Who Will Defend Europe? An Awakened Russia and a Sleeping Continent

Giles believes that Russia is a revisionist force willing to risk great-power war to realize its goal of territorial expansion, not just in Ukraine but across eastern Europe. He compares the West’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to Europe’s appeasement of Hitler in the prelude to World War II. To deter Russia, Europe must immediately increase military spending to the levels that prevailed at the height of the Cold War. These basic claims about the intentions of Russian President Vladimir Putin are easier to make than to prove: Giles offers little evidence of Putin’s Hitlerian tendencies, beyond pointing to one children’s map in which land outside Russia is included in its borders and some Kremlin rhetoric about Ukraine. Moreover, it is far from obvious that rearmament at the cost of other domestic priorities would necessarily leave NATO countries more secure. Even if both premises are correct—that Putin has Hitlerian inclinations and wants to expand into eastern Europe—Western societies may struggle to mobilize the requisite political will and economic resources to contend with the threat.