PROFESSOR Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute, has authored an analysis of the plans necessary for a major war against Russia.
It is already well known that would-be PM Truss favours an immediate attack on the trade unions and one of the greatest gains of the working class – the National Health Service.
She favours new anti-union laws that will allow strikes to be illegalised and broken by the capitalist state.
She intends to raid the NHS budget and to divert billions from the NHS into ‘Social Care’, meaning that the only treatment that will be available will be from the private sector, providing people have the cash to pay!
The project that knows no financial barriers, is her plans to expand the armed forces – not just as strike breakers – but as the cannon fodder for a new war with Russia, that has already implicitly begun with the billions in weaponry that the UK has already provided to the Ukrainian army.
Professor Malcolm Chalmers, deputy director general of the Royal United Services Institute has presented a paper that a Truss government will likely need, to grow the armed forces by more than 40,000 military personnel and spend an extra £157bn, to meet a pledge to increase defence spending to 3% of national income by 2030.
The paper from the top think tank, said such a boost in defence expenditure – from about 2% at present – would mark the biggest rise since the early 1950s, when the UK was concerned the Korean war might escalate into a wider conflict with the then Soviet Union. It would equate to a 60% rise in eight years.
Truss has already committed herself to lifting defence spending to 3% by the end of the decade as part of her campaign to become the next Tory leader and prime minister.
She has been setting out her plans to strengthen the UK’s ability to counter ‘growing threats from Russia’ in the wake of the war in Ukraine, as well as an increasing challenge posed by the People’s Republic of China.
She is literally planning for a war on two fronts, the first against the working class; the trade unions and the NHS at home, and a second front against Russia and the People’s Republic of China.
Increasing defence spending to 3%, by slashing the NHS budget, would effectively enable military chiefs to reverse swingeing cuts to the size of the army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force inflicted by the Conservative-led coalition government in 2010.
Chalmers, said the first indication of whether a Truss administration is serious about hitting the 3% target will come at the next spending review, expected in November.
‘She will need very quickly to act to reverse what will otherwise be a reduction in defence spending over the next two years because of the impact of soaring inflation,’ he wrote. The amount of money the UK currently plans to spend on defence, according to NATO calculations, is set to be just under £54bn this financial year.
Chalmers sees it as a problem that Truss will need to argue the case for increasing the amount of money it spends on defence at the time of a crippling cost of living crisis, when there will be millions of people going hungry in the UK, precisely as a result of the UK-US all out support for the right wing Ukrainian regime.
He writes: ‘there has been very little attempt to ready the British public for the sacrifices that will be needed for a similar level of increase for defence’ as has already been required for the National Health Service.
Using tax to cover the rise in defence spending would equate to a 5p in the pound increase in the standard and higher rates of income tax by the end of the decade, or an increase in the standard VAT rate from 20% to 25%.
Chalmers said care will need to be taken to ensure any rush of new cash into military coffers – which have been raided repeatedly over decades – is spent well on new warships, aircraft, vehicles, other kit and more people.
‘To spend 3% effectively, the defence budget will require a significant increase in the size of the frontline numbers of formations and platforms,’ he wrote.
‘An increase in service personnel numbers of 25% is likely to be needed to support an overall 60% increase of defence spending. This would increase total numbers of regular personnel from 148,000 today to around 190,000 in 2030, returning to the level last seen in 2010.’
Preparing for war with Russia and China is the number one policy of the would-be Truss regime. While the working class suffers from starvation and cold, the Truss regime will be busy strike-breaking and NHS-busting to produce the war machine billions that will be required to challenge Russia and China.
However the working class will not stand by and just watch the war preparations. The TUC is in conference in Brighton on Monday September 12th. The trade unions must put down a motion at the conference, calling a general strike to bring down the Tories. This is the way to stop the war and go forward to a workers’ government and socialism!
