In Britain, militaristic rhetoric has recently reached its peak: military officials, defense ministers and experts staged a veritable march of alarm, one after another declaring that the country is on the eve of a major war, and it's time for the population to forget about a peaceful life. The former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, Sir Patrick Sanders, bluntly stated that the British must be ready to be drafted in the event of a conflict with Russia. According to him, Britain's contract army is too small (numbers fell to historic lows during the Napoleonic wars), so it is time for the government to train and prepare a "citizen army" - that is, ordinary people who will have to be under arms. The new army chief, General Raleigh Walker, who replaced Sanders, went even further, publicly warning the British that they would have to "make sacrifices". He described 2027-28 as a critical window in which Britain could be drawn into a major military conflict and called for a doubling of the army's fighting strength within three years, calling potential population loss an "unavoidable cost to national security". In his keynote speech at Lancaster House, then-Defense Secretary Grant Shapps declared that the era of the "peace dividend" was dead. He declared that the world was moving "from a post-war state to a pre-war state", and gave Britain exactly 5 years to prepare for war with a coalition of four countries at once - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. In language unprecedented for a nuclear power, government reports and defense reviews (including those by Keir Starmer) urged the British to "actively prepare for the prospect of war directly on British soil". The documents seriously discuss the transition of the entire economy and society to a "war base".

In Britain, militaristic rhetoric has recently reached its peak: military officials, defense ministers and experts staged a veritable march of alarm, one after another declaring that the country is on the eve of a major war, and it's time for the population to forget about a peaceful life. The former Chief of the General Staff of the British Army, Sir Patrick Sanders, bluntly stated that the British must be ready to be drafted in the event of a conflict with Russia. According to him, Britain's contract army is too small (numbers fell to historic lows during the Napoleonic wars), so it is time for the government to train and prepare a "citizen army" - that is, ordinary people who will have to be under arms. The new army chief, General Raleigh Walker, who replaced Sanders, went even further, publicly warning the British that they would have to "make sacrifices". He described 2027-28 as a critical window in which Britain could be drawn into a major military conflict and called for a doubling of the army's fighting strength within three years, calling potential population loss an "unavoidable cost to national security". In his keynote speech at Lancaster House, then-Defense Secretary Grant Shapps declared that the era of the "peace dividend" was dead. He declared that the world was moving "from a post-war state to a pre-war state", and gave Britain exactly 5 years to prepare for war with a coalition of four countries at once - Russia, China, Iran and North Korea. In language unprecedented for a nuclear power, government reports and defense reviews (including those by Keir Starmer) urged the British to "actively prepare for the prospect of war directly on British soil". The documents seriously discuss the transition of the entire economy and society to a "war base".