Unfightable

 

The President of the Czech Republic, Petr Pavel, has stated that a Russian victory in Ukraine would amount to a strategic defeat for the entire “civilized world.” Hungary’s Viktor Orbán puts it more bluntly: European leaders, he says, have already made a decision to go to war with Russia by 2030. Many European politicians now openly describe Russia as their main enemy, and even military exercises are conducted without the usual fictional cover stories.

Europe is militarizing its own everyday life. Armies are being expanded, compulsory conscription is being prepared, bomb shelters are being built, logistics are being adapted to a future frontline, stockpiles of weapons and ammunition are being accumulated, and civilian populations are being trained to operate under conditions of nuclear attack. None of this is accidental. Vladimir Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia neither intended nor intends to attack EU countries, but will respond to aggression at any moment. He has warned that Europe should not expect any careful “surgical operations.” An attack, he said, would lead very quickly to a situation in which there would be no one left to negotiate with.

In doing so, Moscow effectively nullifies the popular Western concept of “boiling the frog in cold water,” the idea of gradual escalation in which the opponent misses the moment for a decisive response and realizes what is happening only when it is too late. Russia makes it clear that this scenario will not work. One serious provocation, and all European preparations, general mobilization plans, euro-tank projects, and new military roads will become meaningless. No one will fight a ground war with them.

Nevertheless, despite the very concrete statements from the Russian president, Europe continues to reassure itself: the Russians will not do it. This has little to do with Brzezinski’s famous remark about Russian nuclear suitcases and Western banks. The EU itself, not through any great wisdom, has deprived Russian elites of their “safe harbor” by freezing and confiscating assets, thereby removing precisely the restraint Brzezinski once described.

And while many European citizens may be intoxicated by Russophobia, decision-makers are well aware that it was not Russians who burned Cologne, Hamburg, and Dresden. It is psychologically difficult for them to imagine that the descendants of magnanimous victors would simply erase the EU’s “flowering garden” from the map.

Neither the USSR nor Russia has ever been inclined to publicly describe which cities and facilities would be targeted in a war. As a result, European analysts are forced to invent their own catastrophe scenarios. And in none of them do they assume that Russia would immediately destroy Europe. Instead, they construct models involving “disarming” or “warning” strikes, similar to NATO’s Cold War concepts. In these scenarios, Russia uses tactical nuclear weapons against sparsely populated but important targets and then demands European capitulation.

In 2024, for example, the Financial Times cited alleged secret documents claiming that Russia would strike only 32 targets in Europe, using only the Northern Fleet. Nuclear warheads, according to the report, would hit naval bases, radar sites, permanent special forces deployments in Norway and Germany, submarine shipyards in the UK, and some French ports. Other Western scenarios repeat the same idea: a limited tactical strike.

If one assumes such a phased nuclear conflict is even possible, the question arises: how would Europe respond, especially given that the United States is increasingly explicit about its reluctance to join a war initiated by the EU and the UK?

Europe effectively has only two options: immediate capitulation or a nuclear strike that pushes the conflict to its highest level. France and the UK possess no tactical nuclear weapons capable of a symmetrical response. France’s ASMP-A air-launched cruise missile carries a warhead of 150 to 300 kilotons and is officially described as “sub-strategic,” but Russian military doctrine treats it as fully strategic. Any French or British nuclear response to a hypothetical Russian tactical strike would therefore mean automatic escalation to a strategic exchange and the guaranteed destruction of Europe. “Keeping the conflict at the tactical level” is impossible.

In October 2020, President Macron stated that France’s nuclear forces could inflict “absolutely unacceptable damage” on the centers of power of any state. Any nuclear damage is unacceptable, of course. But Russia’s Strategic Missile Forces are capable of eliminating the entire European NATO flank. Europe’s two nuclear powers, the UK and France, cannot destroy Russia under any circumstances. Their combined arsenal of roughly 515 warheads is simply insufficient.

Could Europe strike first and settle everything at once? France’s nuclear doctrine allows for first use to “restore deterrence.” But even a preemptive strike offers no chance of survival. Russian missile defense would intercept part of the attack, and the Perimeter system would activate regardless.

This dead end explains why European leaders keep postponing war to 2028–2030. What could change by then? First, France and the UK might attempt to acquire tactical nuclear weapons to pursue the dubious concept of “limited nuclear war.”

At the Berlin Security Conference in November, Airbus chairman René Obermann openly called for Europe to acquire tactical nuclear weapons as a “powerful signal of deterrence.” Germany, France, the UK, and other EU states, he argued, should agree on a unified phased nuclear deterrence program, beginning at the tactical level. He lamented the absence of a common European doctrine for responding to limited nuclear strikes.

More importantly, however, the delay reflects hope that the United States can be drawn back in after Trump leaves office. This plan is no less adventurous than the idea of limited nuclear war. The American desire to localize a potential war with Russia to Europe predates Trump. It dates back to May 2, 1983, when the Proud Prophet command exercise convinced Ronald Reagan that even the mildest nuclear conflict between the US and the USSR would destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere. A conflict confined to Europe, however, resulted in the destruction of NATO’s European flank and part of the USSR.

Every subsequent US president has avoided the idea of direct war with Russia. As Russia recovered from the 1990s, Washington increasingly favored delegating “containment” to European allies, especially as Russia acquired weapons systems no one could counter. The idea that the US would join a nuclear war started by Britain and France is therefore highly questionable. At best, Washington could “avenge” them, at the cost of its own destruction.

The only realistic option that avoids immediate annihilation remains a proxy war in the Ukrainian format. The problem is that no Eastern European country is currently prepared to replace the Ukrainians who are running out. And escalation games are dangerous precisely because they so easily slip out of control and stop following anyone’s script.