From Sweden to the Netherlands, passing through Germany or the United Kingdom, warnings to the population about the possibility that the war in Ukraine will spread to the rest of the continent and the need to “mentalize” themselves come from the mouths of senior military and politicians.
“Take a look at the news about Ukraine and ask yourself: If this happened here, would I be prepared? What would I do? The more people think about it and prepare, the stronger our society will be,” proposed the head of the Swedish Armed Forces, Micael Byden, at the beginning of the month, shortly after the Minister of Civil Defense, Carl-Oskar Bohlin, said that “there may be a war” in the country, still pending the green light from Hungary to join NATO and come under the transatlantic security umbrella, as it requested 20 months ago following the Russian invasion.
A few days earlier, the outgoing commander of the Dutch army, Martin Wijnen, had made a similar warning. “The Netherlands must realize that the entire society must be prepared in case something goes wrong. We should not think that our security is guaranteed just because we are 1,500 kilometers from the front, he told the newspaper De Telegraaf. This does not mean that “everyone has to put on a helmet,” Wijnen clarified, but he advised stocking up on supplies and advocated reinstating compulsory military service.
The British Government should “mobilize the nation” and “train and equip” a “citizen army”, because conventional armed forces will not be enough, General Patrick Sanders declared this Wednesday in the framework of a conference on armored vehicles. . “The war in Ukraine shows that the army starts wars, and citizen armies win them,” concluded Sanders, very critical, like the other European military commanders who have expressed themselves on the matter, with the level of defense spending.
In Germany, it was the Defense Minister himself, Boris Pistorius, who has recommended “taking into account” that “one day Vladimir Putin could attack a NATO country.” Although “for now” it is not likely, “our experts hope that this will be possible within five to eight years,” he told Der Tagesspiegel. Pistorius, whose government has promoted the highest German military spending since World War II, advised using that time to “prepare ourselves in military, social and military defense terms.”
The long list of warlike omens expressed in recent weeks – nothing new when it comes to the Baltic countries – inevitably leads to the question of whether these are crude but necessary warnings to sensitize public opinion alien to the idea of ??war. or, on the contrary, a crude exercise in warmongering or opportunistic alarmism. In Sweden, many people reacted by stockpiling food or contacting their municipalities to find out where the nearest shelter was, while youth psychological helplines recorded their highest spike in calls since Covid.
“In some cases, the comments border on pure warmongering but, in general, I think they respond especially to two factors,” says Professor Mark Galeotti on the phone, an analyst at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies, who sees “little “it is likely” that Putin will consider invading a NATO country. “The first is very simple: senior military officials are ultimately bureaucrats and all bureaucracies exist in order to increase their budgets, so at a time of so much pressure on defense budgets they clearly want to raise the tone to protect what they they have or, hopefully, increase it,” he says.
Apart from this “convenient excuse”, Galeotti, former advisor to the British Foreign Office, detects a certain degree of “exasperation” in military circles because Europe, addicted to the military umbrella of the United States, does not dedicate enough resources to its own defense and now suddenly have to finance an expensive, high-intensity war like the one in Ukraine at the same time as waging a direct economic war with Russia, continues Galeotti, author of Putin’s Wars. From Chechnya to Ukraine. “People are getting fed up, there are clear signs of fatigue towards the Ukrainian war and, in response to that, some want to scare the public, evoke a hypothetical Russian invasion, to justify that if we do not help Ukraine defend itself we will have to fight really in Europe.”
NATO also believes that it is necessary to raise awareness in society about this possibility. “We must realize that peace is not guaranteed, that is why in NATO we are preparing for a conflict with Russia,” Admiral Rob Bauer, president of the Alliance’s military committee, recently said, advising to include in these discussions European industry, to ensure a high production capacity for weapons and ammunition, and explain to citizens that they also “have a role to play.” But “not everything can be planned and not everything is going to be rosy for the next 20 years,” he stressed.
Warnings about the possibility of war have provoked mixed reactions, but governments have often been accused of being alarmist. In the United Kingdom, General Sanders’ words forced Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to clarify that he is not considering reinstating compulsory military service. Given the social alert in Sweden, the leader of the opposition, the social democrat Magdalena Andersson, demanded “responsibility” in the public communication to the executive of the conservative Ulf Kristersson, who governs with support from the extreme right. “A government must speak clearly, otherwise it would be irresponsible,” but “there is nothing to suggest that we are on the verge of war,” Kristersson later clarified.
The prospect of a political turnaround in the United States weighs on statements such as those made this week by the leader of the European People’s Party, Manfred Weber, who demands that Europe prepare to “be able to defend itself without NATO or with Donald Trump.” in the White House” and develop its own capabilities, including nuclear defense. “Trump has a somewhat underdeveloped knowledge of geopolitics and believes that NATO is a club in which Europeans do not pay entry fees,” says the British analyst. But the way to counteract this perception, he argues, is precisely by “increasing spending now and neutralizing that risk by saying that we already spend more on our own defense.”
Minister Pistorius is not the only politician who has set a date for a possible Russian invasion. The Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, recently said that according to her intelligence services, Europe has “three or five years” to prepare to face another military offensive on NATO’s eastern flank (it depends, she said, “on our position on “Ukraine, because what Russia wants is a pause to rebuild its resources and forces. Weakness provokes aggressors.” But is it possible to foresee such a thing and with such accuracy?
The high representative of Foreign Policy of the EU, Josep Borrell, this week questioned the viability of such estimates but stressed that the war in Ukraine is “an existential threat” for Europe. “At the moment the war is in Ukraine so let’s not anticipate more problems than we already have. Our responsibility is to do everything possible so that it does not spread and that Ukraine wins, not to speculate about what will happen in 5 years,” the high representative concluded.
From a strategic point of view, Galeotti sees no reason for Russia to try to invade a NATO country. “If the question is whether Putin has the capacity to launch an attack, the answer is yes, of course,” says the British analyst, author of the book ‘Putin’s Wars. From Chechnya to Ukraine’, he believes, however, that Putin will take at least a decade to fully rebuild his forces. “But does he have any reason to take such a risky step? That’s what I don’t see,” he points out.
“In general, politicians do not understand soldiers. The job of the military is to imagine the worst possible scenarios and plan for 5, 10 or 20 years, because that is how long it takes in total to build an aircraft carrier, for example. What happens is sometimes politicians take the most alarmist scenarios and use them for political purposes. As soon as soldiers talk about possibilities, politicians start talking about probabilities,” summarizes Galeotti.
