Warnings of a global war from someone Trump trusts

The new emerging axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea has created “the most serious and most dangerous challenge” since the second world war, a former top US military chief has told The Times. “China, Russia Iran and North Korea are working effectively together. What has happened is that they have perceived us, the US, to be weak and that we have lost the political will to confront them,” General Jack Keane said. He warned that the danger will have to be rapidly addressed when President-elect Donald Trump takes power in January. It will mean a comprehensive reform of the Pentagon to rebuild the military, fix the ossified business practices and replenish the defence industrial base. The retired four-star general and former vice chief of the US Army, is one of the most influential military figures in Washington. Everyone seeks his advice, democrats and republicans, including the man who is to be the 47thpresident. They go way back. When Trump won the election in 2016, he wanted Keane to be his defence secretary. But tragically, the favoured general’s wife had just died. Keane reluctantly declined the job. Now with the same president about to return to the Oval Office, Keane has been laying out the challenges ahead for him and his national security team. The war in Ukraine is top of the list of dangers for Trump’s administration. The axis of China, Russia and North Korea is no more clearly defined than in the war in Ukraine, where thousands of troops from Pyongyang are now fighting alongside Russian soldiers against Ukrainian forces who seized 1,000 square kilometres of territory in western Russia’s Kursk region in August. “At the moment there are 10,000 North Korean troops who have joined the Russians. But is this a one time deal or do we have the beginnings of a pipeline of North Korean troops coming to support Russia? “ Keane questioned. “Another country fighting alongside Russia to try and overthrow Ukraine? This is the biggest escalation of the war .” This week’s launching by Ukraine of the US ATACMS long-range missile and Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile into Russia for the first time, and President Putin’s firing of an experimental intermediate-range hypersonic ballistic missile against Ukraine in retaliation have raised the danger levels of a potential global war. Could there be a peace settlement, promised by Trump, with such an inflammatory atmosphere increasing by the day? “Putin is accelerating things. I’m in favor of negotiating with Putin when it is in Ukraines best interest. But I don’t think he really wants to negotiate a deal. He still wants to take the whole country, “ Keane said. “However, he has significant challenges. He’s been trying to take the whole Donbass region in the east for eight months. But he has had only small but steady tactical successes., no major operational gains, and he’s suffering 30,000 casualties every month. In October it was 57,000. That’s staggering. “But he doesn’t want to go for another mobilisation because of the fear of stirring up protest. He won’t go to recruit in western Russia where the educated live, he goes to the rural areas and poor communities and gives them money to join up. He’s avoiding a national call-up because he knows it will be resisted. When the soldiers from these poor families are killed they received 150,000 dollars for every dead body. For people in impoverished communities, it’s a huge figure and it buys their silence. “He also has significant equipment problems. Russia has lost so many tanks and other armoured vehicles his industrial base can’t keep up. Thousands of vehicles have been destroyed. “ “Mechanised offensive operations as we know them have effectively ceased because of Ukraine’s drones. The technology of warfare has changed. It was always said that the best way to destroy a tank was with another tank. But that’s not the case anymore. Drones and anti-tank weapons and anti-tank mines have taken over. “The Ukrainians have also developed long-range drones that can go hundred of miles into Russian territory. So I don’t think they are in danger of losing their country to the Russians. “So If we can help [President] Zelensky by giving him everything he needs and fund their drone forces, they should be able to take back lost territory in 2025. But support for the war is eroding and the soldiers are exhausted. The new recruits replacing them are not so well trained. They can pick their skills up as they fight but then they become casualties.” Will Trump do as he pledged and start to end the war on his first day in office? “I think there’s a difference between what has been said in the campaign and what is now being discussed among the people with the responsibility for dealing with the war. These people are all getting classified briefings and they likely know that what is needed is a favourable outcome for Ukraine, at a minimum, when negotiations end. “The pressure on Zelensky is enormous. This is not only about giving up the 18 per cent of territory the Russians have seized, it’s about giving up Ukrainian lives. The Ukrainians living in these areas will be subjugated under Russian domination. This is what Zelensky cannot allow to happen. He needs leverage so that he gives up less territory. That’s why we have to give him everything he needs.” To meet the growing threat from the new anti-West axis, Keane envisages significant changes at the Pentagon under the Trump administration. As a member of a congressional commission which examined every facet of President Biden’s defence strategy, Keane gained unique insight into the way the Pentagon appears to have failed to adapt to meet the new security challenges. “Our assessment was that the DoD [department of defence] challenges were more formidable than at any time in eight decades. “In the last four years we haven’t increased our defence budget because of inflation. It has been flat under Biden. This was irresponsible and reckless. We have got to prioritise our capabilities to deter a major conventional war, ie with China. China is the most rapidly developing military in the world and it has been going on for 20 years. “The acceleration in their defence capabilities has been extraordinary and they outgun us and outman us in every platform except submarines. Meanwhile our army is the smallest it has been since prior to the second world war, the air force is the smallest in 40 years and our navy which needs 360 ships is something in the low 290s and there is no hope of getting even close to the number we need for ten to 15 years. “The Trump team has got decisions to make and they are going to have to be made pretty soon. We have war in Europe and war in the Middle East and President Xi [Zinping] threatening war. There is the potential for the first time since the second world war of another global war. “We were prepared to deal with a global war when we had the Soviet Union [as the West’s adversary] but are we prepared now to confront a global war? Our Commission concluded we are not prepared. “One of the problems is that our defence industrial base is depleted. Prior to the collapse of the Soviet Union we had 55 Tier 1 defence companies [biggest and best] . Today we have just five, such as General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin. That gives you a sense of how the industry has collapsed. “The war in Ukraine has been a major learning lesson. We have raided our war stocks to send weapons and munitions to Ukraine and it forced us to come to grips with what the stockpiles should be for our use. When we conduct war games now with China in mind we find that some key weapon systems run out after two weeks and others in several weeks, which means we could lose. That needs to be fixed. “We have to reach out to the commercial non-defense sector to purchase items they can produce very rapidly. At the moment Congressional restrictions prevent us from purchasing tens of thousands of drones. Compare this with Ukraine. By the end of this year they will have developed in Ukraine 1.4 million drones with some the help from US and Eoropean companies operating in Ukraine. Next year they aim to have five million. We build at best a few hundred drones a year. The Pentagon is trying now to turn this around. “We need to persuade Congress to give us more agile funding so that we can buy drones off the shelf and get them into operation. We have to change the Pentagon’s business practices. We have thousands of civilians involved with these weapons programs but it’s all about the emphasis on cost, performance and schedule which drives a risk averse process . We test, test, test everything and it drags on. It takes too long and it costs too much. If we don’t change the business practices in the Pentagon a portion of any increase in the defence budget in the next administration will just be squandered. “Again, look at Ukraine. They have managed to do serious damage to the Russian navy without having a navy just by developing and deploying aerial and underwater drones. We can’t wait years to get them through Congress. Congress writes the cheques and nothing gets done without their authorisation. In the DoD we need competent people who have the right experience. The status quo is no longer viable. The Trump team are coming up with names. the sort of people who will turn things round. “