The biggest threats to Western security in 2025
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Too many people in our country and in Western countries think that an absence of conflict means that we're living in a time of peace, and we're just not. They said, "He will start a war." I'm not going to start a war. I'm going to stop wars. I recognise the challenges from Ukraine to Gaza to Sudan and beyond. War, hunger, terrorism. I just find bombs and I find dead people. But it's a really scary thing. Pass up, pass up, pass up! Inside, inside!

I'm Roland Oliphant and this is Battlelines. It's Friday, January 10th, 2025.

On today's episode, leading foreign policy and security experts talk us through the biggest security threats of the coming year. 2025 has started with a bang. Russia's war continues in Ukraine. Syria is grappling with transition. There's still no end in sight to the war in Gaza. And Donald Trump has threatened to annex Greenland, throwing the entire Western alliance into chaos.

It promises to be a year at least as tumultuous as the last. So we have gathered three of the West's leading security experts and asked them one question. What do they think is the biggest threat to Western security in 2025?

Alicia Kearns is a Conservative MP and the Shadow Minister for Security. She previously chaired the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, the first woman to do so, overseeing inquiries into hostage diplomacy, the Wagner Mercenary Group and counter-terrorism.

This year, she's particularly concerned about the West's domestic resilience. So it means whole of state. So it is literally everything from your Women's Institute meetings and who they're hearing from, all the way through to the information space and things like TikTok and the decisions individuals make about what they're choosing to engage with or not, all the way through to sabotage, criminal entities acting as proxies for hostile states, attacks on our democracy, freedom of maritime movement,

underwater sea cables, research, academia. I mean, we really are talking about whole of state resilience. And I think when I look back over the last few decades, I think the West as a whole, we've kind of optimistically, but some might say naively or arrogantly, thought that if we showed the world our values and our market economies and the way our open societies and democracies work, that others would kind of move towards us and say, yes, that's the model we should be adopting.

And whilst you always have to have hope when it comes to diplomacy, and that's the only thing that often keeps me going, what we don't do as diplomats often as countries is plan to fail. And I'm really concerned about where we're going to head with that over the next year, because I think too many people in our country and in Western countries, although I will say the Baltics and the Nordics, I would normally exclude from this, think that an absence of conflict means that we're living in a time of peace. And we're just not. And I think we're in a really vulnerable place at the moment.

It really is recognising that we're not in a time of peace. I think there's a real problem with the societal contract that we currently have where the average person on the street doesn't think they have a role to play in keeping our country safe. You know, when I go to schools, I talk to children about TikTok and the risks of it and the fact that it's been weaponised as a platform. But also when we talk about preparedness to fight, do we...

Do we think the average person on our street is willing to take our arms tomorrow to defend our country and defend everything we stand for and what we have? And we don't have that recognition of the threat. Whereas if you go to Sweden...

Every year you get a note through the door that says, if we are invaded, and if the radio is telling you that we put down our arms and we're not fighting, don't believe them. We will fight to the last house. In Finland, they've got such a sense of responsibility. In Poland, I mean, they're now training their people to take up arms, which I don't think we should be putting our children into gun lessons. I slightly disagree with the polls on that.

But we don't have that whole of state preparedness and we don't have that societal contract where we say to people, you have a duty. So for example, academia. I have come up against academics so often the last few years where I have said to them, why are you partnering with this organization? It is an arm of the Chinese state. Sometimes specifically, it's actually the Chinese military, the PLA that they're partnering with. And they say, well, we're academics. Everything we do is in that kind of

an international forum of friends who work together in the mutual interest of pursuance of science and technology. But that's just not true. That's not what your partner is doing. That's not why they're coming into this. And so I think we really do have

a genuine problem across the whole of our spectrum of society where we don't recognise what warfare looks like this day and the fact that there really are every single day probes, interrogations, attacks on every single part of our society not just politicians like it used to be. I mean we've seen chemical weapons attacks on our shores we have seen constant probing we are fortunate I think that we have yet to see as critical as a cyber incident as I think is possible. You know we could see the entire electrical grid

go down. We could see international communication networks be taken down. We are being probed and tested for that and whether it's possible or not. But you also have, of course, international organised crime networks who are just looking to profit, and then all the proxies who are working for either international crime syndicates or are working for hostile states. And that, again, the plethora of attacks. We went through a few decades where we were being attacked by states,

And then we went to a couple of decades where it was terrorists who behave like states. And now we're back to primarily states who are behaving like terrorists who are attacking us. Russia, without question, is hostile to our efforts, our goals, our objectives. Chinese government currently, the way they are working, is hostile in nature, whether it's transnational repression on our shores, the fact that we have diplomats beating up Hong Kongers on our streets, the fact that we have espionage taking place against elected officials.

sabotage, you name it. The Chinese government is not working with us in an act of faith at this time. But there are also the North Koreans, there's the Iranians, there was the Assad regime.

There are all sorts of countries who at different times choose to act in a way that is hostile towards us. The Donald Trump Greenland example is a really interesting one because it goes to my point around the resilience of the rules-based system. Because actually when we talk about it, what we really mean is a power-based system based on US hegemony, which is reliant on then a kind of network of allies coming together, a constellation of allies with shared norms and values who say, we are going to all stand behind this and together.

And by threatening our allies, we get into quite a difficult place because we don't always know how to respond when our friends threaten us. I would argue we're very bad at democracy as owning the escalation ladder when it comes to hostile states, let alone our own allies.

And the challenge is that all the areas that underpin our system economy rely on the presumption of fair and free-ish kind of trading. And any stresses within that can cause quite serious fractures. So I think it's fair to say that with full US support, the system is just about viable. But if we start to see that diverted or fractured, I think we're in a very difficult place. I think that rules-based system comes under enormous strain.

We need to all recognise that everything stems from the security of the state and we need consensus around resilience. We need to be harder edged in our expectations from our partners and we need to defend the international framework because states are infiltrating those bodies that are meant to uphold that so-called rules-based system. And I think the final one is about being...

absolute in defense of our domestic realm. So that will to win. We are not seeing deterrence diplomacy from countries around the world. We are not getting a grip of the escalation ladder. When we look back to Syria, chemical weapons, where we look at poisoning people, deploying troops, stuff in Hong Kong, the abuses we're seeing, where is...

the West taking control of the escalation ladder. We see Putin constantly gripping it every single time and we need to defend and act. Anything on our shores, we should be absolute in our response to it and absolute in defence of our people. And we spend far too much time apologising and not enough doubling down on protecting our people and our country and our interests.

That was Alicia Kearns. Richard Bannett was the head of the British Army from 2006 to 2009 when he oversaw operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He's now a member of the House of Lords and has continued to speak out on military affairs. In particular, he's called for steep increases in defence spending to deter Russia. I think principally, as far as I'm concerned, is that at some point in the middle of the year, the Labour government will publish its Strategic Defence Review.

And this is going to be a significant piece of work. Quite obviously, they will evaluate the threats to the security of our country.

but more importantly, we'll then set out how we're going to respond to those threats and what level of military capability the United Kingdom will be able to field in both the air, land and maritime domains and of course in space, in cyberspace as well, and in terms of how all these various different domains are integrated. My concern, and it's a concern based on history,

is that the review will not be a genuinely strategic review and set out in great detail what the threats are to our country, but it will take the alternative approach, which is to say how much money defence can expect to receive over the next five or ten years, and we will frame our strategic decisions within the envelope of the finances available.

And my fear is that the finances available are going to be considerably less than they ought to be. And therefore, the deterrent effect that the United Kingdom can contribute to as far as the security of Europe is less than it ought to be. And therefore, the overall threat to our security, principally in Europe from Russia, will remain and will remain high.

because we, or the government, is not going to attribute enough money to defence. Now they talk about lifting our defence expenditure to 2.5% of GDP when circumstances allow, but by any analysis, 2.5% does not cut the mustard. It does not answer the question.

it is more likely 3% or 3.5% of GDP that is going to be required. Just raising to 2.5% is simply going to mean the underfunding in the current defence programme.

So if the UK, as one of the permanent five members of the UN Security Council, as a member of the G7, the G20, a major player in the world, wants to take a responsible position as far as the security of Europe is concerned, more money has got to be allocated by the Treasury to defence, and 2.5% of GDP does not cut it. I'm sure the strategic overview will look at the threat in the Indo-Pacific area formed by China,

But I would argue that this is predominantly the responsibility and should be the responsibility of the United States. I'm sure that the review will look at the instability in the Middle East. And of course, coming back in history, we have some responsibility, having had the mandate for Palestine between the First World War and the Second World War until 1948.

But again, this is not the highest priority concern that the United Kingdom government should have. That is the security of Europe and the threat that's been manifest by the Russian attack on Ukraine from February 2022 onwards. And that threat will remain.

So, if it's accepted that that is the principal threat to our own security, then this plays to a greater increase in our land forces, a greater investment in our land forces supported by our air forces and a modest tailing back of expenditure on the Royal Navy. Now, of course, our absolute security is guaranteed by our nuclear deterrent and the replacement deterrent that must be a high priority.

But I'm afraid we go back to the Labour government decision of 1997-1998 when they decided to have two new large aircraft carriers. Frankly, they are now seen increasingly as two very expensive white elephants that do not play into our current priority of security needs. So it's a tough decision, but it may well be selling one or both or not mothballing one or both as though it is very expensive.

facilities may be the right way to switch our balance of investment towards our land forces supported by air forces to ensure our security against a continuing threat from Putin's Russia. From Lord Robertson's point of view it's very rare in life that you get the chance to do something twice. Now he was the Secretary of State for Defence

in 1997 and 1998. At the time, I was the director of the defense program staff and chaired many of the working groups in that defense review. But I can tell you that at no stage was there ever a discussion about how we should provide air cover over deployed forces.

Should they come from aircraft carriers or should that cover come from land-based fighters with their range extended by air-to-air refueling? No. Instead, a decision was made, a great announcement was made that we would have two large aircraft carriers coming into service in 2012 and 2014. Well, in the end, in the Defence Board, we signed them off in 2007 and I voted against, not surprising me.

They were exposed to cost 3.6 billion. They've come in at 6.2 billion. And the aircraft that fly off there are 100 million plus each. And we can't afford anything like the number of aircraft that we need. So that decision announced by the Defense Review of 1997-1998 under Lord Robertson

is a significant contributor to the difficulties that we have in defence and defence procurement and our own security now. We've invested in the wrong things at the wrong time and I'm afraid the birds are coming home to roost. That was Richard Lord Dannett, the former head of the British Army. After the break, Donald Trump's former National Security Advisor John Bolton gives us his biggest fears for 2025. Welcome back.

John Bolton served as United States Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush and as National Security Advisor to Donald Trump during his first term. Today, he's both an unapologetic foreign policy hawk and a fierce public critic of Mr. Trump. So, where does he think the greatest dangers lie in the coming year?

Well, I think the biggest risk is what happens at the intersection of the growing Beijing-Moscow axis that we've seen in operation around the world with outliers like Iran and North Korea and others. What happens when that collides with the Trump administration's inclination toward American isolationism?

reflected in what Trump has said about Ukraine, what he said about NATO, what he said about a wide variety of things. Will Trump carry through on some of these statements he's made during the campaign and before, which I think could be very detrimental to Ukraine, very detrimental to NATO?

Or will other voices in Washington prevail, as they sometimes did during Trump's first term? I think it's that dynamic more than anything else that we need to worry about. And we're in completely uncharted territory, remembering that Trump can't run for a third term, which is a good thing in my view, but which also means he never has to face the electorate again. So that democratic guardrail is gone now.

I think the fact that it's a geographically coherent axis, it covers the three main areas of potential conflict, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and China's Indo-Pacific periphery. The fact it does have outriders like South Korea and Iran themselves, nuclear proliferators. There are other outriders as well. There's one fewer outrider now that Assad has been ousted in Syria, but Belarus, Iran,

Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua in the Western Hemisphere, others perhaps in Africa, seduced by China's Belt and Road Initiative, protected by Russia's Wagner Group mercenaries. It now provides a strategic coherence to a variety of threats that weren't necessarily related to begin with, but they are now. Take Ukraine.

China's not disinterested in Ukraine. China has upped its purchases of Russian oil and gas. It's helped launder Russian financial assets through China's opaque financial system to evade sanctions. It's undoubtedly supplied

equipment useful to the Russians, if not outright weapons and ammunition, even though they've denied it from time to time. This is just the beginning of this pattern. I'm not saying the axis is fully formed or totally without problems. It's still a work in progress, but the direction, I think, is very clear.

And it's led by two of Donald Trump's best friends in the world, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. What could go wrong? If China is able to assert hegemony over considerable parts of its Indo-Pacific periphery, which is certainly its near-term goal, it will have a dramatic effect.

on Europe and on the United Kingdom. It's interesting, many of America's allies in Asia already understand this. That's why Japan has urged closer cooperation with NATO. They wanted NATO to open a full-scale liaison office in Tokyo. And who objected? France and Germany. Now, NATO will have a small office in Tokyo, but that shows you, I think, the Asians, because they're

close to both China and Russia, see the threat very clearly. South Korea has sold artillery and ammunition to Poland, for example. And I'm told that after reports of North Korean troops fighting for the Russians against Ukraine, the South Koreans before their most recent government crisis inquired gently of Ukraine and others, would you like some South Korean troops to come help you?

This is, you know, if you want to understand why Asia's important, look at AUKUS, the Australia-UK-US project to build nuclear-powered submarines for Australia. An excellent idea, a real paradigm of what we can be doing in the future. I think the UK probably understands the Asia connection better than the rest of Europe, but while we're on the subject of the rest of Europe, Germany's economy is in deep trouble.

because they made several mistakes over the years, abandoning nuclear power, signing on to the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, and trying to make China their principal export market. Now the Chinese are eating their lunch. I mean, it's all there if people look at it. The nature of the Chinese threat has been difficult to understand. Different countries have come at it at different speeds. I'll tell you very frankly, when I was in the White House,

I'm very grateful for Australia and New Zealand telling us about the threat of Huawei and ZTE and their efforts to get control of fifth generation telecommunications.

We had a struggle to convince the UK of that, although I think that the UK is now fully convinced, but countries in Europe still are not, and they are at risk. Now, if people don't see the risk, it's pretty tough to argue why you need more collective defense response to this, but I see the axis forming very clearly. I might say, to my surprise, what I thought was a semi-original thought on my part is now almost conventional wisdom in the United States.

That was John Bolton. Needless to say, Battlelines will be covering all of the issues raised by our guests in the coming year. Thank you very much for joining us. Battlelines is an original podcast from The Telegraph created by David Knowles. If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battlelines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, please leave a review as it helps others to find the show.

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