Why Europe Must Prepare to Go It Alone | Carlo Masala

0:00Demetri Kofinas:What's up, everybody? My name is Demetri Kofinas, and you're listening to Hidden Forces, a podcast that inspires investors, entrepreneurs, and everyday citizens to challenge consensus narratives and learn how to think critically about the systems of power shaping our world. My guest in this episode of Hidden Forces is Carlo Masala, a political scientist, a professor of international politics at the Bundeswehr University, Munich, and the author of the book If Russia Wins, which makes the urgent case for European national rearmament and the need to deter near-term threats of Russian incursions into NATO member countries and protect European governments and nations from Russian political domination.

0:43Demetri Kofinas:Carlo and I spend the first hour of this conversation detailing the scenario that he puts forward in his book, that of a limited Russian incursion into the Estonian city of Narva. We explore why Karlo thinks that Russia might attempt such an operation, the similarities to and differences from the approach Russia took in Ukraine in 2014, whether NATO's Article 5 commitment would hold in such a scenario, and whether the gradual erosion and eventual destruction of the NATO alliance is the ultimate goal of the Russian Federation, irrespective of who is in office, be that Putin or his successor. The second hour is devoted to a conversation about Europe's defense challenges in the face of declining American commitments to NATO, the material and financial constraints European nations face in strengthening their deterrent capabilities in the absence of such a commitment, the advantages and disadvantages of Russia's conventional and unconventional forces, and the deeper crisis of identity and purpose afflicting Western democracies.

1:41Demetri Kofinas:We discuss the immigration debate, culture wars, and the failure of leadership in the context of European politics, and what ordinary citizens can do to defend democratic systems in the face of threats, both external and those emanating from within. If you want access to all of this conversation, go to hiddenforces.io slash subscribe and join our premium feed, which you can listen to on your mobile device using your favorite podcast app, just like you're listening to this episode right now. If you want to join in on the conversation and become a member of the Hidden Forces Genius Community, which includes Q &A calls with guests, discounted access to third-party research and analysis, and in-person events like our intimate dinners and weekend retreats.

2:24Demetri Kofinas:You can also do that on our subscriber page. If you still have questions, feel free to send an email to info at hiddenforces.io, and I or someone from our team will get right back to you. And with that, please enjoy this timely and important conversation about NATO and the future of Europe with my guest, Carlo Mazala.

2:51Demetri Kofinas:Carlo Mazala, welcome to Hidden Forces. Thanks for having me on your program. I'm excited to have you on. Your book has been making the rounds and it was recommended to be by a number of people. I finished reading it over the weekend and I'm very excited to speak with you about it today. The book is titled, If Russia Wins, and it opens with a very specific scenario that takes place in the future on March 27th, 2028, where Russian forces invade Estonia's largest city with a population of 57 ,000 and also take control of a sparsely populated Estonian island. Walk us through the scenario that you lay out in the book.

3:31Demetri Kofinas:Why did you choose to write it? And what made you choose this particular country and this sequence of events as your thought experiment? Okay, I have to start with the reason why I wrote this scenario. And this goes back to summer 2024. In summer 2024, almost every military intelligence service in Europe published their assessment that Russia might have an army by 2029, which is big enough and strong enough to attack a NATO member state. And then, of course, a debate started here in Europe, partly also in the US, but mostly here in Europe, where critics made two points. The first one was, why should Russia be so stupid to attack NATO?

4:19Because NATO is far superior in its military capabilities than the Russians are. And the second argument was, look at the Russian forces in Ukraine. They have so many difficulties. How can you think that, you know, even the Russian political and military elite might think that they have a real chance in fighting NATO. So this was the debate we had in summer 2024. And at that time, I was thinking, you know, maybe this is not the right way to think about how Russia might attack a NATO country. Because what is Russia's goal? And Russia's goal is actually to destroy NATO and to make sure that US forces are out of Europe, because then this is what the Russian political and military elite things.

5:05They are able to dominate part of the European landmass again, politically and economically. So this led me to the thought to achieve this goal. Is it really necessary to attack a NATO country full fledgly, meaning, you know, six tank divisions breaking through the Belarus-Polish border with the aim to conquer Warsaw? And I thought, no, it's not necessary. I mean, the Russians just have to put NATO on a test and to see whether NATO is willing to invoke Article 5. And the best thing they can do is they can do some, let's say, minor incursion into a NATO territory. And then I was looking, where are basically NATO's soft underbellies?

5:52And this goes back to, you know, the Second World War, where Churchill was looking for the soft underbellies of the Nazis. And he found the soft underbelly in Sicily. So that's the reason why they drove in through Sicily to basically liberate the rest of Europe. And if you look basically at the map and in various NATO countries, you have a couple of soft underbellies. You have an island which belongs to Norway, Svalberg, for instance, where there are small Russian settlements. You have Gotland, which is a Swedish island, but you have also a couple, four cities actually, two in Norway, one in Estonia and one in Lithuania, which are close to the Russian border, which have a Russian-speaking minority and even some people who are still Russian citizens.

6:43And these kind of cities with a Russian-speaking minority or even Russian citizens or people who have a dual citizenship, one of them is Russian, usually provide the Russians with a perfect narrative to invade. This is what we saw in the Donbass in 2014, because then the Russians can make the argument that the rights of their minorities are oppressed in the respective countries and that they have to do something in order to protect their minorities abroad. And so you have Narva in Estonia, you have another city in Lithuania, and I choose Narva as an example. So sometimes people think that this scenario is a prognosis and that I say they will go into Narva.

7:31But that's not the point. Narva is just to illustrate something we know from the Russians. Could have taken place also in these two Norwegian cities where there is a Russian-speaking minority or in Lithuania. But I just choose Narva basically as an example for how the Russians might look at the possibility to put NATO on a test. This is the basic scenario. And then, of course, I mean, the Russians would make the scenario. I don't want to reveal too many things because still I want people to read the book. And then the Russians would basically go around NATO countries and especially to the United States and would say, are you really willing to risk a major conventional confrontation, which always includes a nuclear dimension for the liberation of this tiny place in Estonia?

8:20And this will put NATO on a test because NATO then has to decide whether they invoke Article 5 and they try to liberate, by all means necessary, this Russian-occupied city, or whether some NATO countries think it's not worse. Let's use a phrase which we know from the First World War, that it's not worse to die for Narva. And this is basically the scenario. So it's a political scenario rather than a military scenario.

8:47Demetri Kofinas:So I certainly encourage people to read the book. It's a very short book. You can read this book in a few hours really, if you're committed. So I would love to at least give them some sense of what the scenario is that you've put forward, because I also want to run some counterfactuals by you, because in fact, this is a contested area. Contested is the wrong word, but the Narva River crossing is an area that has seen incursions by Russian forces before. and so Estonians are on high alert on a regular basis, the Estonian army, in how to deal with this. So this is not actually, while the scenario itself is fictitious, it is by no means implausible.

9:23Demetri Kofinas:So just do me a favor and share with us what details you can about what you've put forward in the book so that both people can get a sense of what they're about to read and also more importantly for this discussion to lay the foundation for a further series of questions that delve into this topic. Yeah. So basically the book starts with the end of the war against Ukraine. I call it the Peace of Geneva because there is a treaty signed in Geneva between the Russians and the Ukrainians mediated by the US and some Europeans, which basically gives Russia whatever they claim they want to have. So Russia gets the territory it is occupying, Russia gets or mostly demilitarize Ukraine, rest of Ukraine, which will have no hard security guarantees, neither by the Europeans nor by the US.

10:10The current government or the president has to resign. They go into a phase of new elections and the Russians are trying to meddle into these kind of elections. But mainly also there is no economic perspective for the rest of Ukraine. So people are starting to leave the country. And the point is that this will be perceived by the Russians as a victory. And this encouraged them to go even further. So in my scenario, Putin as a Russian president resigns and a new guy comes in, which is someone who comes from the financial sector, wasn't in politics before, young, smart guy, and he starts a charm offensive vis-a-vis, let's say, Europe and the US, making clear that he's not ready to negotiate anything about the occupied territories in Ukraine, but he wants to normalize relations with the West.

11:06And he puts forward proposal after proposal, which basically leads in Europe to a situation where European leaders, as well as public opinion, is not quite sure whether this is guy is just a better looking Putin or really represent a kind of new approach in Russian foreign policy. And the consequence is that all these attempts we've seen over the past couple of years, two years, to rearm Europe, to establish some kind of deterrence with regard to Russia is put on a hold because European political leaders want to test and want to see basically who is this guy. is he really a new approach in Russian foreign policy or not?

11:52Demetri Kofinas:Some combination of wishful thinking and also appealing to a public that is war-weary and also wants the benefit of closer economic integration with Russia. Yeah, and definitely in all of the European societies, then a debate starts that if this guy represents something new in Russia, then why should we continue with all the efforts to rearm, then basically we should, you know, look for closer cooperation with Russia. While in Russia, it is very clear that actually this president, this new president wants to continue this kind of neo-imperial policy we see from Russia since a couple of years. So he gets all his closest advisors and top military guys together and says, find me a way where we can basically continue with the policy of my predecessor.

12:46And then they started discussing about various options. They are very sure that invading a NATO country full-fledgedly would not lead to the desired results. And then the chief of the Russian army comes up with a historical analogy. And the historical analogy is the so-called remilitarization of the Rhineland. And for those who are not familiar with that, this is a situation in 1936. The Versailles Treaty, I mean the treaty which was signed basically after the end of the First World War, did forbid Germany to have a permanent military presence in the Rhineland, which is part of Germany. Because the French were adamantly against this and supported by Great Britain in that.

13:33So it was written into the Versailles Treaty. When the Nazis came into power, they started a debate with the leadership of the Wehrmacht, how to basically test the French and the British resolve in confronting Nazi Germany. And they came up with the idea of sending the Wehrmacht into the Rhineland, fully knowing that if France, and this was the decision, that if France and Great Britain would react, they would basically immediately withdraw from the Rhineland. But at the end, it turned out that neither France nor Great Britain did react in any way. So the Wehrmacht stayed in the Rhineland. And this basically is the scenario they developed then for their political ambitions, which is you basically go into a small part of a NATO area.

14:25You stay there. You ask NATO actually if they're really willing to have a major conventional escalation with the Russian armed forces and the nuclear dimension included to that for the liberation of such a city. If NATO would react, if NATO were to react, they would immediately withdraw on their own territory. But if NATO doesn't react, then they would stay and NATO would be dead. That's basically the scenario. What is important for the book is that the attack on Narva doesn't start in Narva. Actually, it starts with Russian paramilitary units in Africa in pushing basically people from Africa to the Mediterranean coast, putting them on boats to be sent to Europe.

15:12Because if you live in Europe, you know that one of the major issues at the moment is irregular migration into the European Union, especially from Africa. So if you have such a wave of migrants trying to get into the European Union, then Europe would be completely focused on preventing these migrants from entering the European Union. So Europe is going to be distracted from, let's say, the Eastern flank. The same thing happens in my scenario with a little bit of help from the Chinese who start basically some kind of quarrel with the Vietnamese of a small archipelago in the South China Sea. Because you as Americans, you know that whenever something happens in the South China Sea, the reaction of every US administration is at least to send a carrier group over to deter the aggressor from doing even more.

16:04So even the US to a certain extent is distracted from the eastern flank of NATO and focused on the South China Sea. And this basically provides the space for the Russians to move into Narva. This is what they do in my scenario. And then basically the whole political process starts. Then you have a couple of scenes where basically, you know, how the US is debating internally what kind of possibilities they have in order basically to get the Russians out of Narva. The same thing happens in Europe. And the Russians are countering this by sending out their diplomats. And especially one scene is, I think, very crucial in my book, is a meeting between the Russian ambassador to the United Nations, who is sent to the White House to meet the US National Security Advisor to have a talk about, you know, Narva.

16:54And in this talk, the US National Security Advisor basically is pressing the Russian ambassador on the issue what Russia is willing to do in order to defend Narva, because the Russians make it very clear it's about this city, it's about the protection of their minority, they have no intention even to go further. And in this conversation, in this chat, the ambassador, the Russian ambassador and the US National Security Advisor they have, the Russian ambassador makes it very clear that Russia is willing to protect Narva by all means necessary, which also means the use of nuclear weapons. Yeah. And then actually in the third step, you have the NATO meeting, which is the center of my scenario, where actually you see a split in NATO member states.

17:44There are some member states who see this as, you know, an attack on NATO's territory and they want to push back. They want to basically react. And you have a couple of countries who are very reluctant to engage in order to defend Narva. So at the end of this NATO meeting, NATO doesn't invoke Article 5, which basically means NATO will not react to that as a whole. And then I think I just say something about the last chapter of the book. In the last chapter of the book, there is a call between the new Russian president and the Chinese president. And it's a very small chapter. I mean, it's half of a page or something like that.

18:25And the dialogue basically is as follows. The Russian president says to the Chinese president, you know, things are moving faster than they did over the past century. and the Chinese president answers by saying yes and we are in the driving seat or we are driving that and what sounds like a made-up dialogue by me is exactly the dialogue Putin and Xi had a year and a half ago at Sochi when they basically had a bilateral meeting so at a certain point they had a break they went out on the balcony with their delegations and there was a kind of hot mic which recorded exactly this kind of conversation.

19:05Putin said to C, history is moving faster than the past 100 years and C answered to Putin, yes, and we are in the driving seat. So that's basically

19:15Demetri Kofinas:the end of my scenario. Okay. I have a lot of questions. Thank you so much. First of all, do we know whose mic it was that was turned on during that conversation? Well, I would have to go back into my files. I don't know. I don't know if it was ever... I'm just curious, because I'm also skeptical. If it was If it was someone from the Chinese delegation, I would expect that it done an error, but I wouldn't have been surprised if someone on the Russian side had kept it hot on purpose. So let's go through a number of my questions. First of all, let's talk a little bit about your choice and your decision to replace Putin by this younger charismatic leader.

19:48Demetri Kofinas:Why did you decide to engage in a leadership transition ahead of this incursion? Why was that important for you? Was it to demonstrate that the Russian threat extends beyond Putin? I mean, there are three arguments why I changed basically a Russian president. One is it's very simple to make the book more readable and to have some kind of surprise element for the reader. The second thing is, and you alluded already to that, that if you look at Russia, we tend to call this war Putin's war. And we tend to overlook that this is basically Russia's war because it's the regime who has this kind of neo-imperial ambition.

20:27So if Putin will be dead by tomorrow, he will be replaced by someone else who probably would continue the same kind of policy. Because we know from the regime, it's the regime who has this kind of neo-imperial ambition. And the third thing is I wanted basically older readers like I am, you know, having this kind of new Russian president who basically confuses Europe and the US is exactly what we had in the mid 80s. in the mid 80s when Gorbachev came into power, actually Europe and the US, I mean the Reagan administration and our administrations, they were split on whether Gorbachev is something like a better looking Brezhnev, I mean his predecessor, or whether he represents really something new in Soviet foreign policy.

21:15And I needed that to basically get to the point, which is something I'm really concerned of, that if the war is over, basically we will slow down in our efforts to deter Russia because we will have this kind of mood in the societies as well as in politics to say now the Russians got what they wanted in Ukraine and that's it. They won't pose any further threat to European stability and security.

21:47Demetri Kofinas:So I definitely think it's a good strategy to assume the worst in order to prepare yourself as best as possible in this case to deter potential Russian aggression. But I do want to dig a bit deeper into some of these assumptions that you make about Russia's goal. You said its goal is to destroy NATO. And also that the regime beyond Putin, that the Russian, I suppose the the ruling consensus within Russia has imperial ambitions. Why do you proceed with these assumptions? I mean, first of all, the first assumption that Russia wants to destroy NATO is something the Russians are clearly telling us.

22:25If you go back, for instance, to the letter, I mean, the letter was written by Lavrov, but of course it was Putin's letter, on the 17th of December 2021 to Washington. And a similar letter was sent the day after to Brussels, NATO headquarters, where they laid out their demands in order not to invade into Ukraine. One demand and the most important was that they wanted to talk to the US about actually the European security architecture, meaning they wanted US forces out of large parts of Middle and Eastern Europe, as well as the Balkans. Some even say they want US forces out of Kosovo, but I'm not quite sure about that.

23:05But this is basically which they wrote in a letter. And since then, when Putin or someone else, Lavrov, Peskov, whoever, talks about ending this war, they make very clear that they want to talk to the U.S. about its European security architecture. So usually the Russians let the U.S. know that they're not that much willing to talk about Ukraine because they have this maximalist demands which they want to see fulfilled. But they want to engage in a dialogue about reversing the European security architecture. And what is written in this letter of 2021 is to the status of 1997. Now, 1997 was two years before the first enlargement of NATO.

23:53The first enlargement was Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. And the Russians know that, you know, I mean, NATO will not kick out these countries out of NATO. But what the Russians do mean is no American troops and installations, you know, in those member countries who came after 1997 into NATO. And if you ask yourself, why is this the case? I mean, why do they want American troops out of Middle and Eastern Europe? that's a precondition for them to dominate parts of this land mass again politically and economically. I don't think personally I do not believe that Russia's ambition is to recreate the Soviet Union especially not when it comes to territory.

24:37I mean it's not that I think that the Russians want to integrate the Baltic countries and the other countries into their territory and have this kind of new Soviet Union but and you can go back to the Yeltsin area I I mean, after 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed and there was this first democratic government in Russia, even Yeltsin wanted to have the control over these areas. I mean, we know that there was a meeting between Clinton and Yeltsin in 1993, where Yeltsin basically said, give us the Baltics and Central and Eastern Europe. We had the first national security strategy of the Russian Federation.

25:17I don't remember, 1993, I think was it too, where basically they called this whole area there near abroad where they have special interests. So this is something which is not, you know, part of Putin's and the regime's ideology. This goes even back to the Yeltsin area. And you can even extend this to the Soviet Union because the first proposal in 58 by the Polish, then Polish foreign minister Rapaki, calling on the Western Europeans to engage in some kind of diplomatic effort to create a kind of European security architecture, was calling for a European security architecture ranging from Vladivostok to Lisbon.

26:02San Francisco and Vancouver were missing in this proposal. So because even the Soviet Union knew that dominating Europe is only possible if you don't have any American influence in Europe. So that's my point. There is this inherent imperial, neo-imperial aim in Russia. And even with the current government, they're telling us this. And I could even give you more nitty-gritty details. There is a Lithuanian politician who basically was expelled from Lithuania because he was accused of being a Russian spy who lives now somewhere in Russia. He recently wrote a book and his main argument is actually there is no state Lithuania and the Lithuanian language doesn't even exist.

26:50And surprisingly, who wrote the foreword for this book, it was Lavrov. So which gives you some kind of official label, you know, for this kind of revisionist policies. So secondly, replacing Putin. um i'm i'm not a russian expert so i lack a lot of insights in in russian inner debates but i talk to a lot of russian experts i know and i would even say in my field of expertise which is more security defense and security policy and military stuff if you look at the war there was only one clash in russia with regard to this war and this was not among people who said that this war is stupid, you know, and doesn't bring anything to us.

27:38These were among the people around Putin and the hardliners, accusing Putin being too soft in the way he was waging the war against Ukraine. So actually the only opposition we became aware of was an even more nationalistic opposition than the current regime is. So therefore, you know, my assumption is If there is a change of politicians in Russia, we might even get people who are more hardcore with regard to Russia's goals and what the Russians want to achieve in foreign and security policy than the current leadership is.

28:19Demetri Kofinas:And it's actually a great point because a lot of commentators in the United States, whether we're talking about Russia, whether we're talking about Turkey, because this also applies to Turkey as well, where you have a significant contingent of hardliners who push Erdogan to the right, there's an expectation that if the leader leaves or if there's a collapse or a coup or something that somehow this is good for the United States. Putting aside all the other ways in which something like that would be bad, it's also important to recognize the points that you made. So I think there'll be opportunities to challenge some of these assumptions even further as we move along, but I want to clarify a few other assumptions that you put forward.