The head of the armed forces has warned that the rules-based systems that have been the foundations of western democracy since the end of the Second World War are under threat.
Air Chief Marshal Sir Stuart Peach accused the Kremlin of using cyber and propaganda weapons, such as the state-owned television channel RT, in a direct challenge to the institutions of the West.
He also indicated that Britain and its allies must be ready to challenge attempts by Beijing to restrict freedom of movement at sea and in the air in the Asia Pacific region and voiced concern about what he described as a “nuclear-style confrontation” in North Korea.
In his first Christmas lecture as chief of the defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Peach, who took over the job in July, warned also of the threat posed by Islamic State fighters as they are pushed out of Iraq and Syria.
Speaking at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, he said that combat-capable militants were “hiding in plain sight” among flows of migrants across Europe and raised the prospect of “copycat” terrorists popping up all over the world, including in China. His sternest warning was about how the system of institutions such as the United Nations and Nato were being challenged. “There is no doubt that Russia is using cyber as part of her state power. This is in direct competition with our approach to sustain the rules-based order,” he said.
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Unusually, his remarks were drawn from a set of bullet points rather than contained within a pre-approved speech, which is often the process that senior military personnel must go through to be granted permission by the government to speak in public.
“We are in a strategic state-on-state era of competition,” the former fast jet navigator said. This is when countries for example test each other economically, through cyberattacks, by using state-sponsored propaganda to engage in territorial skirmishes. “I don’t see that diminishing or ending soon,” he said.
The armed forces head did not name China, but said: “In the Asia Pacific region there are a series of state on state confrontations. None of them represents a crossing of the boundary between peace and war but they are all slightly of concern.”
