World ‘At the Dawn of a Third Nuclear Age’ Without Guardrails of Earlier Eras Warns Head of British Military

The most senior officer in the British Armed Forces says the world is now entering a third nuclear age, one more dangerous than others that went before because the previous hard logic of deterrence and avoiding “uncontrollable escalation” has been disregarded.

Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, erstwhile First Sea Lord and now the Chief of the Defence Staff told the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI) on Wednesday night that the global security picture is worsening in ways that is already degrading the United Kingdom, but worse things are happening in the nuclear security domain.

The top officer stated that “The security outlook is more contested, more ambiguous and more dangerous than we have known in our careers” and the world is now passing into a new paradigm, telling his audience of defence decision makers that “a third nuclear age is upon us”.

Chronicling this development, Radakin said the first ‘nuclear age’ had been during the Cold War, a time of peril but nevertheless one governed by “the logic of deterrence”. The two great powers of that era were held in check by the guardrails of mutually understood “risk of uncontrollable escalation” and states “took their international responsibilities seriously”.

This was followed, he related, by a second era of “disarmament efforts and counter-proliferation” in the 1990s and beyond. “Nuclear non-proliferation has been one of the great successes of international security since the end of the Second World War”, Radakin said, asserting that ideally the underpinnings of safety guarantees contributing to a more stable would will continue.

Nevertheless, President Vladimir Putin has heralded this “third nuclear age”, the Admiral stated, noting: “From Russia we have seen wild threats of tactical nuclear use, large scale nuclear exercises and simulated attacks against NATO countries, all designed to coerce us from taking the action required to maintain stability”. Russia is on this course, he claimed, because “Putin believes in a historic fiction”.

Other risk factors include China’s nuclear build up “to reshape the rules around its own interests” posing a challenge to the United States, Iran, and North Korea increasingly becoming a “global threat”. Grouping these as authoritarian states opposed to the “responsible nations of the world”, Radakin noted there is also a third group of nations “hedging and ducking between the two for maximum advantage”.

Admiral Radakin said he had a responsibility as the UK’s most senior non-Royal military officer to “stiffen the nation’s resolve” by talking tough, and not just focussing on the positive. “That requires me to speak plainly about the threats we face”, he said, although the speech also took in the UK and the broader NATO alliance’s advantages over resurgent threats.

NATO spends more on defence than Russia and China combined, he said, while Europe and the U.S. accounts for “half the world’s wealth” while, he said, Russia faces “economic and demographic decline”.

The United Kingdom is well geographically removed from Russian aggression and has an independent nuclear deterrent, but is being weakened nevertheless by its considerable exposure to the knock-on effects of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. While the country had spent billions of pounds on supplying arms to Ukraine, it had cost many times more to subsidise the price of energy in British winters due to global energy price spikes caused by Russia turning off the gas taps.

Radakin said:

we too are experiencing the consequences of a more unstable world in a way that is also very real. Our national airspace and territorial waters, our critical energy and digital infrastructure, and our public discourse have all been subject to interference. In cyberspace, the frequency of attempts on our networks continues to accelerate, driven both by rogue individuals and nation states.

And we are seeing a Europe-wide campaign of arson and sabotage, characterised in and extraordinarily frank and open way by the heads of two of our intelligence agencies – as ‘a sustained mission to generate mayhem’ and ‘beyond irresponsible’.

But the impact of global instability is felt even more broadly. As consumers through the cost of living. As taxpayers, through the expense of energy subsidy. And low growth and stagnation across Europe as markets react to an increasingly uncertain world.

Threats and felt consequences or not, deterrence remains key, Radakin said, speaking ahead of a major coming shift in the UK’s defence posture as the new left-wing government decides how much to spend on the miliary and where. Ultimately, the officer said: “we need to sense the risk of tragedy to ensure we avoid it. And that risk of tragedy is growing… the world is more dangerous. The challenges are greater.”

While alarming, the Admiral’s remarks appeared more measured than some outright alarmist claims of a coming Third World War made by other top Western defence leaders in recent months. NATO’s Admiral Rob Bauer has said European voters need to be ready to sacrifice some “luxuries” to fund Ukraine’s and their own militaries to prevent a “wartime scenario”. As reported then on other similar European postures:

Poland, which would very much be in the firing line should Russia decide their Ukraine war had gone so well they’d try it again somewhere else, has been first among NATO nations in this regard, with the head of their National Security Bureau saying in December Europe has just three years to get ready.

This is the time Russia needs “to reconstitute its army”, he said, expressing the Polish view that if NATO is to successfully deter further Russian aggression it had to be able to show it could stand up to another invasion quickly.

Professor Katarzyna Pisarska of the Warsaw Security Forum also spoke to these points, articulating Admiral Bauer’s assertion that Europe would have to sacrifice some luxuries to fund its militaries to transform them into credible forces that Russia would not care to confront. She said “this lifestyle, the focus on the welfare state, on prosperity under the American protective umbrella” may become unsustainable under the cost burden of keeping freedom free, and told a German newspaper:

“When do preparations for this scenario need to begin? They should have started yesterday… We can, like Emmanuel Macron, speak of “European autonomy”. But what does that mean? Can France station 10,000 soldiers in Poland tomorrow? Can Germany effectively defend NATO’s eastern flank? Credible deterrence is needed. We currently only have that with the Americans.”