Britain To Aim Its Special Forces at Russia

June 15, 2019 (EIRNS)—Now that the war on terrorism is “winding down,” Britain’s special forces, made up of the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and Special Reconnaissance Regiment, are to be turned on Russia under a plan now being considered by government ministers, called “Special Operations Concept.” According to a report in the Guardian, underlying the plan is a belief that the nature of modern warfare is changing, with less emphasis on conventional military action and instead a shift towards a more subtle conflict between nation-states. Last week, the Guardian reports, Gen. Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the Chief of the Army General Staff, talked about the emerging thinking in British circles, saying that peace and war were “two increasingly redundant states.” In a clear reference to Russia, Carleton-Smith claimed authoritarian regimes were “exploiting the hybrid space that exists in between” disinformation, subversion or cyber where lives may not immediately be at stake, but economies, livelihoods and ways of thinking are.

The story of the redirection of the special forces was first broken on June 13 by BBC correspondent Mark Urban.

The Russian Embassy in London found these media reports alarming. “Of course, it’s hard for us to say how reliable this information is and how it corresponds with real tasks of the U.K. armed forces. However, if it is true, this decision appears to be, firstly, erroneous and, secondly, questionable as far as London’s compliance with its international obligations is concerned,” the embassy was quoted by TASS.

“In fact, this would mean that U.K. defense agencies are paving the way for removing the existing restrictions imposed by the international law and to claim the right to carry out military operations beyond the limits of self-defense, which constitutes a direct breach of the UN Charter,”

the embassy said.

“This would not just become a yet another step towards deliberately destroying the world order based on the international law, but also create major risks of those ‘hybrid’ operations evolving into full-fledged armed conflicts as a result of various coincidences and misunderstandings.”