraine in fighting Russians in eastern Ukraine, rather than risk British soldiers’ lives fighting Russians in eastern European NATO states.
There are other selfish reasons we need to engage as deeply as we can with Ukraine’s military. We need to learn about how drones and AI are changing the tactics of warfare. We are seeing the future of war in Ukraine. Our adversaries will learn from this war to make themselves militarily stronger. We need to do so as well. NATO and UK forces remain unprepared for the scale of change that the Ukrainian war has ushered in. We have unique access that even the US does not have. Is every war going to look like the Russo-Ukraine war? No. Are future wars going to be influenced by the Russo-Ukraine war? Most, yes.
Third, we remain societally clueless about resilience. ‘Resilience’ covers a lot of territory, but one of the issues they have that we could/should learn from is air defence. Air defence is just that – defence – it’s something that the Ukrainians need now, it keeps civilians alive and their economy going and it’s something that we may well need in the future. Zelensky says Britain’s air defence is bad. He’s right. It’s non-existent but is of growing importance, not only in the UK given the falling cost of long- and medium-range missiles, but also for the defence of our allies, our forward troops in the Baltic, and our sovereign bases, even the Falklands.
We need a layered system. The Tories, thankfully, have promised to develop one, but I do not understand why the Labour Government is not prioritising this now.
We have given Ukraine £100 million to buy Air Defence kit, but that’s not really the point. We are their closest military ally and we should be partnering with Kyiv to develop an air defence strategy to keep its people safe. It’s a blindingly obvious moral imperative and at the same time it’s a no-brainer that it would be highly valuable for us to study too. By developing it with Ukraine, we would probably come up with cost-effective solution too.
More Patriot air defence missiles have been fired in three days in the Middle East than in the entirety of the Ukraine war. That’s a damning indictment of collective support for our ally.
One of the reasons that the Iran war is proving so ruinously expensive, even for the US, and their stockpiles of weapons are becoming so drained, is that Western nations lack cost-effective options for the new generation of mass-produced cheap drones and cheap cruise missiles now coming on stream. We do need some very high-tech, exquisite kit for the very fastest and largest missiles, but we need a lot more basic interceptors too to be able to shoot down the new generation of cheap, mass-produced drones and cruise missiles that are hitting the city I am writing from.
As well as the threat to the cities, Russia is now attacking commercial shipping in the Black Sea to destroy Ukrainian exports. Why is this allowed? Why is there no push-back? This is the hidden cost when nations skimp on defence. We lack the stockpiles to give to allies, we lack the investment in new equipment and we lack the will to have red lines, in this case to enforce free navigation of the seas. Our enemies see this, and every time a British or Western politician says, “we will be with you as long as it takes,” they know it’s not as true as it should be.
For 30 years we have failed to invest in defence. For the last 15 the threat has become increasingly obvious. In the last four, it should have been our national priority.
Defence yes, well maybe, but not at the cost of the £431 billion welfare budget?
It is rare in our history that such an obvious threat to us and our European allies has been met with such a reluctance to face that threat. Instead of growing to the task, our Government continues to shrink from it, and the missiles keep raining down in Kyiv.