Britain is becoming a soft touch and a "fragmenting, post-Christian society" with a "misplaced deference to multiculturalism" undermining the fight against extremists, a security thinktank says.
The warning is published today by the Royal United Services Institute, Rusi, a thinktank at the heart of Britain's defence and security establishment.
"Some may believe that we are already at war; but all may agree that generally a peacetime mentality prevails," it says. In "our social fragmentation, the sense of premonition and the divisions about what our stance should be, there are uneasy similarities with the years just before the first world war", it adds.
It continues: "The country's lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy."
Although written by Gwyn Prins, professor at the London School of Economics, and Lord Salisbury, scion of a leading Tory family and a former cabinet minister, Rusi says the paper reflects a consensus that emerged from a series of private seminars involving a group of former senior military and intelligence officers.
Our military and security services are fighting against "active forces" at home and abroad, the paper, published in the Rusi Journal, says. It adds: "Islamist terrorism is where people tend to begin. The United Kingdom presents itself as a target, as a fragmenting, post-Christian society, increasingly divided about interpretations of its history, about its national aims, its values and in its political identity."
The problem, it argues, "is worsened by the lack of leadership from the majority which in misplaced deference to 'multiculturalism' failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities, thus undercutting those within trying to fight extremism. The country's lack of self-confidence is in stark contrast to the implacability of its Islamist terrorist enemy, within and without."
"Fractured institutional integrity" means that when the unexpected occurs, the response is likely to be "incoherent and ad hoc, short-termist and uncertain", says the Rusi paper. Uncertainty "incubates the embryonic threats these risks represent. We look like a soft touch. We are indeed a soft touch, from within and without."
The paper says the July 2005 London bombings "exposed the weakness of the 'multicultural' approach towards Islamists". It proposes the setting up of two new bodies - a cabinet committee of ministers and officials, and a joint committee of MPs and peers - to counter what it calls "flabby and bogus strategic thinking" which it describes as "a fundamental source of damage to Britain's security". The problem is compounded, it says, by the "wider muddling of political responsibilities between Westminster and Brussels". The UN, Nato, and the EU have all lost their way, it adds.
The paper refers to the fierce criticism of the government by five former defence chiefs in the Lords last November. Their pleas for more military spending "suggests an atmosphere of chronic disrepair".
Rusi, Britain's oldest military thinktank, said it was an "independent institution [providing] a forum to debate the full spectrum of defence and security issues". It added: "Rusi's tradition for nearly two centuries has been to promote forward thinking, free discussion and reflection on defence and security matters."
Prins told the Guardian: "We are simply saying we are in a hell of a mess. Our view is that the problem fundamentally is how risks turn into threats."
The concerns aired in the paper expressed a consensus of a number of influential people who met over the course of 18 months, Rusi said. Participants in the private seminars which led to today's paper included Sir Mark Allen and Lady Park, both former senior MI6 officers, Field Marshal Lord Inge, a former chief of defence staff, General Sir Rupert Smith, a former commander of UN forces in Bosnia and Nato deputy supreme commander, and Hew Strachan, Chichele professor of the history of war at Oxford University.
Majority opinion in Whitehall would probably say the Rusi paper exaggerates the threat to Britain's security and social cohesion posed by Islamist extremism. However, the paper does reflect concern in military circles about pressure placed on Britain's armed forces and a belief that the government does not appreciate the importance of the values it stands for and is supposed to defend.
Separately, a report by the centre-right Centre for Policy Studies called on the government to take up the example of the Troops to Teachers programme in the US where it had proved an "outstanding success". Former soldiers should be encouraged to retrain as teachers, bringing a taste of military discipline to tough inner-city schools, its says today.
The proposal was strongly supported by the former chief of defence staff, Lord Guthrie, who says in a forward to the report that it could offer an antidote to some of the problems of youth knife crime, drugs and violence. "This will not, of course, solve all the problems of the inner city. But it will help," he said.