War may be coming. Are we psychologically ready?

The notion of a "crisis of disbelief," as Michta describes it, varies across the continent. Sweden has not experienced armed conflict in two hundred years and upheld a policy of neutrality for centuries. Following Russia’s full‑scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Stockholm abandoned that stance and, in a short span, became one of Europe’s most psychologically prepared nations. "Russia is self-evidently dangerous", Sweden's Prime Minister Ulf Christersson told The Economist mag past month. "We don't cognize erstwhile it [the warfare successful Ukraine] ends, but however it ends volition specify the information concern successful our portion of the satellite for astatine slightest a generation" Under Sweden’s partial conscription model, every school leaver must register for military service. The armed forces select and conscript the most suitable candidates, who undergo up to fifteen months of compulsory training before returning to civilian life, employment or higher education, simultaneously joining the nation’s extensive reserve force. "There's a batch of national engagement," says Minna Alander, an expert astatine the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies deliberation tank. "It was astir an net gag successful 2022 and 2023 that everybody wished for a telephone up. Sometimes radical get frustrated if they haven't been called up for a agelong time. It's an anticipation for sure." "Sweden has, for example, been identifying civilian engineers with immoderate applicable skills in, say, energy proviso who could beryllium exercised successful lawsuit of disruption. So Sweden tin entree this excavation of civilian engineers [who know] what they could bash and however they could beryllium activated." When asked whether Russia should be regarded as a possible aggressor after the Ukraine conflict, Christersson replied, "Yes. We person a fewer 100 years acquisition of this… We cognize Russia beauteous well." The three Baltic republics—Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia—share that familiarity with Russia. They restored independence from Moscow in the 1990s. German forces entered Lithuania during the 1940s and are now present on Lithuanian soil by invitation to reinforce its defences against the eastern threat. A thousand British troops lead a multinational unit in Estonia for the same purpose.