2 THE IMAGE OF RISK
The need not to be naïve: Worst case scenarios.
Facing today’s Kremlin, Europe as a whole must do something new; we must be willing to talk to Putin again. In other words, we must wholeheartedly attempt intersubjectivitiy, even if we don’t believe much in it because we experience his style of communication and relating as non-intersubjective. In that attempt, we must even subtract our own, possibly hitherto unacknowledged contribution to ill circumstances over decades’ accumulation that finally ignited the Ukraine war (contributions at an aggregate level as a nations block, not as individuals).
Before we do so, however, we must ensure not to be naïve. We must take height for the worst case scenarios, the worst we could possibly think about Putin’s Kremlin, since it is impossible to peek directly into Putin’s mind. These worst case scenarios are here – not – drawn up to fortify an enemy perception of Russia. No, to the contrary, it is done based on a still living hope that today’s Kremlin is better than these scenarios would tell. Being naïvely blind to these worst case possibilities, however, can nonetheless be the road to one’s own demise.
Denmark’s intelligence reported in mid-february 2025 that it is unlikely that Russia may start a war against one or more NATO-countries as long as they sustain the present war-effort in the Ukraine. Denmark warns that Russia will have the capacity to launch further wars in Europe if the Ukraine war ends or freezes, and the European part of NATO seems militarily weak or politically divided.
They describe three levels of threats if the Ukraine war ends or freezes. Denmark concludes that the time horizons mentioned takes as their premis that the European part of NATO does not arm itself at the same paste as Russia does. If the European part of NATO does not arm itself at a paste symmetrical to that of Russia, then:
- Within 6 months Russia will have – the capacity – to lead a small, “local war” against a small neighboring country. The 2008 war against non-NATO member Georgia which did not entail a full invation may give a norm for the size of such a conflict.
- Within 2 years Russia will have – the capacity – to pose a realistic invasion threat towards several small NATO-members neighboring Russia, the three baltic states being the most vulnerable.
- Within 5 years Russia will have – the capacity – to launch another “big war” in Europe, granted that the USA does not get involved. Without here saying anything about Russian goals and cost-assessments, the mere scale implied by the report seems examplifiable by scenarios such as a war against Poland like that against the Ukraine before.
In Norway, commentaries to the Danish report differ from it. They pointed out that some of the reported facts are relatively obvious and not necessarily newsworthy, and it is asked why it is helpful to transmit them. The Danish report only speaks of Russia’s capacity, not their intentions. Vague threath descriptions can create exaggerated fears.
It gets pointed out that the continuous reporting from secutiry services is not without effect on the conflicts that drives states towards war. Such reports may create exaggerated threath scenarios that feeds into a conflict escalation, and contribute towards a type of self-fulfilling prophecy. It gets pointed out that the type of information from secutiry services that is the most useful is concrete and more specific.
Despite of the need for nuancing and contextualization, the Danish report can be useful as a crude map for letting the EU identify worst case scenarios (which would be naïve not to), as long as one consciously uses it exactly to avoid self-fulfilling prophecies.
Europe’s degree of risk pertaining to the Ukraine war
Above were mentioned theoretical risks that may exist if the Ukraine war ends or freezes. In the present situation, however, the Ukraine war is not over. If Trump lands an agreement with Putin that the Ukraine does not accept but choses to fight on, and if Europe then keeps serving the Ukraine with weapons that prolong the war without the USA doing the same thing, Russian perception and news transmission to the Russian public may make the EU their new, main enemy – no longer the USA. We may be viewed in Russia as a freight train of nations feeding a war that the landscape wants to end.
It may be right to accept that as part of the “bargain” for a while longer, but we should at the very least be aware that we are doing so. We who live in countries in Europe may be drawn up in an image as radicalists and extremists in the Russian, public media transmission; a “just enemy” to Russia, who might dehumanize us to lower the threshold of making us targets of military violence. The threshold of future wars on the continent may be lowered.
If the Ukraine war actually ends, what is the next risk given a worst case scenario?
Granted that we here still only talk of various worst case scenarios, we should reflect on what the Danish report did not, namely possible Russian goals and cost-assessments. It must be done while remembering that worst case possibilities must not be true.
Let us imagine that Trump gets a peace deal for the Ukraine with Putin – which is implemented. Then, whether during Trump’s present term or later, Russia could test the cohesion and commitment of European NATO members to each other with military provocations that may not (and importantly – should not) result in full blown war. This way, Russia will get hints as to whether cohesion and mutual obligation among European nations to each other within the NATO-alliance is weak or strong. If cohesion is weak, the chance for further wars could theoretically increase.
Given that we here talk of worst case scanerios, it is still comparatively more likely that the Kremlin would want to focus geographically on regions that lie the closest to them first, securing full and stable control over a core geographical area before moving on “outward” (cf. “secured, perpetual and concentric expansion”). Wars further away from the Russian heartland or open front towards several sizeable european NATO members at once, both increases the chance of overstretch and goes against the principle of “secured, perpetual and concentric expansion”. A possible Russian “worst-case-strategy” could be “one by one”. If cohesion and mutual commitment among European NATO-members is weak, Russia could realistically take small countries close to their own borders, one at a time. That could also give them increases in manpower for later wars.
That means that the countries at the most risk are those bordering Russia the closest to Russia’s greatest centers of population and power. Compared to Poland, for instance, Finland and the three Baltic states lies closer to big Russian population centers and are smaller; easier to take. Finland and the Baltic states are comparably vulnerable because they are small countries bordering Russia, but also because they do not border other NATO-members to the west, but in stead the Baltic sea. European assistance might be thought harder to organize effectively.
Is the Scandinavian peninsula at risk? Russia has too short coastlines in the Baltic sea that a marine sovereignty there is a given up against Finland, Sweden, Poland and Germany taken together. It might seem unlikely that they will try to invade the Scandinavian peninsula “over sea” in some sort of minor scale “D-day”. That could be very costly for them at sea, and with insufficient odds of succeeding even if they should arrive on shore, due to “prepeared NATO landpower” in Scandinavia. This is a “lay assessment”, but supported circumstantially by the fact that it would also violate the principle of “secured, perpetual and concentric expansion”. Trying to invade the Scandinavian peninsula over sea without controlling Finland and the Baltic states first does not make ideal sense. Russia may also realize that Britain and Germany would fight them in Scandinavia out of sheer strategic self-interest. Otherwise, those two nations would have Russia “pointing at them” from southern Norway and Sweden. France would most likely get involved as well. Even a USA more detached from NATO may get then involoved, in support of “Britain’s war”. The same would also be true if Russia wanted to invade the Scandinavian peninsula, not over sea, but from the north.
Is Poland at risk? Even in a worst case scenario, Poland seems, more likely than not likely, not to be Russia’s next object of a full scale war. Unlike the Ukraine, Poland does not have historical, Russian speaking population pockets. Poland lies further away from Russia than the Ukraine does, is therefore a lesser threat to Russia as a NATO-member. Even if Russia would meet only the European part of NATO on “battlefield Poland”, the odds are too high that a united European NATO would surpass them in conventional strength. Russia might not want to use tactical nuclear weapons in Poland since Poland is a slavic speaking sibling culture of Russia. A conventional war there would also cause a stream of polish migration westwards, which would be a demographic disadvantage for Russia; a weakening of the pan-Slavic sphere as a construct wished by some Russians. This general assessment is made even more precarious if Russia has not nivillated NATO’s control in the Baltic region first. That, again, would violate the principle of “secured, perpetual and concentric expansion”.
The Baltic region seems to be the most precarious one, and not only for the reasons mentioned thus far. Russia may be interested in strengthening their marine standing in the Baltic sea by securing a longer Baltic sea coastline. The three Baltic states were once a part of the Sovjet Union – and the Ukraine war – could – be interpreted by some as motivated by a wish to restore the same geographical sphere of interest. The Russians may have an interest that the Kaliningrad enclave is no longer an enclave, but landbound with “main Russia”. The Baltic states have Russian speaking minority populations, like the Ukraine. Finally, they lie so close to St-Petersburg, Moscow and Kaliningrad that NATO forces there may be deemed a severe strategic threath to the Kremlin, a bit like the reason the Cuban missile crisis got so severe. The three Baltic states have allready become NATO members, something that could increase rather than decrease the conflict potential, at least so if NATO cohesion is being perceived as crumbling. If Russia actually is behind the cutting of communication cables on the sea floor of the baltic see, like many in the West express convictions of (yet which is not an empirical fact), those cuttings have one thing in common. They serve to isolate the Baltic states as an “island” of NATO. Cables running from Finland to the baltic states, from Sweden to the baltic states; it is all lines either to or from the three Baltic states. That’s what these incidents have in common. It could be interpreted as a possible warning sign that the Kremlin of today may “want something” with the three small Baltic states.
Is Finland at risk? Also Finland is at increased risk if Europe as a whole does not find a path towards de-escalation towards Russia. That is one reason the Norwegian reserve to the Danish report is important. One should not claim that Finland is not threatened. We must seek to make a war here less strategically important to Russia. First and foremost, we who care for the Fins as part of the nordic community, must for the reason of that care seek to establish a trust lost with Russia. Some sort of common ground, however defined.
The Baltic region and the German NATO assignment at present
Possible EU-forces in the Baltic states would have a relatively higher chance of being perceived by the Kremlin as the military of a fledgling cross-national unit; a truly united Europe; a fledging new statehood. At present, however, this is not a possible alternative to NATO-forces. There are not yet EU-forces.
NATO-forces in the Baltic states coming from the largest, European NATO members have a higher chance of being perceived (or slandered) by the Kremlin as those “single nations” using NATO as a “cloak” to expand their national interest spheres in a “game” where only those without a “back yard” are at sole disadvantage. This is especially true if Russia perceives that “NATO-powers” standing in the Baltic states no longer have the clear backing of the USA. If NATO is barely a credible construct any longer, then why should Russia attribute for instance a strong German military presence in the Baltic states to NATO?
According to this line of thinking, a German presence in the Baltic region under NATO-banner (as is presently the case), but without the clear cut back of the USA, could by the Kremlin more easily be attributed to “Germany” than to NATO compared to a situation where NATO cohesion was strong and American backing secure.
To make matters worse, especially a German, military NATO-presence in the Baltic region, may be misinterpreted (or slandered) in Russia as a potential disputation of Kaliningrad (formerly known as Königsberg). German accept for the permanent German cesession of Kaliningrad was a condition set by the Sovjet Union before it signed the German reunification treaty of 1990 (one of the Sovjet Union’s last official acts).
It might be necessary with a strong NATO-presence in the Baltic states if we are serious about wanting to co-defend their national autonomy, but Germany should possibly not be given its heaviest task here, given the specifics of history. If Germany should fight Russia in the Baltic region as part of a Russia-NATO war, intimately close to Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, this is far from an ideal situation, given the history of WWII. The Kremlin could then brand no longer just the Ukraineans as nazis, especially not if missiles accidentally perforate Russia’s borders. If the Russians sense that they might lose their reason to celebrate their righteous and existentially important victory over Hitler in WWII, how should they explain that to their children? In the worst case, they might choose extremist courses of action where they will never have to.
One could fear that a seemingly nationalistic Russia is so sentiment-guided that they would not despise a revenge on Germany for WWII, but more traditionally, Russia has always appeared more coldly rational. Traditionally, they would not spend an unnecessarily big part of their stock piles for an irrational and inhuman act that – given the +80 years delay and another/exchanged population, would put them in the same category as the nazis. Revenge was served back then, through a very high number of civilian deaths in the end phase of the war and permanent german loss of large land areas.
Since EU-forces are unrealistic as of now, Britain or France could take the “Baltic NATO-assignment”, while Germany takes equally heavy tasks elsewhere. Like the USA says to Europe as a whole, Germany may also say: What is NATO for us, if others are unwilling to share risks – historically sensibly?
Either Britain or France could take the “Baltic NATO-assignment” together with a number of smaller EU-countries. Britain is the only main European power that has never senselessly attacked Russia with the intent of destroying it, unlike France (cf. Napoleon) and Germany (cf. Hitler). Britain was the strategic ally of Russia both in the Napoleonic wars and in WWII. The drawback to letting the British stand there, however, is that if a warm conflict is not averted after all, it would be more likely to see friendship-based American involvement in such a war, which means the odds of full nuclear war (a nuclear Armageddon) could get relatively higher.
Thus, more important than the non-nuclear NATO-member Germany not standing in the Baltic region, might be that a process is initiated where the future situation for the Baltic states is seen in relationship to the terms of peace in a European brokered peace deal for the Ukraine. This topic will be more detailed under a later heading. If Britain or France don’t want to take over for Germany in the baltic region, Germany could put forth an ultimatum within NATO, that the only condition under which they will keep standing there, is if a process as that mentioned are initiated rapidly and with all weights of seriousness.
The nuclear threat, whether in a still ongoing Ukraine war – or afterwards
The risk of escalation of a NATO-Russia war with nucelear weapons, is a risk that is greater for Europe than for the USA. Russia and the USA perpetually threaten each other with “mutually assured annihilation”, but the Kremlin does not believe that an American President would sacrifice his people‘s existence if Russia uses nuclear weapons in Europe, and Europeans should realize that the Russians are right. All Americans would thank their President from the bottom of their hearts for not doing so. We Europeans would also do the same thanks if we were Americans.
Europe as a whole does not have what the USA has, the means of deterring Russia through the prospect of “mutually assured annihilation”. That difference gives rise to consequences we must be acutely aware of. Britain no longer being an EU-member, France is now the only EU-country that has nuclear weapons, but they wouldn‘t want to establish a new balance of “mutually assured annihilation” on behalf of the entire EU, even if they physically could. They would then take too great a risk on behalf of others, just like the USA might – understandably – feel they are unwilling to do.
Let us imagine that Russia was to be “direly cornered” in the course of a conventional war deemed by the Kremlin to be an existentially important one, whether that is a protractination of the present Ukraine war or in some as of now merely fantaziced war of one possible future, for instance in the Baltic region or in Poland. Then, the Kremlin could – in principle and as a worst case – use nucelear weapons against non-nucelear powers in Europe (those who cannot themselves retaliate nucelearly) a bit like the USA did it in Japan in WWII, as a means to get the NATO-alliance as a whole to surrender (cf. “take out one city after another for as long as it takes for the enemy to surrender”). We may call this “the Hiroshima-method”.
The Kremlin may not choose to use nuclear weapons against countries along their borders they hope to conquer conventionally due to historical and lignual affiliations, and where nuclear attacks would have more dire consequences for themselves due to the geographical proximity. Scandinavian and German speaking countries should note that they, in contrast to the nuclear powers France and Britain, are parts of NATO that are not in either of these categories of possible, Russian reservation concerning the use of nuclear weapons. Britain and France could retaliate nuclearly. Germany and Scandinavia could not, but neither are they what Russia considers “un-nuceable sibling-cultures” of theirs.
Here taken as a mere example, the number of human lives that can be saved by preventing a Russian nuclear attack on Germany vastly overgoes the entire population of the three Baltic states. Choosing the right course of action pertaining to the Baltic states is therefore, among other things, also a cost-benefit evaluation for countries in Europe. What if NATO is led by a mentally unstable, hardliner American President unwilling to let NATO surrender in the Baltic region despite of several atomic explotions in Germany and/or in Scandinavia?
The more Russia depletes their means of conventional warfare, the higher the risk of nuclear escalation. That conclusion can be derived from purely rational models: You fight with what means to fight you have available, lest accepting loss is an acceptable alternative to you. Putin does not seem to easily think that loss is an acceptable alternative.
Depleting Russia’s conventional resources on the battlefield in a NATO-Russia war, could be at least halfways a fatalist act in its own right. Maybe more likely than strategic nukes being launched accoring to the “Hiroshima-method”, it is that Russia will use tactical nuclear weapons. The notion that a united Europe is likely stronger than Russia conventionally, is not equally obvious if you would count tactical nuclear weapons as conventional super-weapons.
Historically, the Russians have experienced that non-insane fatalism (out of dire defensive need) pays off for them when the nation’s future is threatened, with “suffering triumph” as their nearly “holy”, historical success template (like when they burned their capital Moscow before Napoleon, successfully to win rather than to lose – or when they defeated Hitler at enormous costs). Putin may have fatalist tendencies on par with heroic, historical examples from Russia. That is to say, we do not have positive hints that he does not.
Popularly elected individuals with executive branch power in western Europe have the responsibility to weed out each last inch of stupidity from the firmness of principle they might like to pride themselves with (or – feel – ashamed if they don’t display publically), because they act on behalf of all the rest of us, if we have voted for them or not. The risk to all of us if your actions are too much based on your subjective convictions at the expence of intersubjective agreement within our democracies is, in a certain sense, majority dictatorial.
“The half knowing is more victorious than the half knowing. The person knows the things in a simpler manner than they actually are. Therefore, the person concerned makes his/her opinions more easily understandable and more convincing.” (Nietzsche, 1878, in Human, All Too Human, Part 1, 9th Main Section, #578)
“One says with great exclaim: “Yes, that is character!”, if a persons shows crude consequence; when the consequence seems conspicuous for the weak eye. As soon as a more nuancding and deep mind reigns, however, and is consequential in its higher way, the spectators deny the presence of character. Therefore, sly state men usually play their comedy behind a camouflage-cape of crude consequence.” (Nietzsche, 1881, in The Dawn of Day, Book 3, #182)