Sky’s new show The Wargame is genuinely sobering. Its depiction of how a potential conflict with Russia could emerge and escalate is chilling enough – but so too is its portrayal of how under-equipped Britain is to deal with such a crisis.
The series, based on an equally unsettling podcast of the same name, plays out a grave scenario. With Michael Gove and Nicola Sturgeon playing the roles of Prime Minister and Deputy PM (nightmarish stuff in itself), Britain faces a campaign of Russian hybrid warfare.
Two F-35 pilots are assassinated. An ambulance service is crippled by a cyber attack. A Russian warship enters UK waters, testing Britain’s response. When the ship subsequently hits rocks and sinks, the Kremlin claims Britain deliberately attacked it, unleashing a torrent of misinformation and providing Moscow with a pretext to retaliate.
From there, the situation spirals.
One of the most shocking scenes comes when COBRA is briefed on just how little military hardware Britain has available to respond. We all know that years of cuts have left the armed forces stretched, but hearing military chiefs warn that there is “bugger all” available because many of the aircraft, destroyers and submarines we do have are either out of action or undergoing routine maintenance was alarming.
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But The Wargame exposes another vulnerability: Britain’s continued dependence on the United States.
For decades, our defence planning has been built around NATO’s collective strength and, in particular, the assumption that the United States would stand alongside its European allies in a serious conflict. Invoking Article 5 requires unanimous support from the alliance, so if Washington chooses to wash its hands of a conflict a continent away, Britain would be left scrambling for an alternative strategy for defence.
This matters because while The Wargame is fictional, its starting point is not entirely far-fetched.
Russia has previously carried out assassinations on British soil and has been linked to cyber attacks, sabotage and disinformation campaigns across Europe. European governments have warned about the threat posed by Russian hybrid activity. A crisis would not necessarily begin with tanks crossing a border. It could begin with a deliberately manufactured incident – and then escalate beyond anyone’s control.
There will inevitably be those who look at this and say Britain should not be preparing for war; that such money would be better spent on wages, public services or tackling the cost of living. That overlooks an uncomfortable reality: preparing for conflict is not the same as seeking it. We can choose whether to prepare for that possibility, but we cannot choose whether it happens.
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That is why the lesson from The Wargame should not simply be that Britain needs more military capability, important as it is. It is that we need to build a country capable of withstanding disruption.
Recent technical problems grounding flights and causing delays across British airports have offered a much more mundane example of the same vulnerability. If a failure in one piece of critical infrastructure can cause widespread disruption in ordinary circumstances, it is worth asking what happens when that disruption is deliberate and targeted at several systems at once.
Resilience rarely feels urgent until something breaks. The uncomfortable message from The Wargame is that we should strengthen ours before we find out just how much we have to lose.
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