Russia could ‘inadvertently’ start World War Three: Britain’s top military adviser warns that Putin’s reckless tactics including assassinations and cyber attacks could push globe to brink
- Chief of Defence Staff Sir Nick Carter said peace is threatened by new ‘weapons’
- The ‘new types’ posing as threats include cash, cyber-attacks, and propaganda
- He said nature of warfare has changed due to pervasiveness of information
- Ten Russian submarines, at least 8 nuclear, set sail in October from Murmansk
Britain’s top military adviser has warned that Russia’s reckless behaviour and lack of respect for international law could escalate into a world war.
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nick Carter said peace is under threat from ‘new types’ of ‘weapons’ such as cash, cyber-attacks, and propaganda, which are posing as alternatives to ‘gain advantage and sow discord’, he wrote in The Telegraph.
In a Remembrance Sunday message he outlined how these ‘weapons’ have created a world ‘less stable than at any times during World War II’.
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Nick Carter, 60, said peace is under threat from ‘new types’ of ‘weapons’
‘The threats are diversifying, proliferating and intensifying rapidly’, Sir Nick wrote.
He described how the nature of politics and warfare has changed due to the pervasiveness of information and pace of technological change.
The military adviser also outlined the assertion that Russia had been ‘testing new disinformation tactics’ in a Facebook campaign in parts of Africa ahead of the 2020 American presidential election.
Sir Nick, 60, wrote: ‘I am not suggesting that our opponents want to go to war in the traditional definition of the term, but reckless behaviour and the lack of respect for international law relating to these new types of ‘weapons’ risks escalation that could easily lead to inadvertent miscalculation.’
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin. Sir Nick said states such as Russia, China and Iran are asserting power in ways that challenges our security and stability that has been in place since 1945
He said how the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28 1914 led to the July crisis which escalated in World War I as a result of ‘miscalculations by European leaders’.
States such as Russia, China and Iran are asserting power in ways that challenges our security and stability that has been in place since 1945, he wrote.
And he said the ‘multi-lateral system’ that has cemented this stability requires an urgent ‘global response’ to protect it.
Ten Russian submarines, at least eight of them nuclear-powered, set sail from Murmansk in October. Six of them are taking part in defensive and testing missions around the Barents and Norwegian Sea, but another four are on a mission into the North Atlantic
The messages comes after ten Russian submarines, at least eight of them nuclear-powered, set sail from the port of Murmansk in October before some of them passed through the Greenland-Iceland-UK Gap, skirting British territorial waters.
The submarines headed out into the North Atlantic with the goal being to pass west of Greenland and as far into the North Atlantic as possible.
The mission, the largest fielded by Russia’s Northern Fleet since the Cold War, is designed to prove that Moscow has the ability to strike the US East Coast, Norway’s intelligence service said.