Dominic Nicholls
The Chief of the Defence Staff has said that Britain is “at war every day” due to constant cyber attacks from Russia and elsewhere.Distinctions between peace and war “don’t exist any longer” in the modern world, General Sir Nick Carter has warned.
Speaking at the Cliveden Literary Festival alongside former US General and CIA Director David Petraeus, the head of the armed forces stressed that it is no longer possible to draw a clear line between competition and conflict.
“The changing character of warfare has exposed the distinctions that don’t exist any longer between peace and war,” General Carter said.
“I feel I am now at war, but it’s not a war in the way we would have defined it in the past. And that is because great power competition and the battle of ideas with non-state actors is threatening us on a daily basis”.
General Petraeus described China’s economic rise over the last 40 years as unprecedented in human history and both said that a revanchist Russia was contributing equally to the break down of international norms.
Russia and China’s “interpretation” of the rules governing international engagement threatened “the ethical and legal basis on which we apply the rule of armed conflict,” General Carter said.
“Russia is much more of a threat today than it was five years ago.
“The character of warfare is evolving… there’s a debate we need to have about what does the future of warfare look like.”
War is increasingly waged online and in outer space, General Carter said, adding the traditional concept of battle only being on land, sea and in the air is outdated. “The key bit that will give you the edge you need is the way in which information connects [it all] together so we are properly integrated at every level.”
“Information is going to be at the core of so much that we do. Future warfare is going to be very much information-centric.
“There is still clearly going to be human interaction – warfare is essentially a political function - but it will be a much more sophisticated and will include the new domains [alongside land, sea and air] of space and cyber.”
General Carter described the difficulty in maintaining a credible military deterrence such as currently in the Baltic states, whilst also transforming the armed forces to the future battlefield that will likely be dominated by cyber warfare.
He said the MoD’s procurement mechanisms needed to be quicker to be able to get the balance right between “the fight today and the fight tomorrow”.
“The stately dance of setting a requirement for something you expect to see in 15 or 20 years time just won’t cut the mustard in the future,” he said.
Raising a chuckle from the packed audience Britain’s Defence chief agreed with his US counterpart that Vladimir Putin was “the greatest gift to Nato since the end of the Cold War”.
“Nato’s got some serious political challenges at the moment,” he said. “Putin has been very helpful in getting us to make the case as to why we need to modernise”.
General Petraeus said that as Deputy Nato chief in Afghanistan, General Carter had commanded more US troops than anyone since Montgomery in the Second World War. He was keen to point out the close military ties between the two nations and praised Tony Blair as “a tremendous wartime leader”.
They agreed that the increased use of disinformation and deniable covert action by adversaries presented difficulties for states that observed the rule of law and whose actions would be judged in the “court of public opinion”.
General Carter said: “Our opponents are using deniable tactics and capabilities against us and we have to find a way of responding to that and indeed do a bit ourselves.
“What we’ll also have to do is bring back the lost art of deception, something we didn’t have to worry about for a long time but now we need to think hard about.”