A senior British military leader says Britain and the US are at greater risk of an accidental war with Russia than ever since the end of the Cold War. General Nick Carter warned that a “multipolar” world increases the risk of tensions. According to him, the “belligerent” nature of the policy is fraught with escalation as tensions between the West and Russia rise over the crisis in Eastern Europe.
Britain and its allies are at greater risk of being drawn into a war with Russia than ever since the Cold War, Britain’s most senior military leader warned, the Daily Mail writes.
General Nick Carter, chief of defense staff, said the new era of a “multipolar world” in which governments compete over different goals and agendas poses a greater risk of tension.
His comments came at a time when the West and Russia are building up troops along the borders of Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus while increasing the show of power amid the ongoing migrant crisis in Eastern Europe.
General Carter told Times Radio: “I think we need to be careful that people do not allow the belligerent nature of some of our policies to end up in a position where escalating conflict leads to miscalculations.”
Tensions have escalated in Eastern Europe in recent weeks after the European Union accused Minsk of Belarus rallying thousands of migrants to provoke a humanitarian crisis on its border with Poland, an EU member, a dispute that threatens to involve Russia and NATO.
Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that NATO’s unscheduled exercises in the Black Sea pose a serious problem for Moscow and that Russia has nothing to do with the crisis on the border of Belarus, its closest ally.
In an interview with the Daily Mail, General Nick Carter said that “authoritarian rivals” are willing to use whatever tools they have at their disposal, such as migrants, rising gas prices, proxy forces, or cyberattacks. “The nature of the war has changed,” he says.
In the Cold War that ended in 1991, the world was organized on the principle of bipolarity, with the United States and the Soviet Union fighting for global hegemony, opposing capitalism to communism. It was followed by a unipolar era throughout the 1990s and early 2000s when the United States dominated the international arena. But in the current world order, in which several global superpowers, including the United States, Russia, and China, are fighting for dominance, diplomats face a more complex scenario. General Carter warned that the “traditional diplomatic tools and mechanisms” of the Cold War are no longer available. “Without these tools and mechanisms, there is a greater risk that this or that escalation could lead to miscalculations,” he said. “So I think this is a real problem that we can face.”
The UK said Friday that a small group of British troops was sent to study “engineering assistance” to Poland on its border with Belarus. British Typhoon fighters on Friday also escorted two Russian warplanes out of its zone of interest, working with NATO partners to keep track of the planes as they crossed international airspace, the Daily Mail writes.
