Responsible Statecraft has reported:

British leaders are warning that the country must prepare for a possible war with Russia, but Britain lacks the money and public support for a rapid military build-up, according to a Responsible Statecraft opinion article. The piece cites Defence Secretary Wes Streeting’s recent statement that the United Kingdom has 1,000 days to be “ready with our allies to fight and win.” It says Russia is the implied enemy, while questioning how the government would pay for greater readiness and whether ordinary people would agree to fight.

The article describes the warnings as vague and says they have become frequent across Europe. It points to a Wall Street Journal observation made nearly a year ago: “rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia.” Streeting, it says, is the latest official to join that pattern.

Earlier in October, Streeting advised Britons to keep tinned food and bottled water in case of an emergency. The article says he has since repeated that suggestion. It argues that such calls for readiness contrast with Britain’s limited fiscal room to raise defence spending quickly.

The government is unlikely, the article says, to meet NATO’s target of spending 3.5 per cent of gross domestic product on defence by 2035. In his annual budget statement last week, Chancellor John Healy, a former defence secretary, said the 3 per cent target would be reached “in the next Parliament,” which could be as late as 2034. Current plans indicate that UK defence spending will not exceed 2.7 per cent this decade.

The article also questions whether the armed forces could supply more troops. Britain’s army has 73,500 personnel, its smallest size since 1823, according to Ministry of Defence data cited in the piece. It compares that figure with more than 700,000 Russian troops in Ukraine alone.

When talks began in March 2025 about a “coalition of the willing” peacekeeping force for Ukraine, British forces were considered “too stretched” to contribute without reducing operations elsewhere. A British MP who sits on the UK parliamentary defence select committee told the author that Britain would struggle to put 10,000 troops in the field.

Despite those constraints, the article says a campaign is under way to make the public more receptive to fighting. The Spectator published an article over the past weekend advocating the return of mandatory National Service for 18-year-olds. Its author, Ted Jeffery, wrote: “What we need is a resilient, hardened and capable population, ready for the tough times ahead,” and called for action rather than “a country with 10 million working-age people on benefits.”

The Responsible Statecraft piece says proposals such as National Service rarely explain how they would be funded, suggesting that benefits could be cut. It frames the choice as a “guns or butter” divide in British politics, also visible in Germany and France: reduce public services, including welfare, to direct more money toward defence and military readiness.

The article argues that recent unrest in those countries reflects domestic concerns. Protests and riots in France, it says, have centred on the deteriorating school system rather than the risk of war. Riots across Germany over the past weekend were linked to the cost of living. It also cites former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock’s statement that she would support Ukraine “no matter what voters think,” saying it helps explain why more Germans are turning to parties such as Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD.

The author argues that foreign policy begins with domestic priorities. Ordinary people, the article says, tend to spend little time thinking about foreign affairs and expect their governments to focus on issues at home. That leaves elected leaders room to make a mark internationally while the public pays little attention, but the author says this does not give governments unlimited scope to put foreign policy ahead of domestic concerns.

Polling cited in the article suggests little appetite among Britons for joining a war. A recent Ipsos survey found that 48 per cent would not agree to fight “under any circumstances,” while 36 per cent might be willing. The article highlights that people over 55 were the age group most willing to fight.

The government announced last week that it had updated its policies to allow reservists up to age 65 to be reactivated “to strengthen UK readiness as global threats continue to grow.” A separate British Foreign Policy Group survey for 2026 found that 52 per cent of Britons would be unwilling to fight and 58 per cent would be unable to do so, with a similar tendency toward greater willingness among older people.

The government has tried to persuade the public to change its views, the article says. In late October, Army head Sir Roland Walker warned that “our citizens have got to consent to sacrifices to prioritize defense and security.” The piece links that call to widely publicized remarks on GB News that pro-Russian, which it equates with pro-peace, voices should be imprisoned and conscription introduced.

The author dismisses the GB News remarks as bluster but describes Walker’s comments as an appeal by a serving military officer to put conscription into practice. Historian Peter Hitchens objected that it was not for serving officers “to put the case for sacrifices by the voting public. Nor was it for him to tell politicians to explain this to the public.” The article’s author says they agree with Hitchens.

The piece says British ministers and commentators have not explained where British forces might meet Russian troops after conscription. It calls the idea that British forces could cross Europe and the English Channel to fight in Britain fanciful. That leaves, in the author’s account, the possibility of sending troops into Ukraine, which Britain has avoided doing since 2014, or deploying them to a NATO country under attack, despite what the article describes as a lack of evidence that Russia intends to launch such an attack.

The author argues that diplomacy would be more credible, less costly and less dangerous than allowing the conflict to worsen. The article says Britain’s government is too poor to expand the army and the population is unwilling to fight, yet the country continues to refuse talks and diplomacy. At the recent G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting in Atlanta, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband stood beside Poland’s grinning Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski and used a plenary session to criticize Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, telling him: “you are not winning the war”.

A planned family photograph of the ministers was cancelled because the British and European representatives did not want to be pictured with Lavrov. The article concludes that this episode reflects what it calls a schoolyard-like approach to statecraft in Britain and Europe.