You do not have to be a military expert to know that warfare has changed.
Despite its ups and downs, Britain has been relatively peaceful and prosperous since the Second World War, with increasing material comfort and personal freedom. Military security meant NATO, underpinned by the United States, and war was something that happened to other people, somewhere else. Few Britons can remember conscription or national service. The violence that peace depends on was amongst professionals, far away, and peace felt like the natural order of society.
However, it wasn't much of a secret that the west had some strongly motivated enemies. That these enemies were taking active measures to subvert western society was confirmed by Yuri Besmanov, Vasili Mitrokhin and others. For example, Britain's Cambridge spy ring got to the the highest levels of the security hierarchy; Senator Joe McCarthy was not mistaken about communists in the US government; the USSR created New Zealand's anti-nuclear movement to damage the West's nuclear defences; and so on. These threats were never denied, and the story was that they could be contained, more or less, by the West's military defences and domestic security. Normal life could continue, and the freedoms enjoyed by the population as a whole was the proof that our system was better.
At some point in the last twenty years, though, Britain has moved into the era of Unrestricted Warfare (1). That is the doctrine adopted by the Chinese Communist Party where conflict is not confined to armed forces. There is no distinction between combatants and others, and all aspects of society are legitimate targets for any type of action.
"In terms of beyond-limits warfare, there is no longer any distinction between what is or is not the battlefield. Spaces in nature including the ground, the seas, the air, and outer space are battlefields, but social spaces such as the military, politics, economics, culture, and the psyche are also battlefields. ... Warfare can be military, or it can be quasi-military, or it can be non-military. It can use violence, or it can be nonviolent. It can be a confrontation between professional soldiers, or one between newly emerging forces consisting primarily of ordinary people or experts. These characteristics of beyond-limits war are the watershed between it and traditional warfare..."
Our adversaries are no longer far away, beyond the military defences. The CCP "strangle you with your own systems" doctrine - that is, using the freedoms and structures of the West to destroy the West – means they are here. In practice, that means the things seen in the US, such as corporations, universities community groups, and elected representatives funded by adversaries and advancing their interests.
"...but the real military threat of the Chinese Communist Party is subversion - their systems for ideological subversion. Which means their control of influencers around the world, their control of government officials, journalists, Hollywood, different major media organizations in the West, big business and big finance in the united states and other countries. How many countries, how many big businesses have sold out to the Chinese Communist Party to the point where the people working for these companies can't even criticize human rights abuses happening in China? How many organizations try to lecture us about "history of oppression" in the United States, while not even being able to criticize the Chinese Communist Party for carrying out genocide and using slavery for minorities in China as we speak right now? ...The reason for this is because the CCP has control over these organizations. That is ideological subversion and through the systems of control it can influence foreign politics it can influence foreign investment, information .. that is the strength of the CCP. It is not military strength. It is the strength to the control of people who have sold out their countries big finance big media big government and different organizations that have against their interests and sold out their values for the sake of supporting a totalitarian genocidal regime. That's the strength of the CCP. … their strength is through these external systems of ideological subversion. "(2)
Neither is radical Islam overawed by liberal Britain. Manchester Arena attack plotter Hashem Abedi is 'refusing' de-radicalisation in prison; the Chairman of the Scottish Afghan Society, a registered charity helping Afghan evacuees to settle into their new homes, is a Taliban loyalist who previously called for the deaths of American soldiers; the teacher at Batley Grammar School said to have showed pupils a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad was in police protection and is said to be "fearing for their life" after receiving death threats.
The example of our civilised freedoms is not going to deter adversaries, and neither will outraged lawyers and priests.
The freedoms enjoyed by the population as a whole is still the measure of a society, but protecting what we have will mean changing how we think about what we value. For example, surgeons in China are required to harvest the organs of healthy political dissidents for sale on the organ transplant market. Dissenters in the west do not risk this. What measures should we take to keep it that way?
It is not as if our adversaries are shy of lethal force to defend their interests. No one will have missed the use of violence by the Taliban since the US withdrawal from Afghanistan. In China, crimes endangering national security - such as treason, separatism, armed rebellion or rioting, collaborating with the enemy, spying or espionage, selling state secrets and providing material support to the enemy - are capital offences, and China executes many people every year. Anyone doing to China what CCP agents do to the west would risk execution.
The West's freedoms have always been secured by lethal force, whether we care to look at it or not. As a society we are happy to sanction the killing of others so long as it can be presented as in our national interests. In that respect, we are not so much different to, or morally better, than China, or the Taliban.
Given the stated aims of the Chinese regime, it is difficult to see why any complicity with the CCP is not punishable as treason. Should we have the death penalty for treason, as China does? That would certainly be full of moral and legal difficulties. The west has strong traditions of the sanctity of human life, and legal protection for human rights is expected as standard. For decades, capital punishment has presented as being incompatible with civilised society, and this was seen as part of what makes our society a better than poorer, more oppressive countries. Some people in Britain would struggle to express what, other than material security, we are trying to protect by the legal taking of life.
In practice, anyone wanting to re-establish the death penalty in the UK would face well-funded opposition. For example, NGOs like Amnesty International, or Business Against Death Penalty, inspired by Barak Obama and set up by Richard Branson. UK is still subject to the European Convention on Human Rights, a human rights treaty between members of the Council of Europe. The Council of Europe has made abolition of the death penalty a prerequisite for membership, even for acts committed in time of war.
Britain's population is used to peace, prosperity and human rights. It is used to thinking of them as universal absolutes flowing from human existence; or as immutable qualities inherent in our legally constituted society. It is not used to thinking of them as benefits contingent on keeping hostile adversaries at bay. In today's world, a country that does not deal with saboteurs will not survive, and perhaps does not deserve to.
Britain's governing institutions have not held out against capture by adversaries. They have not protected the freedoms and values they are said to be there to defend. Many people could not really say what Britain is trying to defend. We have a militarily unprepared population. There is no credible consequences for treason or sabotage. All this is to say to our adversaries that, fundamentally, we are not serious about defending this nation.
They will probably reply, yes, we already know that.
(1) https://www.c4i.org/unrestricted.pdf
(2)
Josh Phillip, Crossroads, Epoch TV 22nd August 48:23