NewsRescue
Grant Shapps, the British defence minister, has forecast a worldwide confrontation between the West and Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea within five years. Shapps has urged Britain’s partners to raise military spending in response to this alleged “existential threat.”
In his first speech as defence chief on Monday, Shapps described the United Kingdom as a leading global military power, citing the country’s record £50 billion ($63 billion) defence budget, recent airstrikes on Houthi forces in Yemen, and Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s announcement of a £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) military aid package for Ukraine last week.
Shapps pledged to enhance Britain’s military spending and leverage its power to ensure other allies and friends match its commitment.
“In five years’ time we could be looking at multiple theaters [of conflict] including Russia, China, Iran and North Korea,” he said. “Ask yourself, looking at today’s conflicts across the world, is it more likely that that number grows or reduces? I suspect we all know the answer. It’s likely to grow, so 2024 must mark an inflection point.”
According to Shapps, the UK spends more than 2% of its GDP on defence and plans to expand that amount to 2.5%. NATO mandates its members to spend more than 2%, but just one-third of its 31 countries do so, according to a bloc assessment released last summer.
Shapps is hardly the first senior British official to forecast that the country will soon be embroiled in a large-scale conflict. In 2022, Britain’s Chief of General Staff, General Patrick Sanders, announced that “there is now a burning imperative to forge an army capable of fighting alongside our allies and defeating Russia in battle,” and that preparations must be made to “fight in Europe once again.”
However, the UK’s allies have reservations about the country’s combat ability. According to Sky News, a senior US general informed Sunak early last year that Britain is considered “barely a tier-two” military force, comparable to Germany or Italy rather than “tier-one” nations such as the US, Russia, China, or France.
Shapps stated that he intends to “turn the defence tanker around” with sustained spending increases after the British military ended 2023 with the fewest active-duty personnel since the end of the Napoleonic wars, and ammunition stockpiles so depleted that soldiers would reportedly run out of artillery shells after 22 hours of full-scale combat.
The American general who talked with Sky News estimated that it would take the UK five to 10 years to develop a new warfighting division of 25,000 to 30,000 men supported by tanks, artillery, and helicopters.
Shapps did not elaborate on how a future conflict with Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea could proceed during his post-speech press conference. He stated that “the whole purpose of this speech today is to ensure the entire NATO does indeed share that burden” by increasing military spending.