Nothing lasts forever

Earlier this week, it seemed to me that the hawks were circling in the skies, once again singing their long-silent songs of war.

The first bird of prey I watched take flight was General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of Staff of the British Army, when he suggested that the UK should ‘train and equip’ a ‘citizen army’.

Apparently, according to military kingpin, if the UK happened to find itself looking across the English channel at an advancing Russian army, the whole population would be as well leaping off their nearest pier and swimming for the United States.

Unsurprisingly, before the highest ranking official in the British Army even got around to uttering the dreaded ‘C word’, Rishi spied the impending PR disaster and was already doing some serious Flintstone-style backpedaling.

“The British military has a proud position of being a voluntary force. As I say, there’s no plan for conscription,” said a Number 10 spokesman in a statement.

“I think these kinds of hypothetical scenarios, talking about a conflict, are not helpful and I don’t think it’s right to engage with them.”

After making him type this last line, one can only assume that Rishi then forced the same dogsbody to lift the Downing Street phone, politely ask to be put through to Ben, before yelling into the speaker in his broadest Geordie accent, “You were born in Carlisle, made in the Royal Navy… AND YOU ARE GONNA DIE WHEREVER YOU ARE THE NEXT TIME I SEE YA!”

Or, perhaps, rather than delivering a death threat to the fictional character at the heart of that ludicrous advert, they just sacked whatever well-paid propagandist came up with the recruitment campaign in the first place. Anyway, as much as I like to mock Rishi, I was quietly happy when he contradicted General Sanders, reaffirming my gut reaction that the prospect of war with Russia was not something to be taken seriously.

However, just when it began to look like the whole thing had blown over, a few other influential military men came out and sided with the general.

The first was Britain’s former top NATO commander, General Sir Richard Sherriff.

“It could be time to think the unthinkable and look carefully at conscription”, he told Sky News.

Still, I was able to shrug it off and tell myself that it is in the nature of people who reach these positions to fanaticise about a war-torn future and worry about worst-case outcomes.

Then, on Sunday, former British Army Colonel and Ulster Unionist Party candidate, Tim Collins, threw his twopence into the mix.

“The recruiting system that the armed forces has failed miserably,” he told Trevor Phillips.

“I think what we have to do is to wake up and realise that… Ukrainians are fighting for their liberty through the illegal invasion from Russia and if they do not win that, we are next.

“We are not sufficiently supporting the Ukrainians towards the victory that is essential to us as well as them.”

While I initially found it almost comically easy to discount General Sanders’ call for conscription as nothing more than the ramblings of one whacky general – hyperbolic sentiments based on a hypothetical scenario – I soon found myself less able to take it so lightly.

For those who have never known international war of this kind, it is almost impossible to imagine.

How would the world feel before the war began?

Would the ground shake beneath your feet, like before a volcanic eruption? Would birds feel it coming in the air and in flocks fly away? Or would it arrive without warning, like a fork of lightning from a cloudless sky?

Prolonged periods of peace seem invincible and eternal, but every land that finds itself at war had once felt the same.

I am far from sold on the idea of conscription, but the conversation this week has definitely made me think about the illusion of everlasting peace, and complacency that all too easily comes with it.