CHACR COMMENTARY // JULY, 2024
BEWARE THE INCENDIARY IMPACT OF STATE-SPONSORED SABOTAGE STRIKES
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HIS Commentary is based on more than 20 years’ experience at the most dangerous edge of counter-terrorism policing in Northern Ireland, including first-hand exposure to the negative impact of terrorism and subversion on politics and society’s trust in their government to protect them.1 This experience included close cooperation with the Army and Armed Forces to ensure protection of the public. An enhanced domestic role for the Army is not, however, in the UK’s strategic culture or interest. Nevertheless, the government must recognise an increased likelihood of sabotage, subversion and state-sponsored terrorism, and the surprising and unforeseen threats that they present. On 22 May 2024, the same day This Commentary has not been attributed to the author due to the sensitivities involved in their deployments.
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that then Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced the General Election, the then Deputy Prime Minister delivered a speech at the London Defence Conference that spoke of proliferating threats, geopolitical tensions at heights not seen for decades and ongoing work with NATO on the UK National Defence and Resilience Plan. The tone encouraged a welcome spirit of openness around national preparedness. More dramatically, Dr Robert Johnson, the former Director of the Secretary of State for Defence’s Office of Net Assessment and Challenge, recently told the Financial Times “the UK has reached a situation where it cannot defend the British homelands properly”. His words have echoes of Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin’s speech in the House of Commons on 10 November 1932. Baldwin, speaking just under seven years before the start of the Second World War, considered that the greatest cause of concern in the UK was fear of air attack. He
warned: “It is well for the man in the street to realise that there is no power on Earth that can protect him from being bombed, whatever people may tell him. The bomber will always get through.” Such a caution has been brought to the fore by the impact of Russian air, drone and missile attacks in Ukraine and recent reports of NATO’s air defence frailties that suggest a “major vulnerability in our security”. Closer to home, the Royal United Services Institute condemned the UK’s air defence capability as “entirely inadequate”. However, the focus of the Deputy Prime Minister’s message was not around preparation for large scale, spectacular attacks, the like of which the UK hasn’t seen since the highpoint of the IRA’s mainland bombing campaigns in the early 1970s or the German Blitz in 1940. Instead Oliver Dowden’s focus was on launching a new gov.uk website – based on the National Risk Register – that features
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practical household resilience information, during which he praised Finland’s ‘72 hours campaign’, which encourages the civilian population to be selfsufficient in the first three days of any crisis. The term of reference within the speech was the impact of Covid and biosecurity more broadly – an uncontentious topic given recent history – but he also made one brief reference to the potential for attacks in the UK and the role Defence may play. This reflects concern about the growing number of apparently state sanctioned or sponsored acts of sabotage across Europe. In early June 2024 police arrested a man for attempting to set buses on fire in Prague, an act the Czech Prime Minister considered was part of an orchestrated and funded hybrid warfare strategy by Russia. In the same month, one person was killed after an explosion at the Mesko factory, which is the largest manufacturer of ammunition, anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles in Poland