Are we being nudged towards a war with Russia?

According to reports in the media, General Sir Patrick Sanders, Chief of the General Staff, is set to warn the British public that they need to psychologically prepare for the prospect of war with Russia within the next two decades. This call is set to be made today (24.1) at the International Armoured Vehicles Conference in Twickenham according to the Daily Telegraph. The views Sanders intends to express have been echoed by other NATO leaders.

The preparation Sanders and others are calling for means accepting the prospect of being called up to fight and for life as civilians to drastically change as the country is put on to a war footing. This is one of number of reports in the media covering what to all intents and purposes is a call to arms: Britons 'face call-up if we go to war with Russia': Head of the Army will tell ministers troops numbers are so low he would need 'to find more people' if Putin's war in Ukraine escalated and public's 'mindset' must change so they are ready - Daily Mail | 24.1.24. Apologies for the Daily Mail source but, it was one of the few news items that wasn't behind a pay wall. To be honest, in their own way, all the mainstream media platforms are as bad as each other!

It should be pointed out that Sanders, who has been openly critical of staff shortages in the military, is due to stand down in six months after allegedly falling out with Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, the overall chief of the Armed Forces. Which makes you wonder what kind of game is being played here. If Sanders is standing down, he can say what he really thinks without having to worry too much about the consequences. So at the very least, this is a kite flying exercise to see how the public at large will react to this call to arms. Those of a more suspicious turn of mind see this as an attempt to nudge the public towards accepting the inevitability of war with Russia within the next two decades.

Will the British public buy this rhetoric or will they smell a rat and start to ask some difficult questions? As this appears to be a kite flying exercise, the powers that be will monitoring the reaction pretty closely. I follow a range of people on X from across and outside of the political spectrum. One such person is Sandra Weedon and this is the post and subsequent comment thread on the call to arms Sanders is making: CONSCRIPTION! because ‘the military is TOO SMALL?’.

The comments on this post on Weedon's X feed are informative in that they indicate a lot of people do smell a rat and are not buying this call to arms. What's really interesting is that it's not just the usual suspects on the Left, who wouldn't be following the likes of Weedon anyway, raising objections. It would appear that a lot of the ire being directed at Sanders and his ilk comes from the kind of people that the Left would class as being on the Right. For someone like me who saw the psyop of the Covid 'crisis' for what it really was, the fact that a fair bit of the opposition to the prospect of war with Russia comes from people some would see as being on the Right comes as no surprise. For me, it's further proof that the Left vs Right divide is becoming increasingly irrelevant and redundant.

Most people in Britain don't have an issue with the people of Russia. Sure, they may well think that Putin is a power crazed autocrat but, they're intelligent enough to not fall for the propagandist's trick of conflating a government with the people they govern. They also see that any move towards conscription is the start of the slippery slope to chucking predominantly working class bodies into the meat grinder of war. Many people are also aware that the way Britain treats its military veterans leaves a lot to be desired. For those who have lost friends and family in combat or have to live with veterans whose lives have been wrecked because of injury, they're asking in whose interests will it be to send more young men and women into combat.

Had this call to arms taken place before the Covid 'crisis', it may well have had more resonance with only the Left raising opposition. Given the strength of opposition to the restrictions that were imposed upon us during that 'crisis', people across and beyond the political spectrum are a heck of a lot wiser to psyops and can see when they're being nudged towards accepting a certain point of view. What will be interesting is whether the Left dominated anti-war movement here in Britain accepts the fact that opposition to sabre rattling from the likes of General Sir Patrick Sanders stretches across and beyond the currently accepted political spectrum. Somehow, I think a new anti-war movement will have to emerge...