Whitehall will revive and update the Cold War-era Government War Book, a detailed plan for dealing with an attack on the nation by a foreign power — Russia, in other words — for the first time in decades as war mania continues to ramp up.
The United Kingdom government is to update plans on how to respond to a direct Russian attack on British territory for the first time since the Cold War. Meanwhile, in polling to gauge the public mood at the time of the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, a pollster has found concern about a Third World War to be widespread, with a plurality or outright majority in several nations found.
The continuity of the government in the aftermath of a conventional missile attack, nuclear bombardment, or major computer hacking attack is being weighed by Whitehall for the first time in over 20 years, reports the Daily Telegraph, citing insider information. These plans are so out of date they have never had contingencies for a catastrophic cyberattack, for instance.
While the root cause of the outage has yet to be revealed, the recent nations-spanning European power cut has also focussed minds in security circles as it starkly illustrated how fragile sophisticated systems can become.
Of particular concern, it is said, are Ukraine war-style strikes against Britain’s critical national infrastructure, such as a conventional missile strike against the nation’s nuclear power plants.
Aspects of the old War Book gradually became public knowledge after the end of the Cold War and revealed government plans to rush key elements of the state to safety in the final moments before a nuclear strike, but not the public. It had been decided back in the 1960s that providing shelters and preparations for the public were a waste of money, as Britain’s ultimate guarantee against needing them at all was its independent nuclear deterrent.
Yet even Britain’s comparatively modest Cold War-era doomsday planning is thought to have been largely decommissioned by this point, with Britain — like Germany — having sold off bunkers that were thought beyond their usefulness.
There is at least one bunker still in operation — one that simply couldn’t be sold, given it is dug deep beneath the heart of government — the comparatively recently completed Pindar under Whitehall, hundreds of feet below the Ministry of Defence main building. The exact extent of the tunnels that connect Pindar to other government buildings has never been made official, but it is understood there is at least one to Downing Street for rapid entry.
While the prospect of Russia, which lies thousands of miles away, launching a sudden assault on Great Britain may seem far fetched there certainly has been a war of words boiling away for years, with lurid threats made by Moscow against London for its support of Ukraine. Among the threats made are of nuclear Armageddon, and Russia appears to have a particular animosity for the United Kingdom, apparently based on very long-held grudges going back over a century.
The British government apparently reviving its War Book comes amid growing concern about a potential coming World War. Pollster YouGov revealed fresh research on Tuesday conducted as part of a series to measure the public mood on the 80th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, finds large numbers of citizens in Western countries feel “World War 3 is likely in the next 5-10 years”.
The French were most alarmed, with an aggregate of 55 per cent saying it was likely, compared to 33 per cent saying unlikely. Only Spain also had an outright majority of residents believing war was likely, with Italy and the United States showing pluralities. The public were fractionally more optimistic in the UK and Germany, with very small pluralities saying their believed it was more unlikely that war was coming in five to ten years.
Of those nations, only American citizens felt confident their armed forces had the ability to defend their nation, with every other country not so sure. The difference was most pronounced in Germany, for instance, where just 16 per cent said they thought their military was up to the job, against 74 per cent so said they had no confidence in their ability to defend themselves.
Tensions between Europe and Russia was seen as the biggest threat to peace, followed closely by Islamism. Spanish respondents were outliers, however, with a strong majority of 58 per cent there believing “tensions between Europe and the United States” is the biggest threat to peace.
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