British military chiefs fear a ‘nightmare scenario’ of fighting major wars against Russia and China at the same time, and are preparing for the West’s enemies to launch coordinated campaigns.
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the former head of the British army, revealed that the Ministry of Defence has drawn up plans for how to respond to wars breaking out simultaneously on two fronts.
He said such crisis could erupt within two years, and told The Times’ podcast The General and The Journalist how such a scenario could play out.
‘We could end up with the axis powers – Russia and China, supported potentially by Iran and North Korea – collaborating to create a war on two fronts,’ he said.
‘It would start with a large-scale confrontation in the Indo-Pacific, like a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which draws off what remains of US forces in Europe.
‘An opportunistic Russia would then move against some part of a NATO territory where they know they can actually win by achieving local dominance, like the Baltics or somewhere in the high north like Svalbard.
‘Having quickly seized limited objectives, limited territory, they sit back behind a nuclear umbrella and they dare NATO to act. Now that’s incredibly high stakes, but the payoff for Putin would be very, very high.’
Sanders, who left his post as chief of the general staff 11 months ago, said his former colleagues were ‘really worried’ about the prospect and were actively thinking it through and ‘wargaming’ ways to deal with it.
Troops from NATO and non-NATO member Georgia take part in the US-led Immediate Response exercise on June 4, 2025
Russia could launch an attack on a NATO member state, a former military chief has warned, in what would be an ‘incredibly high stakes’ but ‘high payoff’ move
File photo shows China’s Harbin (112) guided missile destroyer taking part in a week-long China-Russia navy exercise in 2014
NATO military chiefs have raised concerns about the massive increase in Vladimir Putin’s armoury and ammunitions stock
If Russia invaded the territory of a NATO member state and the military alliance failed to act against its aggression, ‘it effectively means the end of Nato’, Sanders said.
He additionally warned that the only way to deter aggression from Britain and NATO’s adversaries was to rapidly rearm.
His comments come as US defence chief Pete Hegseth today pushed NATO to agree a deal on increasing military spending that could satisfy President Donald Trump.
The US leader has demanded that alliance members boost defence budgets to five percent of their GDP at the June 24-25 meeting in the Netherlands.
NATO chief Mark Rutte has put forward a compromise agreement for 3.5 percent of GDP on core military spending by 2032, and 1.5 percent on broader security-related areas such as infrastructure.
Several diplomats say Rutte looks on track to secure the deal for the summit in The Hague as NATO grapples with the threat from Russia after more than three years of war in Ukraine.
But a few allies remain hesitant about committing to such levels of spending, including UK PM Sir Keir Starmer, who refused to promise that Britain will raise defence spending to 3 per cent of GDP by 2034.
However military leaders calling for more defence investment have warned such a rise could be too little too late.
China’s President Xi Jinping considers 2027 to be the date his military is capable of invading Taiwan, with Hegseth warning this week that the threat posed by Beijing is ‘imminent’.
Meanwhile Germany’s defence chief starkly warned last week that NATO should be prepared for a possible attack by Russia within the next four years.
General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia poses a ‘very serious threat’ to the Western defence bloc, the likes of which he has never seen in his 40-year military career.’
General Sir Patrick Sanders, the former head of the British army, revealed that the MoD has drawn up plans for how to respond to wars breaking out simultaneously on two fronts
US and UK troops launch MLRS and HIMARS rockets in Gotland NATO drills
Breuer pointed to the massive increase in Vladimir Putin’s armoury and ammunitions stock, including a massive output of 1,500 main battle tanks every year as well as the four million rounds of 152mm artillery munition produced in 2024 alone.
He said that not all of these additional military equipment was going to Ukraine, which signalled a possible building up of capabilities that could be used against the NATO bloc, adding that Baltic states were at a particularly high risk of being attacked.
‘There’s an intent and there’s a build up of the stocks’ for a possible future attack on NATO’s Baltic state members.
‘This is what the analysts are assessing – in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029… If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that’s not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it’s not. So we must be able to fight tonight,’ he said.
Breuer said that the Suwalki Gap, a region that borders Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus, was particularly vulnerable to Russian military activity.
‘The Baltic States are really exposed to the Russians, right? And once you are there, you really feel this… in the talks we are having over there,’ he said.
Russian bomber aircraft at the Olenya airbase on the Kola Peninsula are seen ablaze following a Ukrainian drone attack
US defence chief Pete Hegseth today pushed NATO to agree a deal on increasing military spending that could satisfy President Donald Trump
Starmer on Monday vowed to make the UK ‘battle-ready’ while committing to building 12 new nuclear-powered submarines and at least six new munitions factories as part of the government’s Strategic Defence Review.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last week declared that Berlin will finance the production of long-range missiles in Ukraine, shortly after pushing a €500 billion defence and infrastructure spending bill through parliament.
He is due to meet President Trump in Washington today as he works to keep the US on board with Western diplomatic and military support for Ukraine.
Merz will hope that his pledge to sharply increase Germany’s NATO defence spending will please Trump, and that he can find common ground on confronting Russia after the US president voiced growing frustration with Putin following a frosty call between the two leaders yesterday.
