West must ensure Russia loses or face attacks by dictatorships, warns Shapps
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The West must ensure that Russia is defeated in Ukraine or risk being attacked by dictatorships such as China, Grant Shapps has warned.
The Defence Secretary said “regimes who do not believe in democracy are watching” the war in Ukraine and could launch attacks on Western states if they think they have “run out of puff”.
In an interview with The Telegraph, he said Britain was “living in more and more dangerous times”, and revealed that Army recruitment had more than doubled last month amid growing fears of a confrontation with Moscow.
Speaking on a trip to Washington this week, where he met Lloyd Austin, his US counterpart, and Antony Blinken, the US Secretary of State, Mr Shapps said the West must be “very, very clear that this is existential… it’s not just about Ukraine”.
He said: “Everyone is watching – the Iranians are looking. Do we just run out of puff, run out of patience and go away? China will be watching in the Indo-Pacific, North Korea will be watching.
“It is vitally important to our own national interests, and definitely to the Western civilised world, that Ukraine is successful in their own country.”
His comments came as the EU agreed a new £46 billion Ukraine package, which the bloc said would provide “long-term, predictable funding” after concern about the future of US support.
Mr Shapps said he would use a meeting of Nato defence ministers next week to urge member states to meet a commitment to spend 2 per cent of GDP on defence, to “make sure that they are contributing to this global safety by making sure that a tyrant can’t win”.
He added: “Regimes who do not believe in democracy are watching, and we need to demonstrate that the democratic path is the path that always wins.”
Gen Sir Patrick Sanders, the head of the British Army, last week called for “preparatory steps” to put the UK on a “war footing”, including an increase in troop numbers, forcing Downing Street to deny that the Government was planning to reintroduce conscription.
Admiral Rob Bauer, one of Nato’s leading officials, said on Jan 18 that the alliance was “preparing for a conflict with Russia”. Three days earlier, Mr Shapps had warned in a speech at Lancaster House in London that the West was “moving from a post-war to a pre-war world”.
The Defence Secretary told The Telegraph the public could “rule out” conscription, but revealed that the Army had seen almost double the number of recruits last month than in the same period last year, as people grew more concerned about national security.
It is understood that 10,800 people signed up last month – more than double the monthly average of 5,300 last year.
The Royal Navy’s basic training facility, HMS Raleigh, has been fully booked for four weeks in succession – the longest time it has been oversubscribed since 2017.
“I’m actually very pleased that since we started raising these issues, including in my Lancaster House speech, people are responding,” said Mr Shapps. “They realise there are a lot of opportunities.”
A defence source added that the UK could be experiencing a “Top Gun effect” from visible activity of the Armed Forces in the Middle East, comparable to the surge in recruitment for the US Navy after the release of the 1986 film.
On Thursday, Mr Austin, the US defence secretary, echoed the concerns about Western security, warning of a “dangerous moment” for the world.
Mr Austin said the US had chosen a “multi-layered” response to a drone strike in which three American troops were killed on Sunday. He said it was designed to encourage Iran to rein in proxy groups in the Middle East, which have attacked US forces more than 160 times since October.
The strikes are expected to target Iranian personnel and proxy groups operating in Iraq and Syria over the coming days.
Mr Shapps said the UK was not planning to join the strikes, cautioning against a “wider regional conflict”, but called on Iran to “show leadership over these Iranian-backed militias in Syria and Iraq”.
The Defence Secretary said the UK would continue to work with the US guarding against Houthi attacks in the Red Sea because “freedom of navigation has to reign supreme”.
However, he played down speculation that the UK could soon deploy an aircraft carrier to the Red Sea, saying that “there’s certainly nothing imminent or immediate” planned.
“We’ve had a destroyer defending merchant shipping herself, and we’ve had Typhoon aircraft carrying out actions against the Houthis,” he said. “We don’t actually need a carrier there.”
Mr Shapps’s concerns about the threat from Iran and China come after Lord Cameron, the Foreign Secretary, said Iran posed an “unacceptable threat to the UK’s security” and had tried to kill 15 British nationals or UK-linked individuals in the past two years.
Ken McCallum, the head of MI5, has warned that Chinese hackers are routinely targeting UK infrastructure in an attempt to wreak havoc on the National Grid, water supply and transport hubs.
