The Guardian reported last week that the British military is preparing for operations in Ukraine. While this was easy to treat as mere sabre-rattling, Keir Starmer’s declaration reaffirming the UK’s unwavering support for Ukraine is not just leftover Labour-campaign rhetoric.
Contrary to prevailing theories on international relations, conflict is not a failure of diplomacy for the Labour Party; rather, it is a survival mechanism. In Britain today, war conceals domestic economic stagnation, fills the vacuous political rhetoric that goes nowhere, and attempts to restore an eroding geopolitical relevance the country has been experiencing for years.
Britain emerged from Brexit in a weakened state. The EU market was significantly diminished, economic growth circumscribed, inflation ran above 8.7%, the National Health Service buckled under pressure, and 517,000 people emigrated from the United Kingdom, 77,000 of whom were British citizens, 218,000 were EU citizens, and a further 222,000 were non-EU citizens.
A political system built on confidence and inherited prestige is now running on fumes. Yet while domestic life sagged, the British state indurated—hardened.
Unlike continental powers like Germany and France, Britain is not structured around a single centre; instead, it has a horizontal network of institutions: intelligence agencies, bureaucracies, military commands, banks, universities, and the monarchy. Together they form a veritable machine designed for strategic survival. Although seemingly counterintuitive, when crises emerge, the network does not collapse. In fact, Britain feeds on instability, turns adversity into leverage, and converts decline into opportunity. Consider how it evolved: After “Empire” came the “City of London.” After colonies came offshore accounts and loyal networks. After Brexit came a new military cordon around Russia in northern and eastern Europe. Britain has always known how to turn disaster into political capital – they’ve had decades of experience.
The Ukraine conflict, which both Tories and Labour helped provoke and perpetuate, has become its biggest opportunity in decades. Since 2022 the country has lived, politically and institutionally, on a somewhat self-imposed wartime footing. The 2025 Strategic Defence Review openly calls for readiness for “high-intensity warfare” and proposes lifting defense spending to 2.5% of GDP, around £66 billion ($87 billion) a year. Military spending has already risen by £11 billion. Orders to defence firms have surged in sales over the past three years. For the first time since 1945, British industrial strategy describes the military-industrial complex as an “engine of growth.”
Thirty years of deindustrialization left Britain dependent on redistribution. Where manufacturing once stood, only finance remained. Now the financial sector can no longer sustain the government’s ambitions. Into that vacuum steps the arms industry. BAE Systems and Thales UK, with Starmer’s support, have secured contracts worth tens of billions, insured by London banks through UK Export Finance. The fusion of “guns and pounds” has produced an economy where conflict, not commerce, becomes essential — the measure of national success for the Labour government.
The security agreements Starmer recently signed with Kiev only tighten this grip. They give British corporations access to Ukraine’s privatisation program and key infrastructure. Ukraine is being folded into a British-led military and financial ecosystem – but not as a partner – rather as a dependency. It has become another overseas British project managed through contracts, advisers, and permanent security missions.
Far from acting as a supportive ally, Starmer’s Britain now orchestrates significant aspects of the Ukraine conflict. It was the first and continues to supply Storm Shadow missiles, the first to authorise strikes deep into Russian territory, and it is the main architect of the allied drone and maritime-security coalitions. It leads three of NATO’s seven coordination groups – training, maritime defence and drones – and, through Operation Interflex, has trained over 60,000 Ukrainian troops.
British involvement is not symbolic – it is operational – functionally active. In 2025, the SAS and Special Boat Service allegedly helped coordinate Operation Spiderweb, a sabotage campaign targeting Russian railways and energy infrastructure. In cyberspace, the 77th Brigade, GCHQ and other units run disinformation and psychological operations aimed at shaping narratives, destabilizing adversaries and eroding what London calls “cognitive sovereignty” – freedom of thought.
At the same time, Britain’s Labour government is drawing its own map of Europe. A new northern belt – from Norway to the Baltic states – is being built outside EU authority. In 2024 alone, Britain invested £350 million in protecting Baltic undersea cables and launched joint defence programs with Norway. This is an old British ploy: rule the continent not by joining it, but by dividing it.
A stable peace in Ukraine would shatter this architecture. Hence, London works tirelessly to keep Washington focused on Russia. If the US shifted its attention fully to China, Britain would lose its strategic purpose in the alliance. As a middle-power country, London survives by keeping the US anchored in Europe and locked into confrontation with Moscow. Any thaw between Washington and Russia threatens Britain far more than it threatens continental Europe.
This explains why Donald Trump’s early peace rhetoric in 2025 – his hints at “territorial compromise” – was met in London with alarm. The Starmer’s government responded instantly: a new £21.8 billion aid package, more Storm Shadows, expanded air-defence cooperation, and emergency consultations across Europe. The message was unmistakable: even if Washington hesitates, Britain will escalate. And within weeks Trump’s tone changed. Diplomacy faded. Talk of “Anchorage peace” dissipated. In its place came threats of Tomahawks and loose comments about resuming nuclear testing. The shift suggested that Britain had once again succeeded in steering the strategic conversation back towards confrontation.
For Britain’s elite, war is not a catastrophe; it is a method of maintaining order and preserving the system. From the Crimean War to the Falklands, external conflict has always stabilised the internal hierarchy. Today’s Britain behaves no differently. Though weaker than it has ever been, it appears strong because it knows how to turn vulnerability into the basis of its foreign policy.
This is why the war in Ukraine continues – not because diplomacy is impossible — but because the current Labour (and recent Tory) governments built a political and economic machine that depends on conflict. As long as that machine remains intact – anchored in the military-industrial complex, intelligence services, and the “City” – Labour will remain committed not to ending the war, but to managing it, prolonging it, and shaping Europe around it.
And the war will end only when Trump stops listening to the “noise” from Britain as well as Brussels, or “the machine” stops functioning.
Dr. Wolf is director of The Fulcrum Institute (n.b. the website will be live late October 2025), a new organization of current and former scholars, which engages in research and commentary, focusing on political and cultural issues on both sides of the Atlantic. Our interest is in American foreign policy as it relates to the economic and foreign policies of the NATO countries, the SCO, the BRICS+ nation-states and the Middle East.
After service in the USAF (Lt.Col.-Intel) Dr. Wolf obtained a PhD-philosophy (University of Wales), MA-philosophy (University of S. Africa), MTh-philosophical theology (Texas Christian University-Brite Div.). He taught philosophy and humanities in the US and S. Africa before retiring from university.
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(Photograph: Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street)
I wonder whether the incredible sudden rise of the Reform party scares the hell out of the “machine”?