The West is already at war against enemies who believe we are divided, weak and exhausted: DAVID PATRIKARAKOS reveals why the Britain MUST step up and rearm after seeing first hand the gravity of the threats our nation faces

Britain is at war. We have been since 2001 - and we are losing. We lost in Afghanistan; we lost in Iraq; and unless we step up, we will lose in Ukraine.

The time has come to get serious. Defence spending must go up - to at least 3.5 per cent of GDP, ideally more. It's time to stop the endless prevarication and rearm.

When Osama bin Laden struck the Twin Towers on 9/11, President Bush launched a war on terror.

But I believe 9/11 also sparked a broader war - against the West and its allies - one that has never been officially declared nor necessarily fought by state armies on traditional battlefields.

Two things are clear. First, that our enemies in this war, while often at odds with each other, are united in their desire to overthrow the Western-led status quo; and second, that they have finally congealed into a recognisable axis led by China, Russia and Iran.

On February 24, 2022, Russia's President Putin announced his invasion of Ukraine and Russian military forces entered the neighbouring country from Belarus, Russia and Crimea

This week China flaunted its relationship with Moscow when its leader Xi Jinping (pictured) met Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Beijing

Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and Russia's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (left) shaking hands during their meeting in Beijing, China, on April 4

The Twin Towers in New York were targeted by Islamist suicide terrorist attacks carried out by Al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11

An axis that has no interest in what we most value - democracy, freedom and the rule of law - which would be swept aside as minor annoyances on the road to totalitarian rule.

This week, China flaunted its relationship with Moscow when its leader Xi Jinping met Russia's foreign minister Sergei Lavrov in Beijing. The countries, both with massive nuclear arsenals, talked about deepening security ties to resist the 'West's 'anti-Chinese' and 'anti-Russian orientation'.

At the same time, Russia and Iran enjoy an ever-deepening co-operation, united by their opposition to the U.S.

Elements of this axis attack us where ever they can. The front line stretches from Iraq to the Mediterranean (Israel), Ukraine and even the China Sea.

China menaces our ally Taiwan. Iran is said to be preparing a strike on Israel. Russia is intensifying the bombing of Ukraine. Yet we still refuse to learn the lessons of this war against the West.

We didn't stop Putin when he rolled into Georgia in 2008, so he marched into Ukraine and stole Crimea in 2014. We did nothing about that either, and in 2022 he tried to murder his way across the rest of the country.

Now that our Ukrainian allies are bereft of the weaponry we promised, he is emboldened once again.

Last month there were calls, clearly staged by Moscow, from the 'government' of the illegal separatist republic of Transnistria in Moldova for Russia to 'rescue' them. And there are fears that, with Putin's backing, Serbia plans to invade Kosovo.

The point is that this will never stop - unless we in the West stop it ourselves.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Hosseini Khamenei who is said to be preparing a strike on Israel

An elderly Ukrainian woman walks through the yard of her household destroyed by Russian aerial bombing in April

A man walks past heavily damaged buildings in the town of Selydove, Donetsk, in Ukraine amid the Russian invasion

Yet Britain is ill-prepared to do so. For the 25 years that we have been under attack, our Armed Forces have been slowly depleted. No one can be more aware of this than the political class who presided over it, but they are doing nothing about it.

What military strength does Britain now possess to deter its enemies? Our Army has fewer than 80,000 men and women - less than half the number it did in 1990. And the force it could bring into the field is far weaker still.

Meanwhile, most of our tanks are Challenger-II models dating from the Cold War. We had 1,200 in 1990, but just a fifth as many now.

A 2022-23 Commons Defence Committee report claimed the UK could field merely a single 'under-strength division' with just two brigades instead of the requisite three: 'This one, under-strength division, stands in stark contrast to the four divisions of the Polish army and the five divisions of Turkish army.'

Last year, a senior U.S. general warned that our Army was no longer a top-level fighting force. If called upon to fight, he assessed, our soldiers would run out of ammunition 'in a few days'.

Our Navy does of course possess two new aircraft carriers. But, as both have broken down recently, they're barely sea-worthy.

This is bordering on the delinquent. During my frontline war reporting I've come face-to-face with the gravity of the threat facing us.

I've seen the consequences of neglecting national security, while our enemies compound their strength.

I've seen the future of war up close and personal: it is upon us already and we don't even realise it.

In the Middle East and Ukraine, everything from drones to Artificial Intelligence (AI) is evolving. As a British ex-general told me recently, modern war is about 'hiding and fighting', and AI is changing how it is done.

Most of our tanks are Challenger-II models (pictured) dating from the Cold War. We had 1,200 in 1990, but just a fifth as many now

The Royal Navy aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth (left) and HMS Prince of Wales (right)

I witnessed the truth of this in Ukraine, where I took cover from AI-powered Russian drones striking Ukrainian army positions in which I was embedded. I saw the growing use of automated weapons systems that employ lethal force against enemy targets without human oversight.

Back in 2022, Russia had over 100 types of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) like the Lancet-3 loitering munition, which uses sensors to locate and destroy a target without human guidance.

It has also developed a family of Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) tanks - known as Uran-6 and Uran-9 - which saw service in Syria and Ukraine. China is developing a family of combat UAVs that it has flown over Taiwan.

Our enemies understand the importance of investing in military technology, especially AI. In 2017, Putin said 'whoever becomes the leader in this sphere [AI] will become the ruler of the world'.

Last year he said AI was for Russia 'on par with the atomic or missile projects of the Soviet Union in the 1940s and 1950s'.

China spends an estimated $1.6 billion annually on AI-related defence systems and equipment, and some now claim that the country is outpacing the U.S. in the sphere.

There is a further problem. When the Houthis strike U.S. and UK ships in the Mediterranean and the Russians battle Ukraine's Nato-supplied equipment they are not only attacking our vessels and allies but discovering how to fight our defence systems.

Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksiy Reznikov has said in Ukraine Nato 'can actually see if their weapons work, how efficiently they work and if they need to be upgraded… you can't invent a better testing ground'.

Of course, it also enables Russia to find ways to combat them. The U.S. believed that the HIMARS GPS guided munition rocket system it gave Kyiv was almost impregnable, but the Russians have now worked out how to jam it.

Rescuers remove debris from the roof of a residential building after a Russian drone attack on April 4, 2024 in Kharkiv, Ukraine

As each day passes, our enemies are learning how to better defeat us - and there is no doubt about their intent.

Since the turn of the century, the Russians have waged war on us in any way they can - from the assassination with radioactive polonium in London of former FSB agent Aleksandr Litvinenko in 2006, to the poisoning with Novichok of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal in Salisbury in 2007, the Russian state has used illegal force against the UK for decades.

And after the City of London opened its arms to Russian firms -almost 40 floated in London between 2005 and 2022, including state controlled Gazprom and Rosneft - Russia gained influence over our political processes.

During the Cold War our enemies would get people to pass them secrets on park benches. In this war, their most potent tools are the lobbying firms and lawyers they buy up to pressure the government to water down sanctions. We have gone from secret agents to agents of influence.

Then there is the war in cyber space. In December 2023, the National Cyber Security Centre 'called out' Russia for its 'campaign of malicious cyber activity attempting to interfere in UK politics and democratic processes'.

China, too, has attacked us on all fronts for years. Last month, Deputy Prime Minister Oliver Dowden announced in the Commons that China was behind cyber attacks in 2022 on the Electoral Commission's record of the details of 40 million British citizens.

This followed a report from the National Cyber Security Centre that China was responsible for the reconnaissance of the email accounts of MPs who called out its malign activities.

Last year, the head of MI5 warned of the 'epic scale' of Chinese espionage and said 20,000 people in the UK have been approached covertly online by Chinese spies, while businesses were warned of the risk of having research stolen.

A Lancet drone created by Vladimir Putin supporter Alexander Zakharov, which has been used to devastating effect in parts of Ukraine

Yemen's Houthi military spokesman Yahya Sarea looks on while attending a protest against the US and Israel, and in solidarity with the Palestinian people, in Sana'a, Yemen, on March 14

Then there is Iran whose mullahs are ordering regular gangland hits on UK soil.

These examples of attacks by our enemies barely scratch the surface. Their activity is relentless and, I repeat: they are not going to stop.

However, instead of rallying to the fight, the West seems intent on giving in. Pope Francis recently urged Kyiv to have 'the courage to raise the white flag' and negotiate. Clearly, he wants the suffering to stop in Russia's relentless war.

But for Putin and his ilk, a white flag is not a symbol of peace but a signal to charge. The Pope's comments were not only misguided but dangerous - as they articulated a belief seeping across the West: that peace is best achieved by appeasement.

Here in Britain, this delusion is equally present. When, last month, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said that increased defence spending is best secured by 'more economic growth' he was using the bloodless language of a career bureaucrat ducking the issue.

We must understand that mass war no longer exists. The arc of history has bent back toward conflict and chaos.

I know we have huge debt, a housing crisis, and problems with immigration. But if we do not find the cash to rearm now, we will have to find far more later when it may be too late. We spent £48.6 billion on defence in 2022/23, while China's budget for 2024 is £180 billion and Russia's for 2023 was £270 billion - 6 per cent of GDP.

And 2023 saw the largest growth of conflict across the world since 1945. What makes the situation even more dangerous is that this eruption of violence is not an aberration, it is a reversion to the mean.

In fact, it is the roughly 80 years of general peace we enjoyed in Britain following World War II that were the oddity, made possible only by U.S. security guarantees and the post-war order that the victorious allies put in place.

What allowed us to build a welfare state and the NHS was not benign government or individual genius. It happened because we entrusted our security and the bulk of its funding to the Americans, which enabled us to use the money we would have spent on it for other things such as the NHS.

But that era is ending. Donald Trump could well be the next U.S. President and has made it clear that he will not countenance what he calls European 'freeloading' any longer. Many in Congress and the Senate agree with him.

As a senior British Army officer aptly put it to me recently: 'Armies win battles, nations win wars, alliances win world wars.'

We as a nation need to be ready. And this involves a profound mental re-calibration as much as it does a practical redistribution of resources in policy terms.

Which brings me to my final point. We must raise defence spending because alongside everything else, it is a reassertion of national status, of who we are.

I say this not out of belligerence or any kind of warped nationalism. From the luminosity of my Greek surname to my life of almost constant travel, you can call me many things but never a 'little Englander'.

The fact is we have become weak as we believe we are weak. To outsource your security to another country makes you its vassal.

A decline from the Age of Empire was inevitable, and in many ways welcome. The degree of that decline, however, is a national choice.

The seeping away of collective self-belief whittles away at nations like a wasting disease. It is degenerative and, in the end, terminal.

Those who oppose us believe we are divided, weak and exhausted. With every North Korean shell the Russians launch at Western-donated equipment in Ukraine; with every rocket the Houthis fire at a British tanker, and with every Iranian-made Hamas missile that heads into Israel, our enemies are asking the same question: who are you?

It's time we gave them an answer.