This compact book (clocking in just shy of 120 pages including the introduction and afterword) presents an academic and well-researched future where Russia has moved on from their 'special military operation' in Ukraine and has now decided to poke the potentially-Earth-shattering bear that is NATO's Article 5.
The title of the book, If Russia Wins: A Scenario suggests that the narrative would go down the road of a full-scale Russian victory in Ukraine. Interestingly, this is not the case. Carlo Masala opted to go for a much more realistic end to the war where around 20% of Ukrainian territory is taken by Russia.
Masala describes this as a Ukrainian "capitulation" and uses this 'victory' for Russia as the driving force of the country's continued military escalation. You see, in Russia this is seen as a monumental moment, the West had given up in the face of Russian demands - their invasion was a success.
Masala then goes on to describe a future in which Russia, now under new leadership, invades Estonia - a NATO member state - and captures the majority of the Russian-speaking city of Narva and the island of Hiiumaa in the Baltic Sea. Facing pressure from the west, Russia assures their enemies that they only seek to free the Russian people who were oppressed by the Estonian government. After much back and forth, NATO decides not to act and not to invoke article 5, undermining and perhaps eradicating the organization as a whole.
The scenario relies on three main principles:
1. Russia's imperialist desires will never die. Russia and Vladimir Putin - despite his somewhat strange omittance from this book - want nothing less than a reunification of the former USSR. As diplomats, national security advisors, and academics have warned for years now, Russia is not content with an occupation of Ukraine. If they didn't want to expand their empire they wouldn't have invaded the country in the first place.
2. The US and many of its Western allies are growing tired of the Ukraine War. On page 15 of the UK edition, Masala highlights the growing support for far-right politicians in Europe and the US and how these far-right parties and ideologies have no room to keep supporting war in Ukraine. The US has become bored of Europe and would rather turn their head to what they see as the bigger threat: China, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific region as a whole. To put it plainly, Western support for Ukraine is waning.
3. NATO is weak. In no world would the US or UK sacrifice New York or London for a small Estonian city of 60,000 on the Russian border. It just wouldn't happen and Russia knows it. NATO is built on promises which can't be kept and once they are broken NATO will surely be no more.
In conclusion, despite some strange and outlandish fringe predictions If Russia Wins: A Scenario is a stark and cold warning of an ever-more-stark-and-cold political landscape. Putin wants nothing but an ever-expanding empire and the end of the liberal world order (not that the liberal world order is a great option) and if anyone wants to stop him, the world needs to start waking up to that fact.