EAST AND WEST

In the bestseller If Russia Wins, the German strategist Carlo Masala presents a stark warning: if Russia succeeds in Ukraine, Europe will face a far more dangerous future. His scenario imagines a weakened NATO, a complacent Europe, and eventually a Russian probe against the Baltic states—perhaps the Estonian city of Narva—testing whether the alliance still has the will to defend itself. The argument has obvious political force. It translates a strategic concern into a dramatic narrative: if Russia is not defeated now, the war will return later and in a worse form.

Yet the popularity of this argument has produced a curious blind spot in Western strategic debate. The question “what happens if Russia wins?” has been explored at length. The equally important question—what happens if Russia loses—has received far less attention. The prevailing assumption is that Russian defeat would restore stability, reinforce deterrence, and demonstrate the limits of revisionist power.

History suggests something more complicated and potentially far more dangerous.

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Great powers rarely absorb defeat quietly. When they do lose major wars, the consequences are rarely limited to the battlefield. Defeat destabilizes political systems, fractures elites, and reshapes national myths. It often produces not reconciliation but resentment—sometimes lasting for generations.

Russia’s own history offers repeated examples.

Russia has endured enormous wartime suffering without political collapse. Yet the moment of defeat itself has repeatedly triggered internal upheaval.

The loss to Japan in 1905 shattered the aura of imperial competence and triggered the revolutionary crisis that forced the Tsarist regime to introduce constitutional reforms. The defeats of the First World War destroyed the legitimacy of the Romanov state entirely, culminating in the revolutions of 1917.

The most important precedent, however, is the end of the Cold War. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was not a battlefield defeat in the traditional sense, but it was perceived inside Russia as a geopolitical catastrophe. Fifteen states emerged from the ruins of the union; Russia lost vast territory, influence, and prestige. The result was not a clean transition into a post-imperial identity but a long psychological trauma.

The key figure associated with that collapse, Mikhail Gorbachev, remains one of the most controversial figures in modern Russian history. In much of the West he is remembered as the statesman who peacefully ended the Cold War. In Russia he is often remembered very differently: as the leader under whom the state disintegrated and national power collapsed.

The resentment produced by that experience has shaped Russian political discourse for three decades. Narratives of humiliation, betrayal, and strategic retreat have become central to how the post-Soviet period is interpreted.

Any new defeat would inevitably be filtered through this memory.

The Psychological Context of Defeat

If Russia were to suffer a clear military defeat in Ukraine, it would not occur in a political vacuum. It would be interpreted against the background of a society that already believes it lost the geopolitical struggle of the twentieth century.

The war in Ukraine has often been presented domestically in Russia as an attempt to halt that long decline. Whether one accepts that interpretation or not, it has become part of the political narrative surrounding the conflict.

A second major defeat—after the collapse of the Soviet system—would therefore carry enormous symbolic weight. It would not simply represent the failure of a particular military campaign. It could easily be perceived as confirmation that Russia’s historical retreat since 1991 has become irreversible.

Such moments tend to produce instability rather than moderation.

Western discussions often assume that a defeated Russia would become more cooperative, perhaps even more liberal. Historical experience offers little support for that assumption. In many countries, defeat has instead empowered more radical and nationalist forces, precisely because they promise to restore lost prestige.

The danger is not merely revanchism in the abstract. It is the internal crisis that defeat could unleash inside the Russian state.

The Fragility of Elite Stability

Contemporary Russia is governed through a coalition of institutions: security services, military structures, regional administrations, oligarchic economic networks, and technocratic bureaucracies. These actors coexist within a system whose stability ultimately depends on a central political arbiter.

That arbiter is the presidency.

A clear military defeat would immediately trigger a struggle over responsibility. Military command structures could blame intelligence services for miscalculations. Economic elites could blame political leadership for strategic errors. Security institutions could blame each other for failures of coordination.

Such dynamics are not hypothetical. They are typical of authoritarian systems after military failure.

The first stage would likely be a cycle of purges, investigations, and institutional reshuffling inside the state apparatus. But if the perception spreads that the leadership can no longer protect the interests of the ruling coalition, the incentives for elite realignment increase rapidly.

In authoritarian systems this often leads not to democratic reform but to internal coups or factional struggles within the ruling class.

The individuals who emerge from such struggles are rarely moderates.

This is precisely why the early caution expressed by Emmanuel Macron deserves more attention than it received at the time. In 2022 the French president argued that the West should avoid “humiliating Russia” once the war ended. The statement provoked fierce criticism across much of Europe, where it was interpreted as naïve or conciliatory toward Moscow.

But the underlying concern was strategic rather than sentimental.

Macron’s argument reflected a basic historical observation: defeated great powers that feel humiliated often become more dangerous, not less. The political energy generated by humiliation can feed revanchist narratives that last decades.

Europe experienced this dynamic before.

The point was not that Russia should be rewarded for aggression, but that the long-term political consequences of humiliation must be considered alongside the immediate military outcome.

In Western debate this distinction largely disappeared. The conversation became simplified into a binary: victory or defeat, deterrence or appeasement.

Reality is rarely so tidy.

One destabilizing possibility after a Russian defeat would be internal fragmentation.

The Russian Federation is an enormous state with vast regional disparities, complex ethnic composition, and uneven economic development. Its cohesion ultimately depends on the authority of the central government.

If that authority weakens dramatically—through elite conflict, economic crisis, or political delegitimization—the centrifugal forces within the federation could begin to reassert themselves.

This is precisely what occurred during the final years of the Soviet Union. Once the center lost the ability to impose political order, regional elites began to pursue autonomy as a survival strategy rather than an ideological project.

No one can predict whether such a process could repeat itself in contemporary Russia. The institutional structures of the Russian Federation differ significantly from those of the Soviet Union. Yet the precedent demonstrates how quickly apparently solid political systems can unravel once central authority erodes.

The world has already experienced the collapse of one nuclear superpower.

The fragmentation of another would present unprecedented strategic risks.

The Revanchist Cycle

Even if the Russian state remained intact after defeat, the political consequences could shape its foreign policy for generations.

Defeated societies often reinterpret their loss as temporary injustice rather than final settlement. Political narratives evolve to explain defeat not as a failure of national policy but as the result of external betrayal or internal weakness.

Such narratives are powerful because they transform defeat into a future mission.

In Russia, the story of the Soviet collapse already functions in this way for many citizens. The idea that the country was unjustly weakened in the 1990s has become a central theme in Russian political discourse.

A defeat in Ukraine could easily become the next chapter in that narrative.

Instead of ending geopolitical confrontation, it might simply shift the conflict into a longer historical timeframe. The immediate military threat could decline while the ideological motivation for future confrontation becomes stronger.

This is the paradox often overlooked in Western discussions of deterrence.

Defeat can discourage aggression—but humiliation can nourish it.

Strategy Beyond Slogans

None of this implies that Russia must win in Ukraine or that aggression should be tolerated. It means something simpler and more uncomfortable: the geopolitical consequences of defeat must be analyzed as seriously as the consequences of victory.

The success of Masala’s book reflects a genuine strategic anxiety in Europe. His scenario warns that if Russia wins, the security order created after the Second World War could begin to unravel. That concern is legitimate.

But the opposite scenario deserves the same analytical attention.

What happens if Russia loses?

The answer may not resemble the reassuring vision often implied in Western debates. It could involve elite struggles, political radicalization, or long-term revanchism. In the most extreme case, it could even threaten the internal cohesion of the Russian state itself.

History offers a consistent lesson: the defeat of great powers rarely produces stable endings. It produces volatile transitions in which the defeated state struggles to redefine its place in the world.

If Russia were to lose the war in Ukraine, that transition would begin immediately.

And its consequences would not be confined to Russia alone. They would shape the security of Europe—and perhaps the stability of the international system—for decades to come.