Paris and Berlin are unlikely to be threatened. Photo by Kostiantyn Liberov/Libkos/Getty Images
Mild feelings of panic were induced across the European Union last week, as citizens were urged to prepare for impending disaster. Stock your cupboards! Draft emergency plans! No, it’s not the opening of a mediocre dystopian novel — it’s the EU’s newly minted “Preparedness Union Strategy”. This grand initiative is designed, allegedly, to protect Europeans from floods, fires, pandemics and, of course, a full-scale Russian invasion.
The strategy draws inspiration from Poland, where housebuilders are now legally obliged to include bomb shelters in new builds, and Germany, which is reviving Cold War-era civil defence schemes with a bunker geolocation app. Meanwhile, Norway is advising people to stock up on iodine tablets in the case of a nuclear attack.
The EU wants its citizens to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours, recommending households stockpile food, water, medicine and — why not? — playing cards and power banks. Because, of course, should nuclear war break out, a good round of poker and a fully charged phone will see us through.
Yet, as ludicrous as these preparations might seem, they should worry us all. The Preparedness Union Strategy is only the latest layer in an architecture of control that has been building for decades. It rests squarely on the shoulders of the EU’s recent defence policy reboot, ReArm Europe, now renamed less ominously, “Readiness 2030”.
The core narrative behind this push is simple and endlessly repeated: the idea that Russia is likely to launch a full-scale attack on Europe in the coming years, especially if Putin isn’t stopped in Ukraine. The European Parliament resolution in favour of the ReArm Europe programme warned that “if the EU were to fail in its support and Ukraine were forced to surrender, Russia would then turn against other countries, including possibly the EU member states”. As Macron recently put it, Russia is an “imperialist” country that “knows no borders… it is an existential threat to us, not just to Ukraine, not just to its neighbours, but to all of Europe”.
But the notion that Russians are massing at the borders, with designs on Paris or Berlin, is a fantasy. Indeed, when we’re told to prepare for war by packing a power bank and a waterproof pouch for our ID, it’s hard not to be reminded of Cold War absurdities like “Duck and Cover”, the “preparedness strategy” of the time designed to protect individuals from the effects of a nuclear explosion by instructing people to crouch to the ground and cover their heads. That campaign, too, sold the illusion of safety in the face of annihilation. And beneath the clownish veneer of the push lies a calculated aim: the EU’s attempt to further consolidate power at the supranational level, elevating the Commission’s role in security and crisis response — domains traditionally under national control.
The EU’s preparedness plan is based on the recommendations of a report from the former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö, which calls for the establishment of a central operational crisis “hub” within the European Commission; greater civilian-military cooperation, including by conducting regular EU-wide exercises uniting armed forces, civil protection, police, security, healthcare workers and firefighters; and developing joint EU-Nato emergency protocols.
When considered alongside the EU’s rearmament plans, it suggests a comprehensive, society-wide militarisation, something which in the years ahead, will become the dominant paradigm in Europe: all spheres of life — political, economic, social, cultural and scientific — will be subordinated to the alleged goal of national, or rather supranational, security. Proceeding under the guise of protecting citizens, in practice, it will lead to further censorship, surveillance and the erosion of civil liberties — all justified by the ever-present spectre of Russian interference.
Western governments have been resorting to fear as a means of control for a very long time. Indeed, it’s a telling coincidence that the EU’s announcement coincides with the fifth anniversary of the Covid lockdowns, which ushered in the most radical experiment ever attempted in fear-driven politics.
The pandemic response used a totalising narrative that wildly inflated the threat of the virus to justify historically unprecedented policies. As the Director-General of the WHO, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, put it, it was everyone’s moral duty to “come together against a common enemy” and “wage war on the virus”. In this struggle for the greater good — public health — virtually any action was justified.
From the perspective of “crisis politics”, the widespread use of the war metaphor to frame the Covid pandemic was no coincidence: war is, after all, the emergency par excellence. Across the globe, we saw an authoritarian turn as governments used the “public health emergency” to sweep aside democratic procedures and constitutional constraints, militarise societies, crack down on civil liberties and implement unprecedented measures of social control.
Throughout the pandemic, we witnessed — and populations largely accepted — the imposition of measures that would have been unthinkable until that moment: the shutdown of entire economies, the mass quarantining (and enforced vaccination) of millions of healthy individuals and the normalisation of digital Covid passports as a regulated requirement for participating in social life.
All this prepared the ground for the collective reaction of Western societies to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — a real war at last, after years of rehearsing metaphorical ones. In terms of communication, we immediately saw the emergence of a similarly totalising narrative: it was Western societies’ moral duty to support the Ukrainians’ fight for freedom and democracy against Russia and its evil president.
However, as it becomes increasingly apparent that Ukraine is losing the war, and as the world is faced with Trump’s attempt to negotiate peace, European elites are recalibrating their narrative: it’s not just Ukraine’s survival at stake — but that of Europe as a whole. The threat is no longer over there but right here at home: not only is Russia preparing to attack Europe, but, we are told, it is already waging a wide array of hybrid attacks against Europe, ranging from cyberattacks and disinformation campaigns to election interference.
All this suggests that Western elites learned an important lesson during the pandemic: fear works. If a population is made anxious enough — whether about disease, war, natural disasters or some polycrisis cocktail comprising all of the above — they can be made to accept almost anything.
The EU’s Preparedness Union Strategy could, therefore, be read within this broader context. It is not really about water bottles and power banks. It is a continuation of the Covid-era paradigm: a method of governance that fuses psychological manipulation, militarisation of civilian life and the normalisation of emergency rule. Indeed, the EU explicitly talks of the need to adopt, in case of future crises, the same “whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approach first spearheaded during the pandemic.
This time, though, the attempt to engineer yet another mass psychosis seems to be failing. Judging from the social media reaction to a cringeworthy video by Hadja Lahbib, EU Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness and Crisis Management, there appears to be widespread scepticism about the bloc’s fearmongering. But while this is good news, the worry is that as propaganda falters, those in power are increasingly turning to repressive tactics to muzzle political rivals — evident in moves like the electoral ban on Le Pen. This strategy of mounting authoritarianism, though, is untenable in the long run: fear and repression are no substitute for actual consensus, and in the latter’s void, new forms of resistance are bound to emerge.
Thomas Fazi is an UnHerd columnist and translator. His latest book is The Covid Consensus, co-authored with Toby Green.
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SubscribeIt is indeed not only a fantasy that Putin is going to Blitz his way through Europe, but a bizarre one. Have people not noticed that he’s wrecked his military on the reef of eastern Ukraine, costing him more than a half million casualties over three years? He’s had to import North Koreans!
Putin’s quote was to the effect of “If you don’t miss the Soviet Union you don’t have a heart. If you want to reconstitute it, you don’t have a brain.” The last part is never quoted.
Ukraine, whether we like it or not, has a deep religious and cultural meaning to Russians. Kiev is the birthplace of the Russian Orthodox Church, and it’s long been considered the cultural heart of Russia. It’s like the Alamo to Texans, only more so. We don’t need to agree with it, just understand what drove him to invade Ukraine, and not other NATO or would-be NATO nations on his border.
I don’t think Europeans need to worry about Russian soldiers toasting at the edge or the Seine any time soon. But if the fear inspires the Europeans to get serious about their security, I’ll take it.
Happy for the “Europeans to get serious” but not happy about handing defence powers from sovereign countries to the undemocratic EU Commission.
Certainly not when Putin Stooges like Orban have the power of veto.
To be as consistently wrong about absolutely everything you must know what the right analysis is, so I’m guessing you’re just trolling at this point?
You don’t think Orban is a Putin Stooge? If so, surely you are the one trolling.
The EU has no joint defence mandate, and no appropriate structures. The only thing the EU can do – and has been doing – is act as enforcer and accessory to NATO, something again the EU has no mandate for.
In fact, the Lisbon Treaties were ultimately accepted by more sceptical member states only on the basis that the EU would NOT turn into a security organisation.
We could take comfort from the EU assuming a security role because that would (under current reign – “management” would be an unfair misnomer) guarantee that nothing would happen. The downside of course is that the futility would cost us another fortune.
Thanks for that. I’m sure the Commission would happily renege on this agreement – probably by recategorising their actions with a different name. They have form using this approach.
There are some cogent reasons to temper the Russophobia sweeping the UK and EU. Russia has been fighting in Ukraine since 2014. That’s eleven years, a million casualties and a wrecked economy, all for a couple of Oblasts in eastern Ukraine and at the cost of an expanded NATO. How can anyone think that Putin’s Ukraine experience would embolden him to invade a NATO country? If he couldn’t get to Kiev in eleven years, would he really imagine he could make it to Warsaw?
Also, in ten years, less time than he has been fighting Ukraine, Putin will be 80 years old with no viable succession plan. Russia is plummeting toward a reprise of the post-Soviet collapse. When Putin goes, the kleptocrats around him will be too busy securing their Swiss bank accounts and Caribbean villas to have imperial ambitions.
Europe should tap the brakes on Russophobia and look instead in the rearview mirror at the demographic threat that is rapidly approaching.
There is merit in much of what you say. Also, unlike the case in the former Soviet Union, where the Communist Party would generate another leader by way of its internal mechanisms when the existing one expires, there is no “Putin Party” to do the same. However, why does that mean that Europe should “tap the brakes on Russophobia”? If some sort of civil war erupts in Russia as a result of Putin’s demise, I for my part don’t see it as a bad thing. I mean, if Russians are fighting each other, they aren’t fighting the West.
Civil war in Russia would be a disaster for Europe. Look what happened with Syria and Libya. Now imagine millions of Russians (like 1918 onwards) fleeing to Europe. There’s no sea separating us, and judging how well Europe has managed it’s borders over the last 30 years, we’d be overwhelmed.
And that’s not even to mention the crime, loose weaponry coming over the border to us, and what about the security of their thousands of nukes? Look how anxious USA and Europe were when USSR just dissolved and they wanted to ensure nukes wouldn’t end up in wrong hands. With a civil war, you would have no chance of securing those nukes. Therefore, Russian state might not be fighting west, but in civil war scenario, someone definitely would be causing us a lot of damage (last Russian civil war had over 30 different groups and statelets running their own affairs; you can guarantee if same happened again today, one of those statelets’ fighting would spill over to Europe).
Quite correct, civil war in Russia would certainly spill over and destabilise Europe. But if Putin carries on as he is, that’s also disastrous which doesn’t leave many options. The situation is very serious but the UK should absolutely not get involved militarily in any way.
“Quite correct, civil war in Russia would certainly spill over and destabilise Europe“. I’m not sure why it needs to. Europe should adopt the same policy as Egypt did when the Gaza business blew up – slam the doors shut, and let nobody in.
Should is not the same as being able to. Shut the door with what army? Do you think the progressive class and society we have know will have any clue or ability to deal with something like that? Maybe the poles will try, but the baltics are minnows and I doubt spain or Italy would send anything.
Just look how the courts keep blocking Italy from deporting migrants, look at our open channel and again look back to Libya and Syria movement of people.
Yes, Egypt slammed the door, but guess what, they don’t have a well-entrenched human rights industry.
This is the real world, if you want Europe to shut the door then you’ll have to vote outside any of the mainstream parties, if they’re not banned already.
Until you are willing to shoot your migrants, you won’t be able to keep them out and save the country.
Russians will be easier to assimilate as long as they stay below about 5% of the population.
The top party in the Duma is Putin’s United Party.
Yes, but it’s a political party in name only, and is the creation of one man (not unlike Reform in the UK).
“It is a continuation of the Covid-era paradigm“. I don’t think it is a continuation of the COVID-era paradigm. It is a continuation of the Cold War paradigm. That is assisted by the fact that Russia displays the fact that it is “the enemy” of Western Europe by everything it says, and everything it does.
Yes, Putin is a convenient prop for an incompetent political class, which uses fear porn to corral a weak society.
There was a time that the same could have been said about Hitler.
Or Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The Serbs of 1914 might be a better example.
Putin wouldn’t dare invade Poland. He would get slaughtered.
“all spheres of life — political, economic, social, cultural and scientific — will be subordinated to the alleged goal of national, or rather supranational, security”
Do these fools not understand how much this sounds like fascism?
One can only hope that the COVID era was the elites crying ‘Wolf!’ too hard, and that populations are inoculated to government propaganda rather better these days.
Unherd’s resident Putin apologist creating a strawman for himself as usual.
It is the case Putin’s forces have been degraded such that he doesn’t have mobile Army Groups that can roll across the border into other neighbours right now. But that is because Ukraine has fought back and been supported. The Author would have folded and the Russian Army would be lined up on border of other neighbours with high morale and evidence intimidation and force works.
He also isn’t party to the intelligence reports on Russian cyber attacks and other attempts to undermine western infrastructure. He obviously wasn’t wondering around Salisbury when Novichok was left behind by FSB operatives either.
He lives in a fantasy-land where give Putin what he wants because he can be trusted and he’ll settle down. Imbecilic. He goes on about authoritarianism whilst living comfortably in the West. Just another member of intelligensia with a self loathing of the West as Orwell first noted.
He also fails to note the encouragement to rapidly increase military capability is coming as much from Trump and co. Was it 3% or 5% he’s asked for?
Zilch on the credibility front I’m afraid.
One wonders what his views would have been in 1938.
Or in 1914.
In that year the Tory Party was braying for war. Some newspaper magnates were stoking the fear and jingoism. In previous years fear-mongering novels were written about German invasion of Britain; even though Germany had no plans to invade even during the war.
Precisely both Northcliffe and Asquith were an an utter disgrace, not to mention quite a few others, not the least of which was one WSC.
Thus did these muppets lead us into the greatest catastrophe in British history and one from which we shall never recover.
Lloyd George, not a Tory, but a Great War monger. Bringing Italy into the war was a real crime,
And none to invade Poland, Belgium, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway, France, and Russia, of course. But Germany had to do all those things, and more, because some British newspapers said beastly things about their leader.
He is just a Von der Liar bot
Precisely. Well stated.
No, I’m not moved by these fearmongering schemes. However, stockpiling essentials is a habit I’ve kept since the pandemic – not because I’m afraid but because it’s just useful and I wanted to lock in prices of certain items when inflation was pushing them up constantly.
Have a whole cupboard full of toiletries – so, when nuclear winter hits or Vlad the Bad invades, I shall be perfectly coiffed and perfumed and moisturised.
Given the experience of the Germans in 1945/46, it would probably be better to look like a scarecrow dragged through a hedge backwards.
Particularly funny is Starmer issuing warnings to the Russian autocrat. No one could look or sound less warlike. It’s like a clerk in a provincial bank issuing warnings to county lines drug gang leaders.
If the Russians found themselves in Dover they would apply for asylum. And then again, the EU having created an authoritarian whole-of-society structure of governance and population control, this would be a ready-made set up for the Kremlin to use to rule an already cowed people.
I’ve always thought that Britain’s border policy should include a “Section 1”, which reads “No Russians”.
That comment reminded me of Monty Python’s Secret Service sketch, if anyone remembers it.
Don’t forget the toilet paper! (I don’t know if Europeans experienced that shortage during the Covidscam as Americans did.)
Could it be that the Finnish Prime Minister is encouraging “more EU” so that when he leaves office, the EU Commission will reward him with a plum job ?
The ‘answer’ is always more ‘Europe’.
The claim that Putin doesn’t know borders is particularly ludicrous given the open borders doctrine effectively pursued in the West. As well as the Schengen area in the EU itself. Physician cure thyself.
Given that the Kremlin thought that the Ukrainians wouldn’t fight, and after eleven years of war, on top of a population declining naturally, the latest round of conscription in Russia is an example of the abject failure of their war. More like advancing the end of what was left of the old Russian empire.
No emotion can be maintained for a long time. When fear exhausts itself what remains?
Exaggerated, surely ?
I’d say the EU thrives on a rather self-centered complacency and engages in opportunistic activities like these to distract itself from dealing with important and urgent problems (I’m showing some of the symptoms myself this morning – we’re all prone to it to some degree). It’s become habitual with the EU though. I don’t think this is deliberate “conspiracy” at all.
It’s also the inevitable mission creep of a bureaucracy like the EU. Normal and inevitable, if undesirable.
I despise the EU and everything it stands for. It is an unaccountable authoritarian socialist scam that serves the few and deprives the many. They rely on fear based messaging because their policies and aims are so deeply unpopular outside of a crises framework.
That said, I think it is vital that European countries commit to rearmament as a matter of considerable urgency. The US has finally lost patience with the hypocritical social welfare policies and moral grandstanding of Western Europe at the expense of American tax dollars, and we must accept that the US would never risk total annihilation to come to the aid of a fellow NATO country under this president. Sadly, the 27 member states within the EU can barely agree on what day of the week it is, and I can’t see a grand reindustrialisation and rearmament across Europe at the expense of their beloved social welfare spending and net zero.
The necessary rearmament doesn’t need to be undertaken by “the EU”. It is sufficient for individual countries to do it, provided they keep in mind who “the enemy” is (Hint: it’s Russia).
The EU is a structure that hands inordinate power to a cadre of bureaucrats who all consume the same left-liberal media and are fed policy by sinister think tanks who fraternise with such journalists and content creators.
A sober and sobering analysis. Thank you.
France is now the third NATO member-state in rapid succession, and the second member of the EU, to have disqualified its leading Opposition politician from public office. France and Turkey, which has the second largest armed forces in NATO and which is strategically vital to it in a way that Britain simply is not, have both criminalised those leaders, in the Turkish case even locking him up.
Like Donald Trump, there is nothing attractive about the Rassemblement National, or about Kemalism (Turkey has two Far Rights, and not much of anything else), or about Călin Georgescu. There are other ways of holding the line on Ukraine. But what are the odds that the candidates whom liberals disliked would all be turning out to be disqualifiable crooks just when it looked as if they might have been about to win? That is a lesson to us all. As it is unintended to be.
Such is the background to calls to ban teenage boys from social media. Showing Adolescence in schools, of all places, is the most hilarious point-missing that I have heard in a very long time. Mr Bates really existed. He still does, and, though knighted, he remains uncompensated. Jamie Miller, on the other hand, is completely made up. So was Oliver Twist, and so was Étienne Lantier. But even so.
Banning teenagers from the devices that might present them with alternatives to neoliberal economic policy, to identitarian social policy, to neoconservative foreign policy, and to anti-industrial Malthusianism, is of a piece with the defenestration of Jeremy Corbyn, with the subjection of Boris Johnson to a kangaroo court, with the incitement of violence against Nigel Farage, with the attempted murder of George Galloway, with the plot to imprison the late Alex Salmond for the rest of his life, with the persecution of the world-historical figure of Julian Assange, and with the lawfare against Marine Le Pen, against Ekrem İmamoğlu, against Georgescu, against Trump, and against whoever was next on the hit list. It could be you. Already, interviewing Corbyn, the award-laden Sophy Ridge of Sky News has pretended to have mistaken the Independent MP Iqbal Mohamed for the former Labour Councillor Mohamed Iqbal, who was suspended from his party for alleged anti-Semitism, although even in apologising neither Ridge nor Sky has mentioned that he was exonerated.
Like Farage, Trump has extolled the virtues of Keir Starmer. Trump has accepted the credentials of Peter Mandelson after all, and now he has signed off on Starmer’s Chagos Islands deal, by which Britain surrenders any moral ground from which to argue for the self-determination of Canada, Greenland, Panama, or anywhere else. The Labour line is that a governing party is simply not allowed to criticise the United States, but it is delicious to watch the discombobulation of the British Right. Empire Loyalism or “the Special Relationship”. They cannot have both. Tonight, both main parties and Reform UK will know how Special the Relationship was not.
Will others who might be even more crestfallen? Well, if Israel has today felt moved to lift its tariffs on American goods in the hope of reciprocation, then that means that it must have been levying them. Who knew? As for tariffs themselves, between the 1860s and the 1970s, the Hamiltonian American School, as expanded by the American System of Henry Clay, worked to make the United States the world’s largest economy, with the world’s highest standard of living, culminating in the glorious achievements of the New Deal, which in turn made possible the Civil Rights movement. But Trump understands none of that. The best that can be said of him is that at least he is not an avowed enemy of such things, as Starmer and Mark Carney are. Yet whatever may be wrong with Britain, it is our country. And whatever may be wrong with Canada, it is family.
Are you saying that if someone commits a crime, they shouldn’t be prosecuted if they are a “leading Opposition politician”? I’m not across all aspects of the Le Pen case, but most people seem to accept that she is guilty of that which she was accused of.
Western Europe including the UK have been preparing for the Russian invasion since 1945. It’s a sad indictment of our small minded ‘ruling’ class that this colossal waste of resources and energy continues to be thoughtlessly passed down the political generations whilst the opportunities for political and economic engagement sail on by. Whatever happened to “swords into ploughshares” just a dream some of us had
“Western Europe including the UK have been preparing for the Russian invasion since 1945“. For very good reason, it would seem.
The Common Foreign and Security Policy, Maastricht 1992. The job of the European Council, not the Commission. Do get someone who knows the Treaties to write about the EU.
This isnt news, its a very poor attempt by a very low quality journalist to create alarm amongst those who wish to live in little Britain (a mindset, not a place). I can confirm, as I write, that life on mainland Europe is not beset by a state of constant fear and paranoia about the Russians or the imperialist EU superstate dictatorship. The author would be well advised to go back into his cupboard under the stairs and carry on writing his short fictional stories if that’s what inspires him, but they are definitely not news. I hope he has his trusty toy plastic machine gun close to hand.
The political equivalent of ‘Look! there’s a squirrel’
The EU’s survival manual is complete nonsense, but the danger posed by Russia isn’t. Mr. Fazi, you should mention what Putin is doing to Ukrainian citizens trapped in the occupied regions, whose alternative is either Russification or exile. That kind of totalitarianism is certainly much more visible than Ms. von der Leyen’s. But you never mention it. Why?
Oh, I know the answer to this one: Fazi is a Putin apologist.
A good, interesting essay.
But these days whenever I read things like this I think “This is just a grift”. These people aren’t after power, they’re after money. They want to open the till to let their friends reach in. And themselves, too!
Exactly correct, as was obvious from the universal condemnation of America and support for Zelensky on the day of the dust-up in the Oval Office, all using identical language. And, the orchestrated hysteria that has followed.
Putin cannot conquer even the eastern half of an Ukraine fighting with one hand tied behind its back, but is nonetheless an existential threat to Britain and France? Only the sheeple of the EU might be stupid enough to fall for that, and in the face of rising populist parties the ruling class has decided to give it a go.
Stocking up should not be necessary. I’ve understood that normally healthy people can live for 3 days without any food or water. And most people will have shelter and drinks and snacks routinely at hand. The best protection for Europeans against war would be to NOT increase military spending: increased military spending will merely cause Russia to do the same, and increase the pressure to not ‘waste’ all the expensively purchased weapons by not using them.
Imagine where Ukraine would be if it had adopted that mindset. It seems that the nearer to Russia one lives, the less one trusts the Russians.
Pacifist claptrap that recent events expose as absurd.
While I agree that the thought of Russia marching on Paris, or Berlin, is ludicrous that does not rule out Russian pressure on whichever countries it happens to border. Some are weaker than others.
….not to mention cyber attacks on, and novichok poisonings in, those more distant.
The article strikes me as being extremely incoherent and somewhat complacent. Finland and other Baltic countries have good reason to be nervous, that’s not paranoia. On the other hand, it’s perfectly true that the idea of Russia invading Western Europe is absurd, this is not a repeat of 1941 when Hitler invaded Russia to get hold of its oil and cereal growing capacity. BUT it’s extremely stupid for this government to talk about putting boots on the ground in Ukraine since a peacekeeping force is useless, it just gets fired on and isn’t able to fight back e.g. Rwanda. Britain should absolutely keep out of wars that don’t concern it especially since the US is pulling out. Did going into Iraq make the world safer? Did going into Libya? This country is in no state to wage a war and so should stop sabre rattling — give humanitarian assistance,yes. And as for the climax of the article talking about authoritarianism like the EU’s “is bound to fail” — a silly statement, unfortunately authoritarianism works only too well these days when people couldn’t care less about about liberty, only prosperity.
The worst thing that can happen to a socialist is to find himself living under a socialist government that isn’t run by his friends – Ludwig von Mises.
That last line in your comment says it all.
My worry is about the form resistance to authoritarianism will have to take to win back democratic rights.
“The EU wants its citizens to be self-sufficient for at least 72 hours, recommending households stockpile food, water, medicine and — why not? — playing cards and power banks. Because, of course, should nuclear war break out, a good round of poker and a fully charged phone will see us through.”
I’m no fan of the EU but this isn’t as daft as it sounds. The first three days in any such situation are crucial in order to give time to the government to react and respond. Grocery stores operate just in time systems that mean the shelves would be empty within hours of any such attack (assuming the store had survived the strike at all), and the local hospital can’t cope with thousands of survivors all at once coming in with broken limbs, burns and the rest of the various effects of a nuclear blast. So three days of modest self-sufficiency would save a pretty large number of lives, because food, water and basic medication would be taken care of.
Fear is nothing new in European/British politics.
Just consider Mr Tony Blair’s wolf cry about Saddam’s arsenal of Weapons of Mass Destruction [WMD], from deployment of which he asserted we were a mere 45 minutes from destruction. By playing on the UK population’s fears thus heightened he took this country into a macho war with Iraq on the basis of a lie – the ongoing consequences of which we suffer to this day.
Or consider the fear and hysteria generated by relentless Woke environmentalism (mandatory daily item in BBC news bulletins) and the impact this has had on people’s fears, so much so that many Generation Z people are rported not to want to bring children into the world!
Etc., etc. …
I have always thought that there was much to dislike about Tony Blair, but that he at least had the decency to go to war in Iraq.
I forgot to mention David Cameron’s ‘Project Fear’ in relation to the Brexit referendum.
I recall it was a John Pillinger documentary that introduced me to the concept that fear is more poweful than hope. I recall the context was the Cold war and this has stayed with me ever since.
I now see most global events through this prism – ‘the war on terror’, ‘the climate emergency’ and of course Covid.
What has changed since the Pillinger piece has been the internet and new media. Governments and supra-national organisations can now turn on and dial up the fear at their leisure.
Any EU border force down its eastern flank would do better holding back further waves of immigration than concerning itself with Russia. The threat now is from within not without. European citizens are far more likely to be killed by people accorded passports than soldiers. And, ironically, in their failure to tackle those internal enemies they risk internal conflict. Life is nothing if not ironic …