GENERAL SIR PATRICK SANDERS is literally on the warpath. The chief of the general staff is urging the country to brace itself for armed conflict with Russia.

He told an armoured vehicles conference in London — he was speaking to people, the tanks were there to be bought — that Britain would need to enlist a citizens army if it were to give it a go against the menace from the east.

Both major parties have hurried to reassure voters that they are not going to bring back conscription. But neither have started to unpack Sanders’ twisted logic.

The first thing to point out to the head of the army is that if Britain finds itself at war with Russia there is a serious danger that this country would be knocked out of the conflict and, indeed, existence, in a morning.

After a nuclear exchange, there would be no citizens left to form an army of any sort. But presumably, Sanders is somehow envisaging a conventional war between nuclear-armed powers.

He says that the army, presently at around 73,000 soldiers, is too small. Even if it was 120,000 strong, he added, it would still not be large enough to take on Russia.

We have news for Sanders. He could have half a million soldiers in uniform and it would not suffice, particularly if he wanted to march on Moscow.

However, it is inconceivable that in such a catastrophic turn of international events that the US would not also be engaged. And if Russia and the US are at war, the size of the British army is the last thing anyone would be worrying about.

In purely military terms, then, Sanders’ speech is an absurdity. Reviving a Dad’s Army of bank managers, butchers and black market spivs would be a farce.

His friends are, however, briefing the media that his aim was to secure a change in the national mindset and prepare people for war with Russia.

In that, the government is his ally. Defence Secretary Grant Shapps recently said that Britain was “moving from a post-war to a pre-war world,” with war anticipated within five years.

Nor is Labour any different. Its international policy is identical with that of the Tories, and Keir Starmer was recently seen strutting self-importantly in military uniform in Estonia, gesturing towards Russia.

These are the beginnings of a war psychosis, of a conditioning of the population for a future of military conflict. We will shortly be in full Strangelove-land with nuclear drills in every community.

It is impossible to predict the precise political contours of every conceivable conflict in advance, but we may be sure that if Britain finds itself at war it will be to advance the interests of British and US imperialism.

In Ukraine, British politicians and generals are in the lead among those pushing for the continuation of a stalemated war the prolongation of which can only extend the suffering of the Ukrainian people.

In the Middle East, Britain is the only power to join the US in attacking Yemen and is a key enabler of Israel’s genocidal attack on Gaza.

This follows wars in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria in the last quarter-century alone. The ruling class has a war addiction, and General Sanders’ remarks are the latest manifestation of it.

So we must say loud and clear that war with Russia would be an unimaginable calamity from which Britain could not possibly emerge a winner, however big our army.

And that we need politicians who will push for peace rather than serve the aggressive appetites of imperialism.