A new world order

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This article was published 24/01/2026 (263 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If Russia Wins is a very little book of very big ideas that should be required reading for democrats of every stripe.

The scenario Carlo Masala lays out in just 120 pages is so compelling, so plausible that you can’t stop thinking about it.

Which, according to Masala, is exactly what his goal was when he wrote the book — “not to prophesy… but to encourage reflection, discussion and further thought.”

Masala is a professor of international politics in Germany and a former NATO researcher.

At the heart of the scenario in If Russia Wins (translated by Olena Ebel and Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp) is Russian President Vladimir Putin’s oft-stated ambition to reunite the fragments of the former Soviet Union, to reestablish “eternal Russia,” a “Motherland” that will be feared and admired the world over.

To do so, Masala argues, Russia, with the help of its BFF China, must break the bonds that bind NATO and reduce the mighty alliance to its puny parts.

Much of the scenario concerns itself with a brilliant strategy for how that might be achieved over the next few years.

One of the more audacious but intuitively plausible pieces in that puzzle is the proposition that Putin steps down once Ukraine has capitulated.

He would be replaced by a young, “charismatic, cosmopolitan” economist — the new Mikhail Gorbachev with a zeal for peace and reform.

Of course, Putin would be pulling the strings in the background, but one can see how the West would want to cut the new kid some slack — for the greater good, of course, and not just because it would be easier and cheaper.

And so, NATO would let its guard down and, as ever, collect a peace dividend rather than plug holes in its defences.

Suffice to say, the scenario leads to a rupture in the alliance when the “American president” refuses to defend NATO member Estonia from a modest Russian incursion.

As plausible as that surely is, it’s a scenario already being confounded by the fact that U.S. President Donald Trump is doing Putin’s work for him by threatening war on NATO members who try to prevent him from taking over Greenland.

Whether it comes to armed conflict — and a new scenario seems called for, possibly titled When Russia Wins — remains to be seen.

But no matter the future of NATO, one piece of Masala’s current scenario seems infallible.

It is the bleak picture he paints of Ukraine’s future.

Masala predicts that Ukraine will capitulate to its attacker, surrender territory to Russia and agree to enfeeble its armed forces as part of a “peace” pact.

The issue will come to a head when the “president of the United States” informs Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy that he can continue fighting Russia if he wants, but will have to do it on his own dime.

Not touched on by Masala, but in the spirit of further thought, is the suspicion that Trump has what he wants from Ukraine — an agreement to give Americans carte blanche access to the country’s resources.

A peace deal is the only sure way U.S. President Donald Trump has to ensure that Russia doesn’t take any more territory in its war on Ukraine, especially resource-rich territory.

Masala predicts that a bankrupt Ukraine will not be able to rebuild, and that pledged reconstruction funds will be inadequate, with the result that the Ukrainian diaspora will not return and that the exodus will only quicken.

Bitter disappointment will fuel right-wing extremism and a populist belief that closer ties to Russia is Ukraine’s only hope, leading eventually to Zelensky’s defeat in an election.

Mind you, that’s only a scenario.

Gerald Flood is a former Free Press comment editor.