British Boots on the Ground in Ukraine? Don’t Rule it Out Says MP

Ben Wallace, who resigned as Secretary of State for Defence last year in a cabinet reshuffle, sees direct conflict between European countries and Russia as nearly inevitable. 

The former Secretary of State for Defence spoke in the starkest terms possible in an interview with Times Radio: it’s time for Europe to prepare for war with Russia, and that means radically increasing defense spending and getting ready to send troops to fight in Ukraine. 

“I think president Putin – and we just saw that from the sham election – is the closest to Adolf Hitler we’ve had in this generation.” Former UK defence minister Ben Wallace @BWallaceMP has said British troops in #Ukraine “cannot be ruled out & people needed to wake up to how… pic.twitter.com/axSpOO895E

— Glasnost Gone (@GlasnostGone) March 20, 2024

Wallace, who will be leaving Parliament after the next election, wasn’t strictly advocating for sending troops to fight in Ukraine–not yet, at least. But he compared Putin to Hitler and made clear that he must be deterred from moving westward. 

British troops in Ukraine “cannot be ruled out”, former defence minister Ben Wallace has said.

In an interview with Times Radio, Mr Wallace said “people need to wake up to how dangerous Vladimir Putin is” and six more years of the Russian leader meant “more insecurity”.

He said this meant armed forces in the West needed to be “match fit”.

Asked if NATO troops could be ruled out of fighting in Ukraine after French President Emmanuel Macron said “nothing should be excluded”, Mr Wallace said: “We should use that phrase, ‘we cannot rule them out’.

If there is one thing above others that we can say about European militaries, it is that they are nowhere near “match fit.” Germany is the worst prepared, and Britain may be the best, but that isn’t saying much. In the case of Great Britain, reaching the 3% goal of defense spending to GDP would require a 50% bump in spending, while for some NATO countries, it would require a doubling or even more of what is spent on the military. 

In absolute terms, the United States spends far more than every other NATO country combined. The assumption in the EU/NATO countries has been that the US should carry the burden of defense with little actual help from other countries, and they have been right about what we would do. Only the prospect of a Trump victory in November will get them to move. 

There is zero chance, though, that defense spending will increase to levels anything like the 3% target promoted by Wallace. Germany is the key, and the Germans are obsessed with implementing “Green” policies and have let their military die on the vine. The very best you can hope for it an effort to improve weapons stockpiles, and it’s hard to see how they could even do that in the near term. The industrial capacity doesn’t exist. 

Anything that gets them moving in the right direction would be a good thing, though. At least anything short of direct military conflict with Russia. The risks of that are far too high for the United States, which would be dragged into the conflict by treaty obligations. 

The US military itself is deteriorating, at least in some respects. While most of our equipment is world-leading, we are depleting our stockpiles, wokifying the fighting force, losing the ability to recruit, and being stretched to the limit by responsibilities in every corner of the world. 

Europe only has to worry about Europe. The US is everywhere. 

One thing about the rhetoric perplexes me: the comparison of Putin to Hitler, which seems inapt. First of all, the recent reelection of Putin was the most predictable world event this year, so nothing actually changed except the rhetoric from the West, which went into hyperdrive inexplicably. Every third grader could have told you that Putin would be reelected because Russia is not a genuinely democratic regime, so Putin’s reelection was inevitable. 

Also, Putin is a bad guy looking to reintegrate the Russian Empire, but there is no indication that he is more expansionist than that. It would be irrational in the extreme for him to invade Western Europe, although he may try to break up NATO by probing here and there. 

So why the sudden talk of boots on the ground getting into a war with Russia that is both avoidable and sure to harm Western economies? A steady improvement in military capability is necessary, but war? That is insane. If anything, it would likely increase Russia’s threat exponentially. 

Wallace’s first exhortation makes sense: rapidly increase capability to levels that Europe should have maintained post-Cold War. But threatening war with Russia over Ukraine? That makes little sense.