If Russia Wins - by Carlo Masala (Hardcover)

About the Book

"March 2028. Russian troops capture the small Estonian town of Narva and the island of Hiiumaa in the Baltic Sea. After a victorious peace deal in Ukraine, Putin's long-mooted encroachment into the Baltic states has begun. What if Ukraine was only the beginning? What will the NATO alliance decide? Will they risk nuclear war? Day by day and hour by hour, renowned political scientist Carlo Masala plays out what might happen when the President of the United States is called on to uphold NATO's commitment to mutual defense, just as China's maneuvers in Asia provide Russia with the perfect cover. A timely, gripping, and thought-provoking scenario, If Russia Wins shows how our world order is poised on a knife-edge. In the United States, we are accustomed to everything working out in our favor, in the end. But what if it doesn't? What if Russia wins?"--

Book Synopsis

A New Statesman Book of the Year

A #1 international bestseller from a NATO expert, this deeply researched and chillingly plausible scenario imagines what might happen should Putin defeat Ukraine and not stop there

March 2028. Russian troops capture the small Estonian town of Narva and the island of Hiiumaa in the Baltic Sea. After a victorious peace deal in Ukraine, Putin's long-mooted encroachment into the Baltic states has begun. What if Ukraine was only the beginning? What will the NATO alliance decide? Will they risk nuclear war?

Day by day and hour by hour, renowned political scientist Carlo Masala plays out what might happen when the President of the United States is called on to uphold NATO's commitment to mutual defense, just as China's maneuvers in Asia provide Russia with the perfect cover.

A timely, gripping, and thought-provoking scenario, If Russia Wins shows how our world order is poised on a knife-edge. In the United States, we are accustomed to everything working out in our favor, in the end. But what if it doesn't?

Review Quotes

Praise for If Russia Wins:

A New Statesman Book of the Year
One of Le Monde's 20 Best Books of 2025
A Standard (Netherlands) Best Book of the Year

"A curious little bestseller from Germany hopes to steel European resolve by laying out the disastrous ramifications of appeasement . . . In the end, If Russia Wins isn't trying to entertain us. It's trying to warn us, to get us to imagine what might happen a few years after Ukraine is forced to capitulate and surrender 20 percent of its territory. What lesson would that victory teach the Kremlin?" -Ron Charles, Washington Post

"If Russia Wins has been making the rounds in European capitals and helps explain Europe's anxiety about NATO and the U.S. administration . . . NATO is built on decades of trust, so it would only take one time when it fails to act for everyone to question whether the alliance really works, and what it would take for the U.S., for instance, to rally to the side of a small Baltic country like Estonia."--Bertrand Benoit and David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal

"My book of the year is If Russia Wins by the German military scholar Carlo Masala. It is part geopolitical analysis, part novel . . . The political and diplomatic tensions all too evident in 2025 play out in often unexpected ways."--Alastair Campbell, New Statesman

"A warning to the west . . .[If Russia Wins] is not a prediction but a provocation. It's designed to start a conversation about what Russia could do next and whether the United States would come to Europe's defense"--BBC, The Global Story

"Chilling. . . at the heart of this short book lies a question that the wider public may have yet to fully grasp: how should the west--aging, indebted, polarized--respond when a hostile power intent on dismantling the post-1945 security framework probes its defenses?"--Financial Times (UK)

"Provocative . . . 119 pages of wartime reading . . . Masala's scenario-as-question: What if Russia's winning in Ukraine were only the beginning? The beginning of the enfeeblement of the United States?"--George F. Will, Washington Post

"[Masala] intended his book for a German audience, not anticipating it would capture global audience and be translated into a dozen languages. Drawing on his experience at NATO and with contacts in defense ministries across Europe, Masala's scenario offers a speculative look at Russia's intentions following the end of the war in Ukraine. Central to his thesis is what would define a Russian victory, which in his words would not be a ceasefire, but rather a 'capitulation.'"--Newsweek

"Consider, Masala urges, that Ukraine is just the beginning of a long-game effort on the part of Vladimir Putin and his lieutenants to restore something of the old Soviet Union . . . A worrisome thought experiment that projects disaster if current geopolitical trends--notably U.S. isolationism--prevail."--Kirkus Reviews

"Convincing . . . Carlo Masala's warning is timely, given the growing uncertainty of America's future involvement in Europe."--Le Monde, Best Books of the Week (France)

"A worryingly resonant warning . . . A recent intervention suggests that the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, may have read Masala's book: 'Europe is more tested now than perhaps at any time in our lifetimes, ' he wrote in the Financial Times on Thursday. 'We must systematically and massively raise the costs of Russia's aggression'"--Times (UK)

"The thought of Russia achieving its aims in Ukraine

About the Author

Carlo Masala is Professor for International Politics at the Bundeswehr University Munich. He previously worked as Deputy Director in the research department at the NATO Defence College in Rome. Since January 2024, Masala has been Director of the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. He received the Lichtenberg Medal in Gold from the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences in Göttingen in 2023 for his academic work and science communication. If Russia Wins was an immediate #1 bestseller upon publication in Germany and has since become a bestseller in the Netherlands. It is forthcoming in nineteen territories around the world.