According to historian Niall Ferguson, we are, apparently, incredibly close to the onset of World War III.
There is a land war in Ukraine. There are considerable tensions in the Middle East, which has already resulted in real conflict. China is also threatening Taiwan with considerable international implications.
Fergusson's suggestion would appear to be that just as we fell, almost by accident, into World War I, so could we into World War III.
This is not a prospect that I really want to consider. Who would? But, that said, several aspects of it do seem to require consideration. in particular, as Matthew Syed noted in the Sunday Times this weekend, this possibility combined with the possibility that Trump might be re-elected as president of the USA on an isolationist ticket, creates real economic risk for European countries in particular. That is because, if US rhetoric is to be believed, the members of NATO have been free-riding on the USA for decades when failing to meet their obligation to appropriately fund their defence budgets.
I do not accept this argument. In my opinion, the US accepted the obligation to defend the West following World War II in exchange for the West's use of the dollar as the world reserve currency. This is something it did in fact demand as a key component of the postwar economic settlement negotiated at Bretton Woods in 1944. However, my disagreement is of little consequence if a US president does not accept that argument.
How should the UK and other EU member states react to current demands for increased spending in that case? Firstly, they could heed the advice of Lord Keynes when he made his recommendations in ‘How to pay for the war'. In that slim book, Keynes suggested that when the defence of the realm was a priority, then this must come at a cost to consumption, with those with the greatest capacity to spend being necessarily required, as a consequence, to make the greatest contribution to any such cost if inflation is to be avoided. In other words, he promoted the taxation of the wealthiest. Whether twenty-first-century European states would accept this as an acceptable approach is a matter open to argument, even though the logic is impeccable.
Alternatively, it would be entirely plausible for a WWI approach to the funding of this expenditure to be adopted. In other words, the deficit could be allowed to accumulate, funded by war bonds.
Thirdly, for those who are familiar with the detailed history of the issue of those bonds at the beginning of that conflict, the other alternative is that quantitive easing be used. This is a fair description of what happened when the issue of the first tranche of war bonds failed, and they were purchased by the Bank of England on behalf of the government at that time.
These are the choices available to us. That is hardly rocket science, presuming that grants and loans from a foreign power (the USA) are not available. Economics really has little else to offer.
There is, however, a potentially more significant question, which is whether and on what such sums could be expended. An increase in UK defence expenditure to bring that budget up to 3% or more of GDP, to match the USA, would require an additional £20 billion or so a year to be spent for this purpose. Whether there is capacity within the economy to actually do that, both in terms of defence procurement and in terms of personnel availability, is the real question, presuming that conscription would have very little role to play.
Finding the money to fund a war is one thing and a matter for columnists to muse upon. The setting of the whole economy on a war footing that might be required if additional funds were to be spent in the short time demanded by some is something else, and even then, open to question as to plausibility.
In other words, have the debate on how we fund a war effort by all means (the entire range of viable choices on that being set out above). But also, please, decide on what the money will be spent on first, or else all you are discussing is how to create that perennial partner to war, otherwise called inflation.
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Didn’t realise previously about that Bretton Woods condition. That special relationship again…..
On spending 20Bn….. when is 20Bn not equal to 20Bn? I suspect it would be helpful to distinguish between spending that on Infrastructure or public services in the UK compared to buying US-made weapons priced in USD. Often budget numbers are thrown out as if they are equivalent ….
Agreed
There are very different multiplier effects
In our collective, the first question we ask when addressing a problem/issue is: “what are we looking at” – what is the reality of the situation. Realities at the moment seem to be:
A hot/cold Israel – Iran dispute over regional hegemony (for +2500 years Iran has been a regional “player” & clearly still wants to be). Without US support Israel would have been forced to settle its 70 year old disputes – pronto.
The Ukraine war is a weapons testing exercise on the part of the West (had they wanted Ukraine to win quickly against Russia – weapons would have been supplied). In fairness, Germany has supplied loads of equipment – but is still recovering from its former best mate – turning into something else.
China is interested in this conflict from the point of view of evaluating the performance of western weapons – thus it has an interest in keeping the conflict bubbling, & part of this is supplying plenty of drone components to Ukraine & Russia – war is an accelerant in weapons development.
Taiwan & SE Asia & the local hegemon/China may not come to the boil quickly, if only because of events in the Black sea and water drones sinking 1/3 of the Russian fleet.
This does not look like WW3.
Where does this leave the UK & weapons spending? Nice big aircraft carriers – nice big targets for zero cost drones?, ballistic missile subs that are controlled by the USA? Who/what is going to attack the UK? & how? & with what?. I am sure these questions are being posed – but if the answer is “a nice big aircraft carrier” then perhaps the questions need to be reformulated. Money, as Keynes noted, need not be a problem, but the right weapons for defence is a very difficult problem to address, if it is not addressed, then it will be wasted – or turned into submerged objects.
And in all of this are ordinary people, dying, in droves. As you know, we have a Ukrainian family. The mother provides psychological support to people in Ukraine – last night it was a soldier – who has been fighting without pause since Feb 2022. Or the Ukrainian woman I know whose 16 year old daughter returned to Ukraine to fight. We should not lose sight of the human element.
The last is so true
I would entirely accept that the strategic position ought to mean no WW3.
Nor did the situation prior to WW1. It was avoidable right up to the last week of July 1914.
The confounding factor is that the leadership elites, both then and now perceive their national and personal stakes differently to a rational analysis.
Individual leaders’ personalities are seriously flawed at the present time.
Netanyahu is hanging by the thread of continuing the war to maintain his position. The extremely bellicose far right Zionists, including alleged diplomats like Tzipi Hotovely, are strongly pressuring for retribution, revenge and anything that will allow Greater Israel to be colonised, or their historic entitlement reclaimed as they might prefer to see it.
They have huge influence, both in government, and by creating trouble through a series of minor escalations in the West Bank, which ups the ante.
The Iranian leadership want to maintain their regional status, and might be forced into a larger response militarily than they would wish if Israel strikes hard at their national status. They have their own warmongers exerting pressure, but might prefer proxy actions – still provocative to the Israelis.
Then there is Trump.. a very wild card. Illogical, unpredictable, incoherent, narcissistic, just the right kind of person to oversee pax Americana at a time of insecurity in Europe, the Middle East, and potentially East Asia.
And of course wars are just great for economic growth.. (irony alert)
Iran has played a cautious game. They don’t have the technology to ward off a determined attack by the US.
Last evening on NewsNight General Petraeus , former CIA Director , said that “if it ever assessed that Iran truly is going to weapons grade enrichment, neither Isreal or the US will allow it go further. I think Iran knows that.’
But it indicates that the US is prepared to take military action against Iran to prevent their acquisition of any nuclear weapon. It is difficult to think of any other country that Iran might wish to attack. Any such action would be on Israel’s behalf. Israel has its own nuclear weapons which are never referred to. The implication is that Iran is some sort of ‘mad dog’ which would use the ultimate weapon regardless of the cost. Whatever they are, Iranians are not that stupid.
They have not complied with IAEA requests for full disclosure and may well be enriching uranium to build a limited number of warheads as a deterrent. There is a lot of theological opposition to nuclear weapons in Iran. It is not a Western society.
I feel that Israel’s desire to establish dominance over the region rather than use diplomacy is more dangerous than Iran’s desire to spread its influence over the region through its allies. I don’t call them proxies as all would exist anyway but are happy to accept Iranian aid.
The West has to deal with whoever is in power, but it is ill-advised to give more support to the right Wing regime in Israel.
Given recent reports I suggest we need to look at making effective use if what we have at the moment.
But that of course as with so many other areas means looking at the pay and conditions of those who defend us
The only conventional military threat to Europe (though not terrorism, cyber warfare , economic warfare) is from Russia.
Europe has the population and wealth to arm itself to the extent able to defeat an attack by Russia. This argues for a closer defence relationship in Europe. Nigel Farage talks of a European army as a thing to avoid, Sadly too many listen.
However, the EU contains neutrals -Austria, Malta, Ireland, Cyprus, It used to include Finland and Sweden.
In practice Europe has used the NATO framework.The only non-European NATO countries are Canada and the USA but the US has the firepower. No-one has invaded the US for over 200 years and no one has the capacity to do so now. Its defence structure is , therefore, for projection overseas. Europe by contrast is a number of smaller states using defence systems designed for the immediate vicinity. The USA has the advantage of economies of scale. It can produce a weapons system and spread the cost of development over a higher number of units than a European country which can only afford a smaller number and has other defence needs. For sixty years Europe has tried to produce joint programs. It is still a long way from standardisation and the economies which would stem from that. But there have been some achievements, e.g. the Typhoon and Tornado fighter aircraft, and the widespread sue of the Leopard tank, ammunition calibers and some missiles systems are the same. More could be done.
NATO doesn’t have an army as such. They are national contributions under joint command.
BUT to ramp up the scale required takes time. Russia does not have the capacity to ‘invade’ the Continent. Talk of Russia over running Europe is far fetched. But they do have the power to take over Eastern Europe and neutralise it. The motive would be something we thought was for the history books but is very real still-imperialism, gain of territory and national aggrandisement. The risk for Russia is that occupation would make it easier for western ideas to ‘contaminate’ Russia. The struggle in Ukraine is really about that in my view.
Military means are only part of the picture. But the armies and air forces of Europe are small, stocks of weapons and ammunition are inadequate and the capacity to move troops quickly and in sufficient numbers is inadequate.
We don’t need Cold War levels of expenditure to build up an adequate defence structure in Europe. An improved ability to defend the Continent as a whole would, I think, deter. The price of not doing it could be a lot higher.
I think there are probably 2 perennial war partners – inflation and war profiteering.
£20 billion. Think of all those whose PPE/Covid profits have nearly been spent, having new opportunities!
“please, decide on what the money will be spent on first” – very much so Richard.
I think it was the Public Accounts Committee that issued a damning indictement of the MoD failed procurement system
https://news.sky.com/story/uks-nato-commitments-threatened-by-broken-military-procurement-programme-12860247
So easy and so stupid for Starmer to ponce around about ‘mines bigger than yours’ 2.5% GDP defence spending . Stupid if it means UK keeps trying to procure/produce carriers which have no use and dont work, nuclear subs and missiles that dont work, tanks/armoured vehicles etc that don’t work etc etc.
Political discourse on the pros and cons of defence spend, of renewable energy etc, sort of suggests we have these industries here – but often we dont.
They talk about ‘green jobs’ but if there is no ‘green industry’ the jobs will be just installing and maintaining stuff produced elsewhere. And that links into currency values/trade deficit / and inflation depending what skills and capacity we can create so as to produce these things.
If ever there was a case for the Green New Deal, this is it. A move towards energy independence, or as close as possible to it, but what do we have? A Tory Government putting back net-zero policies with its pro-fossil fuel approach, where we are dependent on getting much of that energy/fossil fuel from overseas, and Labour back tracking on its green pledges. I would suggest that, energy wise, the UK is not in a great position to fight in any world war 3 scenario.
As an aside, war economies are very interesting, as it is amazing what the state can do when it really has to put its mind to it (i.e. WW2 and the period 1945-51).
Starmer poncing around that he’s suddenly found the money to signal his and the UK’s virility never mind that UK farmer’s are reporting a coming food shortage because of an excessive wet weather global warming effect. Silly people are going to vote in droves for this man!
The other day I heard Rishi Sunak questioned about the required level of defence spending. Apparently the government would like to increase it about 2.5% of GDP “when conditions allow” (based on other expenditure aspirations, that would be never).
2.5% didn’t sound like very much of an aspiration. So I looked up expenditure during the 1980’s, that is towards the end of the cold war. At that time expenditure was, apparently, about 4% of GDP.
Do many people really think that we should now be spending less than during the cold war? To me, irrespective of whether it is funded by a reduction of consumption through taxation, or by inflation, it seems that we should be spending considerably more.
The cost of war would be very much more that paying for suitable preparation and, hopefully, avoiding a war.
I’d hoped that the lessons of the 1930s had been learnt. I fear they have not.
One final comment on war. C.V Wedgewood was in her 20s when she wrote her masterpiece: “The 30 years War”. The very last two sentences apply now & indeed through recorded history:
“They wanted peace and they fought for thirty years to be sure of it. They did not learn then, and have not since, that war breeds only war”.
This was written in the 1930s and was prescient in its conclusions. All those civilians dead, in so many many places from the 30s onwards, for what? exactly?
(& as for WW1 – it was no accident – it was planned – but that is a tale for another time).
I loved her work on the English Civil Wars when I was at school. It is horribly dated now, but that conclusion most definitely is not.
It is characteristic of both Trump’s ignorance on this, as on virtually any serious subject, AND of the general neo-liberal mindset that the ‘debate’ is focused on the SIZE of defence budgets. It isn’t the size of the spending that matters; it’s what you spend it on. (It’s the same silly number crunching that gives a misleading idea that Blair’s NHS was good ‘cos it spent more as a % of GDP – when it was actually dragging the whole structure further down the road of fragmentation and increasing privatisation.)
For example, a benign accidental by-product of the rigid budgetary ‘thinking’ of the National Governments of MacDonald, Baldwin and Chamberlain, was that their reluctance to enter an arms race too soon coincided with the many of the right decisions emerging on aircraft production. Their Defence policies from 1935 on meant that, uniquely, Britain went to war with – just – the right weapons at – just- the right time; hence, in large part, the survival of the RAF and the success of the Battle of Britain – where other countries air forces were wiped out, even in France which had spent relatively lavishly in bursts but on the wrong planes. Presently, the Ukraine has demonstrated that contemporary warfare needs a hugely varied mix of materiel – some grotesquely expensive but a lot, remarkably cheap.
Ferguson scanning the world from his Harvard eyrie, rather than from his native Glasgow, can indulge in globalist American and intercontinental perspectives and their fantasies of power. Those of us who haven’t forgotten what our Clyde is home to, are rather more concerned about real world calculations – and with the urgent suspicion that there are few signs of any politicians competing for the leadership of Brexitania who could hold a candle, for either moral qualities or judgement, to those commonly maligned for laying the foundations of what rescued us last time.
Why the obsession with Russia.? The Red Army played a pivotable role in the winning the war in Europe. Martin Gilbert writes so in his history of WW2. My Dad who served in the Far East maintained until his death in 2000 that we owed our freedom and lives to the Soviets. #
From 1949 when I was eight to 1991 I was warned repeatedly that Russia was about to invade the West, The constant claim was the Russians were leading in the arms race. The warning were clearly lies. Our rulers have constantly gagged for war.
Thinking about it logically the Soviets were never in a position to fight a major war. I sufficient finance and military capacity. The Soviet economy was the subject of sneers from the USA and the UK. Its performance was poor. Can’ t have it both ways.
Jeffrey Sachs ,economist and diplomat worked with Gorbachev as the Russians collapsed. He regards him as the finest diplomat of the late 20th century. Gorbachev proposed cooperation which would create a powerful economic bloc stretching from the Atlantic to Vladivostok. The White house turned it down flat. As Orwell wrote we need an enemy. And so its has continued.
The media and politicians don’t mention the war in Ukraine began in 2014. The CIA directed by Victoria Nuland instituted a coup in Ukraine. The elected PM was overthrown and the Far Right took power. The Russian speaking people of Eastern Ukraine were massacred. 14000 in all. The Americans promised Gorbachev Nato would not expand one inch eastward. Another US lie to match the WMD claim. The Russians under such intense provocation invaded first to protect its compatriots and to ensure nuclear weapons were not stationed on their border. I was 22 when the Cuban Missile crisis took
place. The Russians took the exact same action as the USA.
Russia has no intention of occupying Western Ukraine. They cannot cope with the inevitable resistance which would bleed them dry.
I am sick of hearing Russia is to blame for everything. Look at their record on aggression. No other nation in the history of human kind is as terrible.
I have no arguments with Russia
I have not been enamoured with its leadership during my lifetime
But you are right, the chance it could fight on another front is very low
I’m staggered to read this ludicrous whitewash of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine which from 2014 onwards was illegal and utterly unprovoked by his victims. His paranoid fantasies about Ukraine and Russia’s history, which start from his baseless assertions of the essentially Russian character of the Crimea, are nonsense and the faux comparison in Stephen Mitchell’s post with the USA’s action in the Cuba crisis is beyond risible.
The notion that the confrontation of the long years of the Cold War was the result, solely, of credibly perceived Soviet threat to the West – a narrative long disposed of by serious historians, from the radical revisionism of David Horrowitz onwards – does not require a credulous lapping up of Putinesque propaganda. As Richard rightly points out in relation to the cauldron of Israel/Palestine/Iran etc., there are few states, if any, in such matters with totally clean hands – but that does not licence one distorted narrative being supplanted by an even more grotesque alternative. Anyone who has read seriously on the subject, or followed Timothy Snyder’s exemplary lecture course on the history of Ukraine and the central European land area which it straddles, should be able to distinguish between the illusions of old style Western Cold War paranoia, which did indeed seek to forget/erase the debt of the West to the violent heroism of Soviet arms between 1941 and 1945 – and the fantasies of Russian ‘victimhood’ in Putin’s vicious and genocidal war on Ukraine today.
The real, and massive, debt to the Red Army cannot be paid by pretending that Putin’s war on Ukraine’s civilian peoples, culture and society is honest, or even understandable, coin. These are the wages of a bloody kleptocracy increasingly in the grip of its own self-serving ahistorical myth. At its head, no less than in any malign theocracy, these men are dangerous to any within their reach.
I have to admit that letting this through was nit one of my better decisions
I showed my doubts about the claims made, I think
I will raise my antennae for anything similar
Thanks to Nigel for his critique of these Putinsque tropes which many serious journalists, historians and others have also demolished. Unfortunately the Kremlin’s disinformation machine is everywhere and has captured many of the useful idiots in the
West. His operatives flood the comment sections of many newspapers (see the Independent) and social media spreading his poison with such obvious lies as Ukraine started the conflict.
In the last paragraph I am reffering to the USA not Russia.
I find it sickening that we’re being psychologically prepped for war as though it were an overwhelming natural phenomenon that we puny humans can have no hope of averting. Yet it’s simply a choice; yes or no.
And all the while the real overwhelming natural phenomenon that (I fear) we now have little chance of averting is not being prepared for in any meaningful way at all. Why are would-be warmongers listened to respectfully, but JSO activists are put in jail?
Agreed
“Now, there’s been a lot of debate as to whether President Gorbachov was promised that there would be no NATO expansion to the East. There was no treaty signed saying that. But as we negotiated an agreement to end the Cold War, first President Bush, at a Malta meeting in 1989, and then later, in 1990, almost all the Western leaders, told Gorbachov: if you remove your troops from Eastern Europe, if you let Eastern Europe go free, then we will not take advantage of it.” From a transcript of a speech made by former US Ambassador to Moscow, Jack Matlock at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday evening, Feb. 11, 2015. Ambassador Matlock spoke fluent Russian and Ukranian.
So?