Fears that Russia’s actions in Ukraine will inevitably trigger a wider European conflict often exaggerate the real threat, writes Richard Sakwa. Photo by Kurt S/Wikimedia Commons.

Is Europe really under attack from Russia? And if so, in what ways? If the answers to these two questions is yes, then we really are in a pre-war situation, and we should prepare accordingly. But what if the threat from Russia has been exaggerated, and the war scare is yet another example of the periodic militaristic hysteria which seizes the continent, always with damaging consequences? It then becomes a matter of critical importance to separate fact from fiction, reality from myth, and thereby possibly prevent the frenzy from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.

A spate of recent incidents gives grounds for the belief that the continent is under assault from Russia. On September 10 at least 19 unarmed Russian drones entered Polish airspace, four of which were shot down by Polish jets and NATO forces. Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that “a line has been crossed,” and that the “situation brings us the closest we have been to open conflict since World War Two.” Serious indeed, worse than the Berlin blockade of 1948, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956, the Berlin Crisis of 1960-61, all the way through to NATO’s Able Archer military exercise in 1983, which the Soviet leadership believed was a cover for a NATO attack. This was threat inflation taken to extreme levels and exposes the febrile state of Europe today.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the incident “a systemic Russian campaign directed against Europe, against NATO, against the West,” and called for “a systemic response. Strong action must be taken,” warning that Putin will “not… finish his war in Ukraine. He will open up in some other direction’ by attacking another European country.” Addressing the 80th United Nations General Assembly, he insisted that “Ukraine is only the first. And now Russian drones are already flying across Europe.” He had already invoked the escalating Russian threat in November 2022 when a stray missile entered Poland and killed two........

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