Carlo Masala is Professor for International Politics at the Bundeswehr University Munich. He previously worked as Deputy Director in the research department at the NATO Defence College in Rome. Since January 2024, Masala has been Director of the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. He received the Lichtenberg Medal in Gold from the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences in Göttingen in 2023 for his academic work and science communication. If Russia Wins was an immediate #1 bestseller upon publication in Germany and has since become a bestseller in the Netherlands. It is forthcoming in nineteen territories around the world.

Praise for If Russia Wins:

A New Statesman Book of the Year
One of Le Monde's 20 Best Books of 2025
A Standard (Netherlands) Best Book of the Year

"A curious little bestseller from Germany hopes to steel European resolve by laying out the disastrous ramifications of appeasement . . . In the end, If Russia Wins isn't trying to entertain us. It's trying to warn us, to get us to imagine what might happen a few years after Ukraine is forced to capitulate and surrender 20 percent of its territory. What lesson would that victory teach the Kremlin?" -Ron Charles, Washington Post

"If Russia Wins has been making the rounds in European capitals and helps explain Europe's anxiety about NATO and the U.S. administration . . . NATO is built on decades of trust, so it would only take one time when it fails to act for everyone to question whether the alliance really works, and what it would take for the U.S., for instance, to rally to the side of a small Baltic country like Estonia."--Bertrand Benoit and David Luhnow, Wall Street Journal

"An engrossing and chilling tale . . . Mr. Masala's scenario illuminates why Europe needs to take its own defense more seriously. Russia is still a long way from winning on the battlefield, despite devoting half its budget to the war. Alliances such as NATO may yet survive. If the West chooses to let its enemies win, history will not judge its leaders kindly."--Economist

"If Russia Wins is a very little book of very big ideas that should be required reading for democrats of every stripe. The scenario Carlo Masala lays out in just 120 pages is so compelling, so plausible that you can't stop thinking about it."--Winnipeg Free Press

"Today Ukraine, tomorrow Estonia, warns Masala in his English-language debut, an immersive work of speculative nonfiction. Masala's what-if about a West that crumbles before Russian brinksmanship has the excitement of a thriller."--Publishers Weekly

"My book of the year is If Russia Wins by the German military scholar Carlo Masala. It is part geopolitical analysis, part novel . . . The political and diplomatic tensions all too evident in 2025 play out in often unexpected ways."--Alastair Campbell, New Statesman

"A warning to the west . . .[If Russia Wins] is not a prediction but a provocation. It's designed to start a conversation about what Russia could do next and whether the United States would come to Europe's defense"--BBC, The Global Story

"Chilling. . . at the heart of this short book lies a question that the wider public may have yet to fully grasp: how should the west--aging, indebted, polarized--respond when a hostile power intent on dismantling the post-1945 security framework probes its defenses?"--Financial Times (UK)

"Provocative . . . 119 pages of wartime reading . . . Masala's scenario-as-question: What if Russia's winning in Ukraine were only the beginning? The beginning of the enfeeblement of the United States?"--George F. Will, Washington Post

"[Masala] intended his book for a German audience, not anticipating it would capture global audience and be translated into a dozen languages. Drawing on his experience at NATO and with contacts in defense ministries across Europe, Masala's scenario offers a speculative look at Russia's intentions following the end of the war in Ukraine. Central to his thesis is what would define a Russian victory, which in his words would not be a ceasefire, but rather a 'capitulation.'"--Newsweek

"Consider, Masala urges,