I spoke with veteran journalist and commentator Mary Dejevsky about the mounting sense of drift in British foreign policy. Our discussion ranged widely—from her recent travels to Greenland and an upcoming trip to Mongolia—to the sharpening tensions with Russia and the quieter but consequential contest unfolding in the Arctic. What emerged most clearly was a picture of a United Kingdom continuing to deepen its military commitment to Ukraine while lacking a coherent strategy, public consent, or the hard power to underwrite the risks it is taking.
Mary described a Whitehall that appears to be on autopilot. Neither the new Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, nor the Prime Minister rushed to Kyiv as an opening gesture, yet both have doubled down on the previous government’s maxim that “Ukraine’s defence is our defence.”
In recent days this has extended to reports of British-made drones striking deep inside Russia. The Russian embassy in London responded with warnings of consequences; British officials expressed indignation.
Mary found both the escalation and the surprise at Russia’s reaction astonishing.
There has been no meaningful parliamentary debate, no clear statement of heightened risk to the United Kingdom itself, and no recognition that such support may actually prolong a proxy war that is already catastrophic for Ukraine’s demographics and future viability as a state.
This policy sits uneasily alongside Britain’s diminished military capacity. Submarines are in repair, stocks of munitions have been drawn down, and the army is a fraction of its former size.
Russia, by contrast, fields a far larger force and a shipbuilding programme that eclipses our own. Any retaliation is more likely to occur in the legal grey zone of the high seas—seizing vessels—than through direct attack on British soil.
Yet the absence of a defence attaché in Moscow for over a year, and the collapse of earlier post-Cold War naval cooperation, leaves little room for de-escalation.
As Mary observed, Europe has forfeited any plausible role as mediator in the Ukraine war and now appears content to keep the conflict alive long after American enthusiasm has cooled.
Threaded through our conversation was the Arctic dimension, where commercial rather than purely military competition is gathering pace.
Mary’s recent voyage along Greenland’s west coast revealed a sparsely populated, logistically forbidding territory still heavily dependent on Danish subsidies.
Chinese attempts to secure mineral footholds failed on commercial grounds.
Yet Beijing has now announced a regular “Silk Ice Road”—a summer trade route hugging Russia’s Arctic coast and destined, in practical terms, for European ports such as Felixstowe.
This is not primarily a challenge to American maritime primacy in the Pacific; it is a bid to tighten commercial ties with Europe and reduce transit times.
Therefore, Washington’s renewed interest in Greenland—bases, the Northwest Passage, and the so-called Golden Dome—can be read partly as a bid to lock in European allegiance in the face of a growing reality of Eurasian interconnectedness, driven by China.
Russia, already possessed of the world’s longest Arctic coastline and its own Northern Sea Route, has little incentive to seek additional territory but does, ultimately, see itself as a key Eurasian power broker.
Taken together, these strands expose a deeper problem.
Britain continues to trade on past martial glories while its strategic reviews dissolve into unfunded pick-and-mix lists and domestic voices—concerned with jobs, infrastructure and everyday security—remain largely unheard.
The result is policy that heightens risk in the absence of strategy.
Conversations such as this one with Mary Dejevsky are a small counterweight: an insistence that peace, not perpetual escalation, remains the more responsible national interest for Britain and Britons alike.
You can watch the full conversation here:
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