{"id":3632,"date":"2026-10-01T08:08:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:08:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=3632"},"modified":"2026-10-01T08:08:33","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T08:08:33","slug":"the-ukrainification-of-europe-and-the-calculated-risk-of-nuclear-escalation%c2%b9-a-new-strategy-has-been-developed-mattias-forsgren%c2%b2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/?p=3632","title":{"rendered":"The Ukrainification of Europe and the calculated risk of nuclear escalation\u00b9, a new strategy has been developed. Mattias Forsgren\u00b2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

BLUF<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming there is some logic behind the US\u2019s actions on all fronts, and that there is an overarching strategy, what would it be?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new strategy has been developed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ultimate expression of this strategy is a managed escalation that keeps the American homeland as sanctuary while Europe absorbs both the conventional attrition and the nuclear risk.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the United States can no longer risk climbing the escalation ladder itself, it transfers the confrontation, with a degree of plausible deniability, onto a proxy: a nuclear-armed or nuclear-sharing Europe driven into acute desperation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Ukrainification of Europe and the calculated risk of nuclear escalation\u00b9, Mattias Forsgren\u00b3<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b2\u201cI argue that the United States is deliberately preparing to sacrifice Europe. When Ukrainian manpower is exhausted, European men and European territory are to become the next expendable resource in a proxy war against Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For decades a networked elite has manipulated governments, manufactured consent for wars of aggression, and shielded itself from accountability through legal and institutional mechanisms designed for that purpose. That same elite now faces the collapse of its financial instruments, the failure of its traditional tools of control, and the rise of powers it can no longer dominate. It cannot afford to lose power, because loss of power would mean exposure for crimes that, under the standards established at Nuremberg, constitute the supreme international crime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe\u2019s own political class is not working for Europe\u2019s interest. Its loyalty has been carefully cultivated to serve the American hegemon \u2014 more like a beaten wife than an equal partner. The continent is therefore being transformed from ally into resource: economically drained, politically captured, and militarily prepared as the theatre in which the costs of imperial decline will be paid. The ultimate expression of this strategy is a managed escalation that keeps the American homeland as sanctuary while Europe absorbs both the conventional attrition and the nuclear risk<\/strong>\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Link to the article:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 \u00b9https:\/\/mattiasforsgren.substack.com\/p\/hegemonic-logic?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=1sxk3k<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b2 https:\/\/x.com\/battleforeurope\/status\/2104608306270490824<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00b3 The Hypothesis<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Assuming there is some logic behind the US\u2019s actions on all fronts, and that there is an overarching strategy, what would it be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A dark but plausible hypothesis is that the American strategy now is to Ukrainify Europe, so that when Ukrainian men run out they can be replenished with Europeans. The point is not to copy every measure used in Ukraine. It is to reach the same result: a country so poor, so tightly controlled, and so sealed against Russia by propaganda that it can be spent as frontline material. In Ukraine that was done with IMF shock therapy, deindustrialisation and a long campaign that turned the country into an anti-Russian project. In Europe the tools are different \u2014 energy shock, the loss of cheap Russian inputs, fiscal strain, NATO rearmament and the same kind of information war. For it to work, unemployment and desperation must rise, and some form of attack from Russia must be provoked or fabricated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That preparation does not stop at a conventional front. Followed far enough, the same trajectory leads into the nuclear domain: a Europe desperate enough to escalate, and a United States that can remain outside the consequences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In nuclear confrontations, as in chess, the aim is often not to play the game through to the end, but to place the opponent in zugzwang: a position where every available move makes the situation worse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ola Tunander, in \u201cFrom U.S. Horizontal Escalation to Russian Escalation Dominance,\u201d describes how the United States achieved escalation dominance in the late Cold War through superiority in attack submarines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By threatening the Soviet submarines that carried Moscow\u2019s retaliatory nuclear missiles, Washington undermined the reliability of the Soviet second-strike capability \u2014 the ability to hit back after an American first strike. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The central problem for Soviet leaders was Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD): the doctrine that neither side would launch a nuclear first strike because the other would still be able to destroy it in return. Once that second-strike capability was in doubt, the logic of MAD began to unravel and Soviet Union was forced to back down<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the perspective of top Western military strategists, the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact constituted a genuine military victory. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The political class mostly interpreted 1991 as the end of an ideological struggle, but those who saw it as a military triumph never abandoned the assumption that the victor retains the right to dictate terms.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Putin\u2019s restoration of Russian sovereignty has therefore been experienced as a violation of that privilege.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today the relationship has reversed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russia has caught up on the submarine front and deployed hypersonic missiles \u2014 Avangard, Tsirkon, Kinzhal and Oreshnik \u2014 that travel at extreme speeds and manoeuvre in flight, rendering them extremely difficult for current US and NATO defences to intercept.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Escalatory dominance has transferred to the Russian side. <\/strong>Any move that risks vertical escalation now carries greater uncertainty for Washington than for Moscow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is why a new strategy has been developed.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because the United States can no longer risk climbing the escalation ladder itself, it transfers the confrontation, with a degree of plausible deniability, onto a proxy: a nuclear-armed or nuclear-sharing Europe driven into acute desperation. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such desperation could arise after Russian hypersonic missiles have destroyed key European arms factories, after tens of thousands of European soldiers have been killed in Ukraine, and after Russian forces are approaching Kiev or even the Polish border. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point Europe itself becomes the party with the strongest immediate incentive to escalate, while the United States retains both distance and deniability<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Europe lacks the conventional military resources to mount any decisive escalation of its own; assessments from NATO officials and European intelligence services indicate that serious conventional readiness against Russia is unlikely before the<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 early-to-mid 2030s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In such conventional impotence, nuclear weapons risk appearing as the only available \u201cquick fix.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mantra that Putin\u2019s nuclear threats are a \u201cbluff\u201d lowers the psychological barrier to escalation that could compel Moscow to use nuclear weapons in order to restore the credibility of its deterrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BLUF Assuming there is some logic behind the US\u2019s actions on all fronts, and that there is an overarching strategy, what would it be? A new strategy has been developed. The ultimate expression of this strategy is a managed escalation that keeps the American homeland as sanctuary while Europe absorbs both the conventional attrition and the nuclear risk. Because the United States can no longer risk climbing the escalation ladder itself, it transfers the confrontation, with a degree of plausible deniability, onto a proxy: a nuclear-armed or nuclear-sharing Europe driven…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3633,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3634,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3632\/revisions\/3634"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3633"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/geopoliticsamongstates.gr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}