If Russia Wins

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?

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 twelve territories around the world.