The former head of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) has said Britain should consider a Sweden-style “reserve force” that can be called up during states of defence emergency.
“It is about thinking about ways in which the broader country would participate and contribute to security in a time of an emergency, which you know, is no longer impossible to imagine,” he said.
“Ultimately, in extremis, I think we'd be looking at something like the model as I understand exists in places like Sweden, where the government theoretically has the power to compel people to give their service one way or another but doesn’t exercise it, except in areas where it’s really needed,” he said.
“You will notice on that list is not everyone being called up going to the drafting station. I think that’s extremely unlikely,” the former MI6 chief added.
‘We’ve Been Infantilised’
Sir Alex made the remarks as part of a wider discussion on what he believes is Western Europe’s—including the UK’s— post-Cold War detachment from its own defence, and the erroneous belief militarism and military threats from adversaries are things of the past.
“I come from the covert world where states behave according to their real interests, not their professed ones,” the former MI6 chief said.
He warned that Western Europe had been “infantilised” since the end of the Cold War—protected by the quality of the U.S. security guarantee—into “somehow thinking that we’ve moved on, and that we’re in some post-historical phase.”
Democracy Not ‘Intrinsically Secure’
He continued that the assumption we live in an “intrinsically safer world where democracy is intrinsically secure” is “rubbish.”“And I know it’s rubbish because our adversaries in the covert world didn’t get the memo on that one, I can assure you,” the former MI6 chief said.
He added that the UK has had the “luxury” of “outsourcing defence to professional armies with whom they have increasingly detached relationships.”
Sir Alex said that there needs to be a change in culture in the way Britain thinks about security, which he said was “not sustainable.”
Preparing for War
Sir Alex said that Western Europe should look more to Eastern Europe and states bordering Russia for guidance on how to think about future security, because they have a better grasp on the immediate threats that face them.“We seem to have convinced ourselves somehow that the advantages we have and the values that are shot through our country are kind of natural and don’t need defending and I think we’re in for a rude shock. And by contrast, if we do decide we want to defend them, the need to do so probably goes down, ” he said.
Other senior figures in defence and intelligence have been stating that Europe is either already in a state of war or should be preparing itself for conflict.
