All Brits must brace for conscription ‘within six years’ unless Putin is defeated, expert warns
27 January 2024, 07:34 | Updated: 27 January 2024, 07:36
All Brits must prepare for conscription within six years unless Vladimir Putin is defeated, an expert has warned.
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It comes as several Nato members face warnings about bolstering their militaries in the event of an armed conflict, most likely with Russia.
This includes the UK, where the head of the British Army, General Sir Patrick Sanders, said Brits would face being called up in the event of a war as our military is 'too small'.
Professor Anthony Glees, a security and intelligence expert at the University of Buckingham, has said Sir Patrick is “absolutely right” that the UK should prepare for an outbreak of all-out war.
“The UK Government should plan to sign up volunteers now and over the next three years and 'the whole of the nation' should prepare for conscription within six years unless Putin were defeated,” he told The Mirror.
Professor Glees compared the current situation in the UK to 1937, the pre-war years before the outbreak of another war.
This follows previous comments made by Sir Patrick back in 2022, when he said the UK was having a ‘1937 moment’ as the West came to grips with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
While Sir Patrick does not support conscription - which means forcing individuals to serve in the military - in the British army, he said he does believe there needs to be a "shift" in the mindset of regular Brits.
Sir Patrick wants regular Brits to 'think more like troops' in case an all-out war with Russia does break out.
He called for a Finnish-style 'citizen army', which would be made up of 500,000 people, including soldiers, reserves and eventually, volunteers and regular citizens.
Professor Glees continued: “I would see a 'limited conscription', a call-up of incentivised volunteers, as being very much on the cards if Putin is now thrown out of Ukraine.
“Obviously, if there were a wider European or world war, conscription would follow at once.
“Putin has repeatedly said he wants the post-1997 NATO states to be disarmed and brought back into the Russia orbit, re-creating the system of satellites that was the strategic policy of the USSR.
“There's not a snowball's chance in hell of Putin just going away.”
It follows a warning by a senior Nato official that the West faces an all-out war with Russia within 20 years.
Admiral Rob Bauer said that although Nato and member governments are readying themselves for conflict with Vladimir Putin's regime, civilians must realise that they also have a role to play.
He told reporters last week that civilians would have to be mobilised in large numbers if war broke out, and governments would have to prepare for how to manage that process.
While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has said that conscription was not on the agenda.
No 10 also defended the UK government’s spending on defence on Friday after a senior US military figure urged it to ‘reassess’ the size of its armed forces.
It comes after Pentagon documents have revealed that the United States will store nuclear weapons in the UK for the first time in 15 years.
Contracts for a new facility at RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk, detail US plans to place nuclear weapons three times the strength of the Hiroshima bomb at the base, The Telegraph reports.
