The Times – 23 March 2021

Responding to concern about our closeness to Beijing, past and present ministers say: 

"We must not embark upon a new Cold War with China". 

This ignores the fact that conflict in the grey zone is the modern equivalent of the Cold War between East and West. In both cases, hostile moves were deliberately kept below the threshold for open warfare.

The remedy for Cold War conflict was, and remains, a mixture of deterrence and containment. To pay for this we regularly spent 4 to 5 per cent of GDP. I welcome the fact that today’s Defence Committee, like its predecessor, believes we should be spending no less than 3 per cent of GDP. Were that to happen, fewer unacceptable choices between conventional force numbers and new high-tech systems would need to be made.

Dr JULIAN LEWIS MP
Chairman, Defence Committee 2015–19
House of Commons
London SW1A 0AA