Sooner or later, anyone who advocates helping Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression is called a warmonger. If you talk about the very real Russian threat to Europe, you’ll be labelled a fearmonger.
Carlo Masala, professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr University in Munich and author of the bestselling book If Russia Wins: A Scenario, takes criticism in his stride. “My reply is: I’m not interested in a war. Why do you accuse me of being a warmonger if my aim is to prevent the outbreak of a military conflict between Russia and Nato?”
In Masala’s geopolitical fiction, Ukraine was forced to sign a “peace accord” – in reality, capitulation – in Geneva in March 2025, because the West would not provide the wherewithal for it to keep fighting. Masala’s book is based on fact. The Trump administration has already endorsed the provisions of the fictional agreement: Russia keeps the 20 per cent of Ukrainian territory it seized in violation of international law. Ukraine is locked out of Nato and receives only vague security guarantees which will not deter further Russian attacks.
Europe and the US have had neither a clear strategy nor a clear definition of their goal in supporting Ukraine, Masala writes. They have been intimidated by Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons, but fear a Russian defeat that could lead to anarchy within Russia, a country with 6,000 nuclear warheads.
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It will be the ultimate irony if Nato, the alliance founded in 1949 to confront Soviet aggression, disintegrates because it is afraid to confront Russian aggression.
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In Masala’s book, the West heaves a collective sigh of relief over the phoney peace agreement and ignores the chaos which ensues in Ukraine. Putin hand-picks a younger, seemingly more moderate successor who calls for improved relations with the West. Meanwhile, the Kremlin is plotting. In March 2028, Russia seizes the Estonian town of Narva and an island in the Baltic. Nato members are unanimous in condemning these fictitious attacks, but cannot agree on a course of action – a repetition of the response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, except that Estonia is a Nato member.
Nato is arguably already “brain-dead”, as Emmanuel Macron said in 2019. “If the member states no longer believe that Article 5, the collective pledge of mutual assistance, is valid, then Nato is finished,” Masala writes. Donald Trump has repeatedly cast doubt on the guarantee.
If Estonia were attacked, Masala speculates, Trump and some European leaders would parrot Russian propaganda about the persecution of Russian-speakers. “The independence of the Baltic states is an artificial construct,” a fictional Russian ambassador to Washington tells the US president. “Historically they belong to Russia.”
For months, EU leaders have been saying that Europe’s hour has come. “It was all just empty talk,” Masala writes. He concludes that “Europeans will have to reach the position where they can deter Russia on their own, without the help of the US.”
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Yet if Nato is too divided to stand up to Russia, so is the EU. “We cannot count on the EU as an institution because at least two member countries [Hungary and Slovakia] – and I would say three now with the new Czech government – have a totally different perception of the Russo-Ukrainian war,” Masala says.
He places his faith instead in the “coalition of the willing” – the grouping of 35 EU and non-EU states cobbled together this year by the French and British leaders – to fill the security void left by the US. “If [the coalition] buys the right stuff and co-ordinates it properly, they can signal to Russia that the price for an aggression against a Nato or EU member country would be unacceptably high,” Masala says.
Putin has ordered the Russian army to increase its size to 1.5 million active servicemen, is producing 600 ballistic and cruise missiles and up to 500 new tanks every year, Masala says. If the war ends in Ukraine, Russia will have a stronger military than it did in 2022.
At a meeting of the UCD Politics Society on September 24th, our new President Catherine Connolly criticised German rearmament, which she compared to the 1930s.
Masala is a leading proponent of German rearmament. He says Connolly’s comparison with Germany in the 1930s was incorrect: “Today’s Germany has no intention of waging a war against any of its neighbours, which was the intention of the Nazi regime.” He hopes Ireland’s new President “will travel abroad and ask other countries what they think”.
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Masala travels a great deal in Europe. “Everyone is basically asking Germany to do more on defence because, given the fact that we are the largest country in Europe, the only country which has solved the problem of financing the rearmament of its armed forces, everyone is looking at us and hoping we will lead this process. There is absolutely no concern in any country I have travelled to about German rearmament.”
What should a small, neutral country like Ireland do? “If there is a major war in Europe, there is no guarantee that Irish neutrality will be respected by the Russians,” Masala says. “I have the same debate in Austria and Switzerland.” Ireland should boost its armed forces, stay out of Nato but co-operate with the coalition of the willing, he adds. “Paramount is that people realise that neutrality doesn’t protect you. If Russia strikes the UK, they won’t stop at Ireland.”
Prof Carlo Masala will talk about his book If Russia Wins: A Scenario at the Institute of International and European Affairs in Dublin at 1pm on December 16th. The event is open to the public, but reservations are required.
