March 24, 2025 (EIRNS)—Britain has little left of its conventional military capabilities, and everybody knows it. That may be a contributing factor behind the nuclear threats U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has been making against Russia. “What the hell is going on with the Europeans?” Tucker Carlson asked White House special envoy Steve Witkoff during an interview last week, reported The Times. “Keir Starmer is saying ‘We’re gonna send British troops.’ Their entire military is smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps, the country is dying economically. … Is that a posture? Is it a pose?” The Times usefully points out that the U.S. Marines, including reserves, number about 200,000 troops whereas all of the British military services combined consist of about 197,000.
Witkoff suggested that Britain and other Western European nations failed to understand Russia’s aims. “I think it’s a combination of a posture and a pose and a combination of also being simplistic,” he said. “I think there’s this sort of notion of, we’ve all got to be like Winston Churchill, the Russians are going to march across Europe. I think that’s preposterous by the way, we have something called NATO that we did not have in World War II.”
Within Britain, Starmer’s posturing is being seen as political theater. On March 23, senior military sources dismissed the plans, telling The Telegraph that “Sir Keir” had “got ahead of himself.”
One senior Army source said it was not “remotely possible” for a plan of support for Ukraine to be drawn up in that time. He said: “There is no defined military end-state or military-strategic planning assumptions. It’s all political theatre. Starmer got ahead of himself with talk of boots on the ground before he knew what he was talking about, which is why we hear less about it now and more about jets and vessels which are easier to do and don’t need basing in Ukraine.”
The Telegraph reported last week that RAF fighter jets would police the skies above Ukraine under proposals that were discussed by the coalition when 30 nations met at Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) in Northwood, west London. It was suggested that British Typhoons could provide air cover to any troops on the ground, although the number of troops that may be sent in, if any, has not been clarified. One defense source described the talks as being in their “early stages,” adding that they were as much about the 30 nations involved “getting to know each other.”
“It’s politics,” one military source said. “There’s no military sense in it.” He added that neither the Russians nor the Americans supported the coalition which was being led by the U.K., and cautioned that the coalition’s talks were complicated by the fact that “no one knows what the mission is.”
“It cannot even protect itself. What is the mission? What is its legitimacy? What are the rules of engagement? How is it commanded, supplied and housed? How long is it there for and why? No one knows,” he said. Such a force can be a provocation, but this of course is not said.
