A Quiet Debate at the Edge of War

Under portraits of empire, young Britons argue budgets while a new kind of war unfolds around them, fought through cables, markets, narratives and captured elites.

The staircase in the National Liberal Club did not simply creak that November night. It sounded like a warning.

Outside the rain had flattened Whitehall into a blur of headlights and wet stone. Inside, under portraits from another age of British power, a crowd of students, junior officials and party activists argued over a motion that ought to have been banal. Whether the defence of the realm should be the national priority. It was the kind of question that once belonged to textbooks and oath taking ceremonies. Now it sat on a handwritten agenda in a London club that looks out toward the buildings where the real decisions are made, and where too often they are deferred.

At the end of the evening, after a set of careful speeches, the room chose to reject the idea that defence should come first. A narrow result, two votes in it, and twenty people not voting at all. On one level, it was nothing more than an earnest Friday night debate. On another, it was a revealing snapshot of a country that knows it is in danger, yet cannot quite accept what that means.

What happened in that room matters because it showed how Britain is thinking about its security at the moment when the threats against it are no longer hypothetical. The speakers described drones that dominate the skies over Ukraine, artificial intelligence that shapes modern battlefields, cyber operations that probe hospital networks and banks, and foreign ships that loiter above undersea cables carrying British data and trade¹. They talked about Russian information campaigns that succeed by repeating what many voters already feel. That their lives are getting worse. They spoke of a young generation in which a visible share expresses fatigue with democracy itself. They invoked the BBC as an unusually trusted institution in a global fog of lies², then entertained the idea that it might have to compete with tanks and missiles for funding³.

Nothing in that discussion was abstract. It was an improvised sketch of a new kind of war that is already under way, in which Britain is not a spectator but a primary target⁴.

Anatomy of a hybrid threat

Strip the evening down to its essential elements and a pattern appears. On one side, voices insisted that hostile powers are already attacking the United Kingdom with espionage, cyber intrusions and coordinated manipulation of information. On the other, opponents warned that over emphasis on defence risks starving the economy, universities and diplomatic tools that actually underpin long term strength⁵. The argument seemed to be about money⁶. In reality it was about how to understand a threat that does not look like the wars Britain remembers.

The hostile actors are not mysterious. The government’s own strategic documents name Russia, China, Iran and North Korea as the most persistent challengers to British security⁷. These are not four separate problems. They share habits, interests and methods. Around them or within their orbit sits a network of security services, oligarchs, arms dealers, technology firms and political intermediaries who operate across borders and who understand Western legal systems and markets almost as well as Westerners do.

Their greatest asset is not a particular missile system or a specific hacking tool. It is the ability to blend methods that liberal societies are used to treating separately. Disinformation campaigns link up with domestic culture wars. Cyber operations slot into vulnerabilities left by underfunded public infrastructure. Dark money arrives through respectable firms that also advise British companies and political parties. What looks like a cloud of disparate problems is in fact a connected ecosystem.

One of the students in the debate tried to draw the distinction in simple terms. Traditional defence, he suggested, brings to mind tanks, ships, aircraft, the visible hardware of deterrence. Yet Britain’s adversaries have shown that far cheaper methods can have far higher impact. A set of troll accounts that amplify real anger over bills and broken services. An influence campaign that translates foreign objectives into local talking points. A legal case that threatens a large broadcaster with costs even if it wins. A ship that circles slowly above underwater cables while its activity is explained as harmless scientific research.

The intelligence systems that support this work are not confined to secret bases. They involve dedicated cyber units, yes, but also business people who owe their fortunes to state favour, cultural organisations that act as friendly fronts, and media outlets whose editorial lines dovetail with the foreign policy of the governments that fund them. They extend to sympathetic politicians in Western capitals, some ideologically aligned, others simply for hire.

Money binds these elements together. Oligarchic capital moves through property markets, football clubs, boutique finance houses and elite schools. Some of it belongs to individuals who wish only to protect their wealth. Much of it is linked to power structures in Moscow, Beijing or elsewhere that expect a return⁸. Not necessarily in public statements in favour of this or that regime. More often in the gradual softening of opposition to certain investments, the quiet shelving of legislative proposals that would bite, the helpful introduction to the right lawyer.

Once inside this environment, overt influence operations become easier. A media outlet that takes advertising from a state backed broadcaster adjusts its tone. A city institution that depends on flows of money from a hostile jurisdiction is slower to support strict sanctions. Politicians who have become accustomed to certain donors are reluctant to ask where those donors made their fortunes.

Meanwhile, the hard edge of the threat has not disappeared. It has simply become more closely linked to these softer methods. Russian drones that darken Ukrainian skies are produced in an economy that still accesses Western components. Cyber units that probe British networks benefit from data gathered through social media and commercial breaches. Military probing of air and sea routes is accompanied by narratives that suggest such actions are the fault of Western provocation.

The tools interlock. An energy dispute raises prices⁹. Disinformation outlets blame sanctions. Domestic political actors amplify those claims to attack opponents. Voters feel genuine pain and frustration and some become receptive to the argument that Western alliances are the problem rather than the buffer against something worse. At that point, a pipeline does not need to be sabotaged and a cable does not need to be cut. The political effect has already been achieved.

The authoritarian project

The club debate circled around money, priorities, prosperity. Beneath that lay a more uncomfortable question. What do the regimes that threaten Britain actually want. Several speakers, especially those defending economic and soft power tools, treated war as a relic of a previous world. They emphasised that modern security rests on a global market and an expectation of rising living standards. The clearest path to long term strength, they argued, is to protect universities, development aid and a respected media rather than pour ever more funds into traditional defence budgets.

It is an attractive view because it suits the post war story Britain told itself for decades. That history however is no longer shared. For Russia in particular, the collapse of the Soviet Union remains an unfinished trauma. The Kremlin has repeatedly signalled that it sees the states on its borders as a rightful sphere of influence. The war in Ukraine is the clearest expression of that belief but by no means the only one. Cyber operations against the United Kingdom, hostile activity near undersea infrastructure and information campaigns aimed at British citizens form part of a strategy that seeks to make Western resistance look costly, unreliable and eventually pointless.

The strategic objective is coherent even when tactics appear opportunistic. Divide allies from one another. Encourage Europeans to believe that the United States cannot be trusted. Encourage Americans to believe that Europeans, including the British, are freeloaders. Deepen existing fault lines inside the European Union. Weaken NATO not necessarily by triggering its collapse but by making its commitments seem uncertain in practice.

Alongside this, authoritarian states work to undermine the legitimacy of democratic institutions as such. Every scandal, every broken promise, every expensive failure in Western politics becomes raw material. The point is not to convince Britons to admire foreign rulers. It is to persuade them that their own system is hypocritical. That parliaments are theatres. That elections are showpieces manipulated by the same few interests. When roughly a fifth of young adults appear willing¹⁰ to contemplate authoritarian rule in abstract polling¹¹, that is less a triumph of foreign messaging than a symptom of domestic decay. It is, however, fertile ground for adversaries who specialise in making disillusion deeper.

Impunity is the third pillar. When the use of chemical agents in a British city produces sanctions but no structural change in how elites manage foreign money, the lesson in Moscow is not that the UK is ruthless. It is that Britain will respond symbolically and then revert to business as usual. The same pattern holds when corrupt networks exposed by journalists are met with legal threats rather than criminal investigation. Each episode teaches authoritarian actors that the cost of aggression and interference is manageable, and that Western anger follows a predictable curve. Outrage, press conference, limited measures, fatigue¹².

Behind all this lies the desire to expand or preserve imperial influence. For Russia this means reasserting control across its near abroad and limiting the ability of neighbours to choose Western alignment. For other powers it involves reshaping global governance away from the liberal model that Britain helped design. For all of them, the weakening of British and European capacity to resist is an integral part of the plan, not a side effect.

Weakness in plain sight

The debate in the club did not set out to diagnose Western vulnerabilities, yet they surfaced repeatedly. One speaker argued that defence cannot credibly claim priority when hospitals, schools and social care are struggling. Another warned that demagogues would thrive if voters believed their services were being cut to fund a distant war. A third insisted that the prosperity of South Korea, built on growth before military expansion, should be the model. Across these contributions, the same fracture lines appeared.

Alliances look solid on communiqués and in photographs. Behind the scenes they depend on publics that accept long term obligations. The British public watched two decades of expeditionary warfare yield ambiguous results. They now watch a European war in which support for Ukraine is costly and open ended. It is not difficult for an adversary to encourage the feeling that Britain is being asked to pay for someone else’s quarrel.

Political fatigue is the second weakness. Years of austerity, constitutional upheaval, pandemic and economic shock have left many citizens sceptical of grand projects. Promises to lift defence spending to new thresholds sound abstract when trains fail, rivers are polluted and waiting lists grow. In this context, talk of deterrence competes with daily grievances. The danger is not that people consciously side with hostile states. It is that they become indifferent to foreign policy altogether.

Public trust is already fragile. When a government cuts overseas aid to fund defence, it can present the move as a sober recognition of reality. Critics see the same decision as an abandonment of moral responsibility that will cheapen British influence in the very regions where population growth and instability are likely to be greatest. Both views contain elements of truth. What matters is the perception that choices are being made without a clear story of how they fit together. Into that gap step conspiracy theories and external narratives.

Captured elites enter the picture at this point. The country that once prided itself on the health of its institutions now tolerates a level of revolving door behaviour that would have shocked earlier generations. Senior figures move from government into consultancies, financial firms and think tanks that may have clients or funders with interests aligned, at least partially, with foreign powers. Even where no explicit wrongdoing occurs, the effect is corrosive. It becomes harder to tell whose interests are being served.

Information disorder increases this confusion. The BBC World Service reaches hundreds of millions of listeners worldwide. At home, however, the corporation is the subject of constant political argument¹³. Its resources are squeezed. Its purpose is questioned. Younger audiences often bypass it entirely in favour of algorithm driven feeds in which verified journalism sits beside propaganda, rumour and outright fabrication, yet carries no special weight in presentation. When speakers at the club celebrate the BBC’s global reputation while hinting that it might be a valid target for budget cuts, they unintentionally illustrate the paradox. Britain’s best line of informational defence is politically vulnerable within Britain itself.

Economic vulnerabilities tie all of this together. A country heavily reliant on imports and on the steady functioning of global shipping routes and data cables cannot treat security as a separate policy domain. Yet successive governments have behaved as though the economy floats free of geopolitical risk. An assumption that gas will always be cheap, supply chains always stable, foreign students always plentiful and investors always eager has underpinned the British model. That assumption now looks reckless.

A warning for Britain

What emerges from this mosaic is not a distant, theoretical risk. It is an immediate national security problem that reaches into sovereignty, politics and daily life.

British sovereignty is already constrained by foreign leverage¹⁴. Energy pricing is influenced by geopolitical shocks beyond national control. Financial markets are exposed to opaque capital whose withdrawal or redeployment could punish unwelcome policies. Legal systems can be used by foreign linked individuals to intimidate media and activists. Communications infrastructure relies on vulnerable choke points under the sea and in space. None of this means that Britain is occupied. It means that decisions taken in London are shaped by calculations about how far these dependencies can be strained.

Political stability rests on trust that institutions act in the public interest. The stories told in that London club hint at how fragile that trust has become. When young participants cite polling that shows significant support for strong leaders rather than democratic process, they are describing a mood that authoritarians elsewhere will eagerly exploit. When they worry that voters will turn against support for Ukraine if they feel too much domestic pain, they are describing exactly the wedge that Russian information operations are designed to drive deeper.

Critical infrastructure, both physical and digital, faces threats that the country has not properly integrated into its defence thinking. The mention of foreign ships near undersea cables was not an academic aside. It pointed to an uncomfortable fact. Data, financial transactions and military communications often travel along routes that can be mapped, monitored and potentially disrupted. A hostile power does not need to declare war to inflict damage. It can generate deniable incidents at moments of diplomatic tension, forcing the British government to choose between escalation it fears and humiliation it cannot admit.

The defence strategy itself remains trapped between rhetoric and reality. Commitments to spend a higher share of national income on defence sound impressive. Yet the examples raised in the debate of projects that are years late and billions over budget show that money alone does not equal capability. An adversary who watches Britain struggle to field basic armoured vehicles will draw conclusions about the seriousness with which London treats its own security¹⁵.

Civic trust is collateral damage in all of this. Each scandal involving donors, conflict of interest or misuse of public funds chips away at the belief that the state can be relied upon in an emergency. When that belief erodes, citizens become less willing to support difficult choices. Calls for higher taxes to fund defence or investment in resilience will meet a sceptical shrug from voters who think the money will simply vanish into familiar black holes.

The failure here is not only in policy but in political culture. British debate still tends to treat national security as a specialist subject handled in separate committees. The reality revealed by the club discussion is that security is now embedded in questions of housing, education, media, energy and health. To pretend otherwise is to leave the field open to those who view the United Kingdom as a target.

Scenes from the fault line

The value of that November evening lay not in its votes but in the small scenes it contained.

One night, a senior politician from the upper house stood in front of an audience and argued that for most of his lifetime Britain had failed to take defence seriously. He recited the long decline in spending since the mid twentieth century and noted that the era of a comfortable peace dividend is over. His tone was not hawkish so much as resigned. The country, he implied, kept promising that its security was a priority while behaving in the opposite way.

Opposite him, a younger speaker questioned whether defence should come before the BBC, overseas aid, universities or the monarchy. He pointed to the comparatively modest cost of the World Service and the vast reach it commands in places where impartial news is scarce. He reminded the room that American audiences rank it above almost every domestic channel for trust. His point was clear. If Britain wants influence in an age of information warfare, it already possesses a powerful instrument of soft power. To erode that in order to fund marginal increases in hardware would be a strategic error.

Another voice described how support for Ukraine, vital in his view, could become politically toxic if domestic living standards continue to fall. He stressed that Russian messaging thrives because it echoes real grievances. When people feel that their country is indeed, in their words, going to pieces, they do not need bots to tell them so. In that environment, asking them to accept further sacrifices in the name of an abstract security doctrine is risky.

A later contribution returned to fundamentals. Stability, this speaker suggested, is what markets crave above all. If increased defence spending can be framed as an investment in stability rather than an indulgence in militarism, investors might accept it. The question he left hanging was who would carry that argument to an electorate exhausted by promises.

Even the closing reflections contained something important. A participant noted that modern strength rests on pillars that are not military at all. Economic dynamism, innovation, responsive institutions. He warned that states which over invested in armaments at the expense of growth had historically stagnated. The Soviet Union loomed in the background of his argument. A security policy that undermines the foundations of prosperity will eventually undermine security itself.

These scenes reveal a country thinking out loud about existential questions without naming them as such. They also reveal the absence of a joined up response. No one in that room fully articulated the idea that soft power, economic resilience and hard defence are not rival claimants but interdependent components of national survival. That gap is where hostile strategies operate.

The price of looking away

It is tempting to believe that Britain can muddle through. That its institutions, scarred yet durable, will adjust to new pressures as they always have. That war on the continent will eventually settle into a frozen stalemate. That relations with major powers will find a new equilibrium. That the younger generation’s flirtation with strongman fantasies will fade once economic conditions improve.

The evidence points in another direction. If deterrence fails anywhere along NATO’s borders, Britain will be dragged into a conflict for which it is only partially prepared. Even if the direct military threat never materialises, the country could still experience the consequences of a Europe that has been structurally intimidated. Supply chains reoriented under pressure. Energy markets distorted by political bargaining. Alliance commitments treated as negotiable rather than sacrosanct.

A Europe shaped by authoritarian influence would not announce itself with tanks at Calais. It would manifest as a series of quiet concessions. Sanctions that are lighter than they should be. Investigations that never quite conclude. Partnerships with regimes that provide cheap energy or investment in exchange for silence on human rights or aggression. Over time, the norms that protected smaller states and constrained larger ones would erode.

For ordinary life in Britain the changes would be incremental yet profound. Higher and less predictable costs for basics such as heating and food¹⁶. Regular news of cyber incidents affecting hospitals, councils or banks. Fewer trusted sources of information as broadcasters and newspapers struggle or fall under more overt political control. Growing acceptance that large decisions are made elsewhere, whether in foreign capitals or corporate boardrooms, and that national politics is mostly a performance.

Corruption would no longer be regarded as an aberration but as a cost of doing business. Voters would expect their leaders to be compromised in some way. Genuine reformers would find it harder to gain traction since promises of clean government would sound naive in a climate of pervasive cynicism. Disinformation would not need to persuade anyone of specific falsehoods because it would have already sown doubt about the possibility of truth.

The danger is not a dramatic collapse into tyranny. It is the steady transformation of Britain into a state that retains the outward forms of a liberal democracy while losing the internal habits that make the term meaningful. Once that process advances far enough, reversing it becomes extremely difficult.

The Cold clarity