General Lord Richards has said the UK’s role in any potential conflict with North Korea is negligible.
This comes as North Korea fired a ballistic missile over Japan and into the Pacific last Friday when tensions are already at breaking point on the Korean peninsula.
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph, he said: “This is not one for us.
“For Britain with its Army of 78,000 and its Navy of 20 frigates and destroyers to have the concert to think it can fight a war in the Far East is almost laughable.”
He said the UK’s role is confined to Nato, Africa and the Middle East.
Nato’s general secretary Jens Stoltenberg has said that North Korea’s nuclear programme is a “global threat and requires a global response”.
It was also revealed that 13 of the Royal Navy’s 19-strong fleet are not able to be deployed because of a lack of manpower, fuel and supplies.
The retired Chief of the Defence Staff said he believed that Kim Jong-un does not have any intention of provoking a war.
He said: “He knows it would be the end of him. My worry is that he miscalculates, and America is forced to intervene. The result of a military intervention will, in the short term, be awful. There should be a diplomatic outcome in which Russia – or, more likely, China – is the major influence.”
General Lord Richards said extremism in all forms is the biggest global threat.
He said: “I don’t buy the idea that Russia need be the big threat everyone says it could be.
“There are regimes – and North Korea is obviously one – that could be pitched into doing things they perhaps don’t intend to.
“One day you can find yourselves fighting a war you didn’t expect, and I suspect we are neither psychologically nor physically ready for that to happen.”
Lord Richards said that as the UK Government negotiates Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union, it “does not look good” that the Royal Navy just has “12 to 14 destroyers”.
He said: “If our ambition is to be the second military power within Nato then we are in a pretty sorry state.”