Defence, Resilience And The Battle For Truth || Major General Tim Cross

In this episode of Fault Lines, Rod Whiting is joined by Major General Tim Cross to discuss resilience, national security, and the changing nature of modern conflict.

As Britain debates defence spending, military readiness and its role within NATO, Tim argues that resilience is about far more than tanks, ships and aircraft. From cyber attacks and disinformation to social cohesion, leadership, and public confidence, the battleground has expanded far beyond the front line.

The conversation explores why Russia remains a serious challenge despite its struggles in Ukraine, what lessons Britain can learn from countries such as Finland, how hostile actors exploit social media and division, and why the “battle for truth” may be one of the defining security issues of our age.

Most importantly, Tim explains why resilience is not simply the responsibility of governments and armed forces, but something that involves every citizen.

A thoughtful and timely discussion about the threats facing Britain, the choices ahead, and the importance of engaging in the national conversation.

For more analysis like this, visit Fault Lines on Substack: 👇

https://rodwhiting.substack.com/

Contact: rod@rodwhiting.com

Transcript

Introduction - The Battle For Truth

Speaker 1 0:00

So this battle for truth is what we're talking about, really, and and our people understanding what that truth means for us and the lies and the propaganda. As somebody once said, truth is true even if nobody believes it, just as lies are lies even if everyone believes them. And we have to make sure that people understand the distinction between those things.

Speaker 0:30

Hello and welcome to Fault Lines. I'm Rod Whiting, and my guest this week is Major General Tim Cross. Tim, hello, and thank you for giving some time to Fault Lines. Not at all, Rod. Good to be with you. Tim is a retired British Army officer. He's best known for commanding bomb disposal operations in Northern Ireland, leading the NATO response to the Kosovo humanitarian crisis and his involvement in post-war reconstruction planning for the 2003 Iraq invasion. Tim, it's good to have you with us at a fascinating moment for UK defense. The long-awaited defense investment plan still hasn't been published, and we've already seen ministerial resignations and public disagreement over defense spending. Before we get into the politics of it all, we're hearing the word resilience an awful lot. Something that's really at the heart of fault lines.

What does Resilience Really Mean in the Context of Defence and Security

Speaker 1:22

When you hear that word resilience, what does it actually mean to you?

Speaker 1 1:26

Well, it takes me back to the definition. Why do we have armed forces? And I and the answer to that from a British point of view is that the armed forces deliver fighting power. They're designed to go off and defend the UK if necessary in UK territorial waters, but also to go and fight if necessary in other places around the world. Now that fighting comes in three components. There is the physical component of fighting power. It's the stuff, the equipment, you know, the big capital stuff, but also all the rest of it, and the ability to sustain that through your logistics during your operation. The second component is the conceptual component, the understanding of how to fight. So maneuver warfare in today's terms, as opposed to attritional warfare, you know, interesting in the context of Ukraine. Understanding how we're going to fight obviously influences the sort of equipment you want to be buying and how you put that equipment into the field. And the third component is the moral component of fighting power. It's the will to win, the will to fight, if necessary, to die on a battlefield. You can have the best stuff and you can know how to use it, but if you have a poor moral component, then you're not going to win. And there's lots of examples in history for that. The Americans lost in Vietnam because they just lost the moral component, and the Viet Cong had a very strong moral component. And we're seeing that in Ukraine today. The Ukrainians have a very powerful moral component. You know, you have to have the resilience of all of those things. You have to have the right stuff and enough of it. You have to understand how to fight it and the ability to move and change as events move and change on the battlefield. And you have to have this moral component that is sustained through thick and thin. If you don't have those three in balance, and in particular the moral component, then you're not going to have the resilience to sustain yourself through these operations.

From Expeditionary Warfare to Home Defence

Speaker 3:08

Al Carn's , in his resignation speech, said something very interesting actually , which was that what has changed is that whereas before we were an expeditionary force that would go abroad to fight and and take equipment with them, now we have to be minded to defend the country from home - and the the requirement is for the home front to be as resilient as the military.

Speaker 1 3:33

That's absolutely right. I mean, if we go back, you know, so the Cold War came to an end at the end of 1989, 1990, and um we had a very powerful military in place at that time. But the pretty quickly after that, we then deployed to the first Gulf War, and we entered a period where people talked about wars of choice. You could decide as a nation whether you wanted to be involved. And we deployed on that operation as part of the coalition. We then deployed to the Balkans, which I personally did three times in the 1990s, and then the decision about going into Iraq in 2003 and engaging in Afghanistan over that period, you know, 2005, 6, 7, etc. Those were wars of choice. And I deployed on a number of those operations. But when I deployed, I always left a secure home base. There was no suggestion of a threat of uh against Marchwood Military Port, for example, where we where we deploy all of our equipment through the um the military port in Marchwood, or indeed against our air bases or whatever. And we would then go off somewhere and um you know engage in that operation for as long as necessary, and then we would come back again. And there was no threat against places like Cyprus, perceived to be a threat against places like Cyprus. That has changed. Al is absolutely right. Uh and the uh I have, to be honest, I've been saying this for for the last four or five years. What we've seen happening in Ukraine, but also in other places like the Middle East, is that the the range and the ability of people to attack the home base is has changed. So this whole business of what we call the hybrid warfare, the gray zone warfare, we we saw it yesterday in one sense with the Russians you know shooting at a yacht, but we also know the threat against the undersea cables. And we have two new domains in warfare today. The traditional domains of air, land, and sea have been uh been joined by cyber and by space. And those two domains are very different, and actually, in many respects, underpinning that moral component I was talking about, I think it's maybe more difficult in those domains, particularly the cyber domain. So we are being attacked daily, cyber from Russia and indeed other countries like China, North Korea, uh uh, etc. And the threat of you know how we may be hit in that home base is is uh has substantially changed. So Al's absolutely right. And we need to understand that and we need to take it seriously. And to be fair, as part of the conversation that's going on at the moment, where do you put the resources? Do you put those resources into the hype, into the hybrid space, into the cyberspace, or into traditional warfighting capabilities? Because those traditional capabilities are still happening in places like Ukraine, they haven't gone away completely.

Is Russia Really a Threat to Britain?

Speaker 6:07

We'll get to that because that's clearly at the heart of the of the conflicts between the Treasury and Defence Chiefs - where do we spend the rather small amount of money that we have available to us? It's a key argument, but we'll come to that in a minute. I just want to deal with something else first, which is the threat, because in the first episode of Fault Lines, Sam Olsen talked to us uh about the geopolitical background, the fact that the world is now a dangerous place. And I think that that is filtering through to the uh to the uh the the general public. The second episode with Edward Lucas, you've listened to that, dealt much more with the actual threats to the UK, not least from Russia. But there is still a significant group of people in the UK who don't accept that Russia is the threat that that you and I might consider to be a threat. They think that, well, look, they haven't had much success against the Ukrainians, then they're no threat to us. How do you counter that argument?

Speaker 1 7:13

Well, first thing I'd say is that you know the world is always a dangerous place. I mean, I I observed through the whole of the Cold War with the threat of m what we then used to call mutually assured destruction and the real danger of of a of nuclear exchange. Uh, thankfully that never happened. But, you know, the world has always been a dangerous place in in that sense. But the net the nature of that danger, I think, has changed. Uh, in those days, we genuinely believed the Warsaw Pact would move across what was then the inner German border into Western Germany and drive towards uh France and you know take over Western Europe. I don't think the Russians are about to, you know, in in large numbers try and uh invade Germany or invade the United Kingdom. There's no threat of Russian tanks driving down Whitehall. So the nature of the threat has changed. That hybrid peace, the the cyber peace, the ability of the Russians to reach out, and indeed others to reach out and attack us in different ways, attack our infrastructure and so on. I think that's very genuine. And for people like the Baltic states and for Poland, I think there is a genuine fear that, notwithstanding what I've just said, that the Russians will use all sorts of means to undermine those nations. And they've got large, particularly the Baltic states, they've got large Russian speaking populations. So, you know, whether they would then attempt to undermine them and maybe conduct some sort of military operations against them. And when we talk about all of that, we need to remember ultimately, of course, that we the real one of the major reasons we spend money on defense is to act as a deterrent, to make it clear to potential enemies that we are quite capable of dealing with whatever you decide to throw at us. So don't bother. And one of the issues in the conversation we're having today in the UK and indeed elsewhere in NATO is what does deterrence look like today? What do you have to put in place? How much do you need to spend? And where do you spend that money? So I I have some sympathy with those who would argue that Russia has struggled in Ukraine and they're not about to invade the UK. But taken as a whole, there's no doubt that Putin and indeed President Z and North Korea genuinely believe that Western civilization is collapsing and all they need to do is do it, you know, to help it in all sorts of ways by by undermining the credibility of our politics, of our economy, and all sorts of other stuff. And I think, you know, to be honest, there's some truth in the fact that Western civilization is struggling for all sorts of reasons. So we we've got to we've got to have confidence in who we are and what we stand for and what we're prepared to defend, and we've got to decide how best to do that, how best to deter uh people like Putin and President Z. Remembering that over half the world today lives under authoritarian or pretty brutal dictatorships. And it's very easy for us to forget that democracy is is uh in inverted commerce a minority sport today. It was Sun Tzu who said, uh, if you understand yourself and understand your enemy, you need not fear the outcome of a thousand battles. I think we struggle to understand what we stand for, Western democracy, who are we, etc. But certainly understanding our enemy, I don't think we're particularly good at that. And I don't think people really understand the genuineness of the threat from places like Russia and people like Putin and President Z.

Disinformation, Social Media and the Battle for Truth

Speaker 10:19

You've touched upon another thing, which, I mean at very different levels, we're both Cold War warriors, to use that cliche. One of the things that we were accustomed to was the misinformation disinformation. I mean, people think that's new. Of course, it's not new at all. It was uh something that the Russians have used very effectively in the past. Misinformation and disinformation in the social media world, though, takes on a a new dimension, and they are using that very effectively. And they're using it to divide communities and to subvert uh governments and and democracies.

Speaker 1 10:58

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 10:59

How do you counter that? And how do you get the message across to people? This is what is happening. You need to be aware of it. This is all part of the resilience discussion, isn't it?

Speaker 1 11:09

Yeah, yeah. And and we used to talk about psychological operations, media operations, information campaigns, and so on, as if they were sort of separate entities. Those boundaries are much more blurred today than they were. I mean, we know for a fact, and we only heard, I think it was this morning or yesterday, uh, the fact that most people, young people in particular, get their news from places like TikTok. You know, they don't listen to programs like this, they don't watch the BBC, they don't, they don't seriously study uh and so on. And I I don't say that, you know, in a dismissive sense. That's just the way it is. And therefore, understanding that the way communication happens and the impact of undermining people's morale, go back to the moral component piece, undermining people by saying your politicians are useless, your economy is is falling apart, um, you know, Western civilization is not is not what it used to be, and et cetera, et cetera. All of that stuff coming together, uh, trying to undermine what we stand for, who we are, and so on. And um it, you know, to be honest, I think it's it's it's very difficult to know how to how to counter that, except that you need to be prepared. And we have got very capable organizations in place to do that. GCHQ is is you know world leading in the context of of some aspects of this. Uh, and and and some of our best media, I think, is is doing a great job. So this battle for truth is what we're talking about, really, and and and and our people understanding what that truth means for us, and the and the and the lies and the propaganda. As somebody once said, truth is true even if nobody believes it, just as lies are lies even if everyone believes them. And we have to make sure that Hub people understand the distinction between those things,

What Britain Can Learn from Finland

Speaker 1 12:45

which you know isn't easy, but it's doable. And we mustn't lose confidence in the fact that it's doable.

Speaker 12:50

As in most cases, we can take a lead from from other nations that have understood this well, and one country in particular stands out. Finland has got an inbuilt scepticism, which we largely don't have in the West. And and I wonder, are there lessons to be learned from countries like Finland and how do we go about it?

Speaker 1 13:09

Yeah, I think they definitely are, and indeed some of the Baltic states um, you know, who have been up the front line of this through their history, and and you know, an understanding of their history is important in this. Well, you know what happened when you know when Russia invaded Finland after the pact between uh Germany and Russia, um, and Finland's resistance to that, and and uh and then what followed from that. We don't need to go back through the history of it, but but there's something about Finland and some of these other countries where the sense of nation and the sense of community and the sense of uh understanding of our history and the threat is, I think, very different. Again, it it's easy for it's easy for crusty old generals to sort of sweepingly generalize, you know, people are like they used to be when I was young. I don't believe that's true. I think that you know, people are as good as good and as bad as they've always been. This in a way comes back to leadership, which we might come back to. But it does come back to things like the media too. I mean, I we we were chatting beforehand, and I said that General Rupert Smith, who was D eputy SACEUR, once said to me, the media is like the weather. You've just got to learn to put up with it. Well, that's true to a large degree, but rather like climate change and the wet and the worsening weather, I don't think there's any doubt that the media has changed dramatically in the last 20, 30 years, and in many respects, it is not as good as it used to be, the way that it informs people and the way that it tackles some of these issues and uh and undermines, I think, many of our people in public service and in and in positions of authority. And Finland and these other nations see that very differently to us. So should we, can we learn from them? Yes, we can and we should, but it it isn't easy to change the mindset of a nation pr quickly. I mean, you know, this is a cultural change. And I think there's some sense of this. There's a sense of younger people beginning to realize we need to change. And that what's been rather like this whole business of social media and youngsters, you know, under 16 and so on, there's a whole raft of issues here which I think we can play into and open up a debate on.

The Role of Citizens in National Resilience

Speaker 15:02

Well, we we come back to this issue of resilience. What what role do ordinary, I say ordinary citizens - the people - what part do they play in this evolved environment that we're having to deal with? Resilience.

Speaker 1 15:14

For an awful lot of people, for the vast majority of people really, they just want to get on with their lives. Um, you know, they've they've got jobs or they're seeking to have jobs, they've got families and friends and relationships. Um, and if they're living in an environment where they don't sense that there's a genuine threat and that there's no need for it, their focus is going to be on all sorts of other things. It's gonna be on uh on the health service and education and so forth. I don't, you know, one can't condemn them for that. I mean, that's just a reality. So in a way, we come back to the leadership of making it clear to people what's changed, why it's changing, what does it mean for us as a nation, and what does it mean for us individually. And in a way, you go back to uh to Vietnam and the American problem back in those periods of the of the Vietnam War. If your people don't genuinely believe in what you're doing and they and they don't like what it is you're getting up to, they can undermine the whole piece. They can bring it down. And and in democracies, you know, we have to listen to people. Interesting, I find when people talk about the um the progressives on on the one hand and uh and the um the right wing who are who are playing into people's fears and so forth, in a democracy you need to listen to people. And if if if people are uh you know are strongly of a view about certain things, it's no good dismissing them as either extreme left or extreme right. You've got to you've got to understand what it is they're saying, and you've got to try and work into them and and educate them and and work alongside them. So at the end of the day, it's not the ordinary people that will dictate how much we spend on defense, how we, you know, what our strategy looks like, what what what are the uh campaigns going to look like that we're gonna engage in operations and so forth. That has to be the professional organizations that are involved in that day to day. But the people understanding why we're giving priorities to what we are giving priorities to, and understanding how they play a part in that, um, is is part of leadership and it's a part of the ability, you know, to communicate with them and to get them to support

How Do We Prepare Without Creating Fear and Panic?

Speaker 1 17:07

us.

Speaker 17:07

But the challenge for both governments and uh and for the media for that matter is how do you generate action without alarming people?

Speaker 1 17:18

And you're right in saying we don't this is not a matter of scaring people. I do worry a little bit about people saying, you know, we're gonna be at war with Russia in three years' time, and people's immediate reaction to that is to think about you know what World War II looked like or the the or the um the way that the Iraq war started in in 1990, uh shock and awe and all this sort of stuff of the traditional war fighting peace. But the nature of warfare has changed, as we've said already. It is a very different way of of engaging. Um so we don't want to we don't want to scare people unnecessarily that we're suddenly gonna be inundated with you know bombing bombing raids and all the rest of it. But I think the way we play into this is more to do with that hybrid gray zone space. It's about what what's what's gonna happen to your life if suddenly the whole of the internet collapses, if suddenly the the um the energy system collapses uh and uh you know we we don't we we find ourselves in a situation where uh we're not able to to work and and and and live the way that we've become used to. And understanding what that might look like and again communicating that. And I think there's something for me too, we shouldn't abandon the space which we've touched on to in inverted commerce, the enemy forces. We have got to have the ability, places like GCHQ and elsewhere have got the have got to have the ability to engage in uh in the TikTok world, in the in that social media world. We've got to we've got to find a way of of getting information out there that it's that you know reaches people and begins to get to explain to them what is happening and why it's happening. I mean, I don't have any easy solution to this. What we're living with today is the result of 30, 40 years of change um and I think of recognition in many areas that um actually something's gone wrong here. Um and I think we now realize that we can't just sit back and watch it all happen. We've got to do something about it. And therefore we need to engage. And those guys who are involved in that professionally, I think, need to need to decide how are we gonna do that. One of the problems for me anyway is that we're having a conversation at the moment. We're listening and talking to one another and responding to each other. Conversations just don't seem to happen much in in uh in in in all sorts of places, particularly in America. Uh, you know, if you don't agree with me, I'm not prepared to talk to you. We we've got to overcome that. We've got to have be prepared to open up these conversations and these debates and try and move, you know, try and decide where where we need to get to. I don't want to be despondent about it. Uh all this is doable. In my view, it comes back to leadership, which is, you know, I think a key component of that of that moral component, courageous leadership.

Leadership, Defence Spending and Political Choices

Speaker 19:47

Well, let's talk about that because uh we've just had two key ministers resign from the Defense Department, Al Carns and John Healey, of course, and the timing of that couldn't have been worse for Keir Starmer. I mean, I've argued on fault lines in the past that the last thing we need is another leadership campaign and a change of prime ministers. The country's sick of that. However, when your defense secretary stands up and says, Look, I just can't do this anymore. Nobody's listening. You're not able, and the chancellor's not willing, you start to to question whether actually leadership is the issue.

Speaker 1 20:29

Well, I think it is. I mean, I think you know, I mean I would say this, wouldn't I, in one sense, having spent uh actually 43 years, man and boy, in the military, 36 years, as you said in the introduction, you know, commission service. Leadership is a key issue within the military, of course it is. But it applies in business, in in uh in politics, and in every other aspect of life. And it's always difficult to define, you know, what does leadership look like? But one of the simplest definitions of leadership is leadership is influence. We all influence ourselves every every day, influence others around us, for good or ill. And the question is, do we want to do that better, you know, or or or or or not? Leadership is also one of the one of my other definitions, which I like, is leadership is winning the hearts and minds of people in order to achieve a common purpose. And it's about winning hearts first rather than just minds. You know, hearts is about our emotions and the way we react to events around us. Minds is more, is obviously the intellectual piece about getting people to understand what it is we're trying to achieve. But it it is the culminating purpose of winning hearts and minds, which is to achieve a common purpose. What is the common purpose we're trying to achieve here? And how do you win the hearts and minds to bring that about? I I don't want to knock all politicians. I'm always reluctant to condemn senior politicians, prime ministers, secretaries of state, etc. It is a tough world and there are tough choices to be made. But at the end of the day, you do have to make the choices. One of my other mantras is all choices carry consequences. All choices carry consequences in our own personal lives and in The lives of our you know of our nations and so on. Some of those consequences are pretty severe. The decision not to go on into Iraq at the end of the first Gulf War. I remember leaning on a Land Rover waiting to hear whether we were going to go on, actually on the road from Kuwait City to Basra. And the decision was made at the time that we wouldn't go on. Now, we can have a conversation about that. I happen to believe it was probably the right decision for all sorts of reasons in terms of the coalition. But the consequences were 12 more years of people living under Saddam Hussein and the deaths and the awful things that happened subsequently. All these choices carry consequences. And Seth, therefore, they're tough, but ultimately, going back to the particular issue, the government, the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State for Defense, and the Foreign Secretary and the other key cabinet members need to say, what are our priorities here? What's the situation we're living in, and what resources do we need to bring to bear to those priorities? And what I think is been worrying, or certainly worried me, is that the Prime Minister has gone around over the last couple of years speaking in world conferences and to world leaders, saying that we have this threat, saying we need to do more, but the rhetoric hasn't been matched by the reality of what he's been prepared to do back here. He's talked about, you know, 3.5% of GDP sometime in 2035 or whatever. You know, that's far too far away in the context of our conversation. We need more capability and we need to make choices now. I have heard that, you know, with all that's going on, Secretary of State for Defense having gone, and I regret that John Henry resigned. I think he's, you know, did a pretty good job overall. But there are people now saying that, you know, change of leadership, the first thing we need to do is conduct a defense review, which is a classic example of politics. You know, let's have a committee, let's have a review, let's study the issue, kick the can further down the road, uh, and then we'll come back to it later. You know, that's going to achieve absolutely nothing. The last SDR was a good piece of work. The government accepted its recommendations. They just need to decide how they're going to put those recommendations or how they're going to bring those recommendations to reality. And they just don't seem to be prepared to put the resources in to do that, which I regret.

What Should Worry Us Most?

Speaker 24:12

In in this context, what keeps you awake at night?

Speaker 1 24:15

Well, the honest truth is not much. Luckily, I'll speak. I'm actually a lay minister in the church. And one of the one of the most often quoted uh comments in the Bible is do not be afraid. Um and we mustn't allow ourselves to sink into despondency and despair over all of this. So I, you know, I'm I'm not I don't have nightmares about what may or may not emerge in the next year or so. But in in the context of this conversation, I think what I'm worried about is we do need to make some hard, difficult choices. I don't want to get into the politics of you know where those priorities should be, but we all know the issue in terms of the amount of money that's being spent on welfare. You know, we've got a million young people, not in education, not in training, not at work. And we have an armed forces that are desperate for people. We're undermanned. They can't be beyond the bounds of possibility to recognize that somehow we can move some of those people into the military or indeed in other ways of national service. I don't lie awake at like w at night worrying about it, but these are serious issues, and over the next pretty short period we need to find a solution. Because the danger is that we will wake up in 2030 with Russia, particularly if there's if there's some sort of agreement in Ukraine, Russia will draw a line, and then and then I think they will, you know, re-arm, resort themselves out, and be prepared to have another go, both in Ukraine and possibly elsewhere. So we we can't we can't sleepwalk into what may or may not emerge over the next two or three years. We need these choices and decisions to be made. And I'm afraid that what we're seeing is, as John Healy said, that the Prime Minister seems to be incapable of making them, and the Treasury seemed to be completely unwilling. And when it comes back to leadership, the idea that the Prime Minister can't turn around to the Chancellor to say, you are to go away and sort this out, that's probably the more worrying thing of what we're seeing here. Cabinet doesn't seem to work, politics doesn't seem

What Would Success Look Like in Four Years?

Speaker 1 26:11

to work.

Speaker 26:11

Yeah. Okay, if if we met again in four years' time, what what would success look like in retrospect?

Speaker 1 26:19

Well, I think it would it would look like the clarity of what is the UK's role in within NATO. And I say that in the context that Poland are spending a lot more on defense, the Baltic states are, Germany is. So it may be that the choice we're making is no, we are a maritime power, we need to put more resources into the Navy, we need to put more resources into the Air Force, but we're going to have one war fighting division that is capable of high-intensity war fighting over a long period of time and sustaining those operations. And the balance between manned and unmanned, you know, the drones and all of these other issues, you know, they'll be clear and we'll know where we're putting our resources. But having a clarity of what is the threat, what is the best way of protecting ourselves against that threat, what are the capabilities that we need, and then we've begun to put those capabilities in place alongside our NATO partners where we understand what our role is in the context of our conversation. If we had that clarity and the resources dedicated to them, we'd be in a much better place.

One Thing Every Citizen Should Do Now

Speaker 27:20

What what one thing do you think people, citizens of this country, should do tomorrow, today even? What one thing, if you had to say you really need to think about this, what would that be?

Speaker 1 27:33

That's that's a in a way, it's a tough question because I think uh there's no doubt that a debate has been generated by what John Healey has decided to do and the lack of leadership that we've been seeing. I would want people to engage in the conversation and influence the thinking that's going on here, to make it clear that they understand that defense and security is a key issue, and to understand the potential dangers that are coming down the track. I mean, I I run a thing called Speaker's Corner, which I invite speakers to come and discuss issues. The last one I ran was with my local MP, Alex Baker, who is a member of the House of Commons Defense Committee, and we had a lot of people there, and I interviewed her for 40 minutes, and then she took questions from the floor. And, you know, that's the sort of thing I'd like to see happening more. People engaging in the debate, engaging in the conversation, and making it clear what they think and influencing the decisions. Now, there'll be people who completely disagree with everything we've said. And I don't have a problem in one sense if the Prime Minister was to stand up and say, actually, in the 21st century, we're not going to engage in the world in which we've done in the past. We're not going to engage in operations abroad, we're going to simply consolidate and look after the UK home base. And therefore, we're only going to put X amount of resources in. What we can't live with is the idea of global Britain and all of the other things that people talk about, and yet not be prepared to put in the resources. So we need people to engage in that conversation. What do they see? How do they see us engaging with the world? What do they see as the threats and influence the politicians? That doesn't happen overnight. But I think if people woke up tomorrow morning saying, actually, this is a serious issue, I do have a view about this, and I need to engage with the conversation, you know, that would be a that would be a good place to be.

Speaker 29:20

Okay. I think that's a that's a good place to to leave it. Tim, it's it's been a fascinating conversation, and I really do appreciate your time. And thank you for for talking to Fault Lines.

Speaker 1 29:31

Not at all. It's be very good to be with you.