Under yet another attack from Russia, a fictional British government of former ministers and military chiefs face a terrifying choice in the final episode of The Wargame.
The home secretary, played by Amber Rudd, asks a key question.
“We have the nuclear deterrent. In what circumstances would we use it prime minister?”
Sir Ben Wallace, a former defence secretary who is playing the PM, offers his view – but is it one that is shared by the rest of his wartime cabinet?
The British side is struggling to respond to mounting pressure from an imagined Kremlin in episode five of the Sky News and Tortoise podcast series, released on Tuesday.
The Russian leam has unleashed waves of missile strikes and is demanding the UK agrees to an unconditional ceasefire.
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London remains defiant, but with only limited conventional fighting power and with its NATO allies still not fully committed to rallying to help, the UK’s options are dangerously limited.
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The dilemma exposes the particular peril for a nuclear-armed nation, such as Britain, that has allowed its conventional fighting power to shrink too far.
It means, in a crisis, the UK no longer has the ability to sustain a fight conventionally, so escalating to nuclear war would have to happen far more rapidly – or else admit defeat.
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Rebuilding conventional military capability and capacity as well as restoring wider national resilience, though, will be expensive.
Whether or not the government and the public want to pay for this kind of conventional deterrence, well that’s the big choice.
Episode five comes out as the real prime minister, Sir Keir Starmer, travels to The Hague for a major summit of NATO powers.
