The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) an "independent" organisation in partnership with the British Army held this year's annual two-day conference "Pulling the Future into the Present" on July 22-23 at Church House Deans Yard, Westminster, London. Sponsoring the conference were BAE systems, Lockheed Martin, Babcock and many other war industries. Many of them are supplying weapons and military support to the Israeli war of genocide in Gaza and to NATO's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia.

Although few people have heard of it RUSI claims to be "the world's oldest and the UK's leading defence and security think tank" founded 190 years ago in the days of British colonialism. Speaking at this conference were Britain's top generals. There were 29 speakers listed [1] from the military and military circles together with executives involved in weapons production, logistics and military research. Speakers included Admiral Tony Radakin, Chief of the Defence Staff, and the Army's newly appointed Chief of the General Staff (CGS) [2], General Sir Roland Walker KCB DSO ADC who brought the conference to a close. Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's former commander-in-chief, was also given his first public speech in his new role as his country's ambassador to Britain.

Although there are scant reports of the conference, reports published revealed further the well-known fact that Britain's land warfare arrangements no longer have the pretence of giving any priority to defending Britain's shores against attack or defending the interests of the British people. General Sir Roland Walker made that very clear in his published concluding speech, "Pulling the Future into the Present" [3]. He declared "a bold ambition" to "double the Army's fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade" and that "our offer to the joint force [NATO] must be based around three configurations of employment and two of command and control, none of these are exclusive, and all are NATO first and national second." [our emphasis] He said that they all involve command and control in Europe and beyond, "making other peoples' mass more lethal" and form "partnerships in places that matter... and by illustration will include our forward land forces in Estonia and Poland, as well as the global deployments of the Land Special Operations Force, as well as our wider global footprint." [4]

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He made further points on the need for British "Reaction Forces, designed for speed to react quickly to cauterise crises when they flare and where their fighting power comes from velocity, not mass", and "Response forces, ultimately organised and optimised to fight in wars at scale..." He said, "Devastating destruction from ever greater distance is the aim."

Also, whilst these headlines of the conference as stated were claiming that Britain would "double the Army's fighting power in three years and triple it by the end of the decade", General Walker tried to emphasise that this was about force and not numbers. He talked about his struggle to shake "the 'big Army' mindset, where some still believe that raw troop numbers alone determine fighting power". However, he replaced this mindset with an even more dangerous illusion of the Anglo-US NATO alliance's capacity to win against superior forces. He advocated that enemies "would be met with such devastating lethality that they would be decisively defeated in the first battle and would be denied a strategy of a quick war". The only conclusion that can be drawn is that this is about wars of mass destruction and the continued criminal use of weapons of mass destruction against peoples, countries and rival powers. In other words, the dangerous warmonger mindset of these imperialists of devastating destruction from ever greater distance is indeed their aim to inculcate in their military circles.

A report on Zaluzhny speech at the conference by Tarik Cyril Amar, a German historian, [5] also picked up this significance. He said that the genocidal slaughter committed by Israel in Gaza is more likely to leave a deeper imprint on the future of Britain's and NATO warfare methods than that of Valery Zaluzhny's presentation on warfare in Ukraine. Pathetically, Zaluzhny, in serving the interests of NATO, tried to claim at the conference that the "changes which were invented on the battlefields of the Russian-Ukrainian war" were very likely to "determine the outlines of wars and the art of war in the 21st century". Zaluzhny advocated in what he said that Ukrainians can keep dying, while the West can field-test new military technologies. Amar remarked; "And there you have it. Ukraine's real future, according to Zaluzhny, is one where more Ukrainians will be fed into the meat-grinder of a losing war, but on the upside, the meat-grinder will be constantly modernised and updated with the newest ways of killing and dying, compliments of the West." [5]

Protestors at Newquay Airport, October 2022 - Photo: Phil Green and Peter Burt

Addressing the representatives of the war industries at the conference, the Chief of the General Staff said: "But I'm not just appealing to industry. Capital is flowing into the Defence sector. Obviously, there is self-interest at play in the form of profit, but that's how our system works. But investors also recognise that a lot is at stake and we share mutual values in the rules-based system as well as mutual interests in maintaining it." In other words, this is a future that threatens. It is the mutual mass destruction of countries and peoples for the profits of war industries, as well as other oligopolies and billionaires whose "rules-based system as well as mutual interests" aim to conquer all markets globally and to destroy what they cannot control.

What was revealed by Britain's top General at this conference, if this desperate stuff is adopted in these military circles, is a future rooted in hankering after Britain's colonial past, its wars of invasion and occupation across the globe in India, Africa and Asia. In recent times, it has meant the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and its support for NATO's expansion in eastern Europe and into Ukraine, provoking and escalating a proxy war with Russia. It has meant Britain's support for and arming the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. In other words, Britain's land warfare conference must be seen as their attempt to pull those in military circles into this anachronistic and bankrupt NATO warmongering mindset and actions for the future, tying Britain to NATO's war chariot. Nothing has been learned by this mindset about the need to resolve conflicts in the world peacefully. This could have been done so many times before the Ukraine war started and through the whole history of Israeli crimes in Palestine. Only division, escalation and war are NATO's stock in trade. The integration of the British armed forces into the NATO command firmly places them as an aggressive force, tied to the global war aims of the US, with no pretence that they are an independent force for the defence of British soil.

Our responsibility, the responsibility of the working class and people of Britain, is to fight for peace in the present and future and bring forward the new movements for changing society including in military circles. Such vital questions have to be sorted out by new arrangements in society where the people are empowered to make the decisions. Such new arrangements will be able to end these pro-war government arrangements as well as the pro-war government itself. There is a need for peaceful solutions to the conflicts in the world as well as resolving the many problems faced by society and humanity on all fronts.

Britain Must Withdraw from the Aggressive NATO Alliance!
No to NATO! Yes to Peace!

Notes
1. https://my.rusi.org/events/rusi-land-warfare-conference-2024/speakers.html
2. The Chief of the General Staff is the professional head of the British Army. General Sir "Roly" Walker took up his post on June 15 this year, his appointment having been announced in December 2023. See: https://www.gov.uk/government/people/roly-walker
3. Pulling the Future into the Present, Rusi Land War Conference, 2024 - The British Army
https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/news/2024/07/pulling-the-future-into-the-present-rusi-land-warfare-conference/#:~:text=The%20two%2Dday%20conference%2C%20which,the%20UK%20and%20its%20allies.
4. Britain Takes the Lead Role In Enhanced Forward Presence. The army is currently deployed in over 80 countries around the world. Deployments vary in strength from single military advisors to full operational deployments - MOD
https://www.army.mod.uk/
5. Meatgrinder 2.0: General Zaluzhny Recommends Regular Upgrades for the Slaughter in Ukraine. Tarik Cyril Amar, a historian from Germany working at Koç University, Istanbul, on Russia, Ukraine, and Eastern Europe, the history of World War II, the cultural Cold War, and the politics of memory. First published in RT, 25 July 2024
Accessible on the substack: https://substack.com/home/post/p-147037924

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