The Peacewalkers: How the West Went to War in 2022

“The protagonists of 1914 were sleepwalkers, watchful but unseeing, haunted by dreams, yet blind to the reality of the horror they were about to bring into the world.”

C.Clark, ‘’The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914”

OPINION — This article is a homage to the aforecited Christopher Clark’s seminal work, where he meticulously details how Europe’s leaders, blinded by their own complex, interlocking alliances, and convoluted diplomatic manoeuvres, stumbled into the catastrophic Great War of 1914.

This article is also a mirror for present-day leaders and decision makers, offering a disturbing reflection of morbidly similar, if not at all the same, pre-war developments, attitudes, and sentiments, that have once again led the West to a precipice, this time – with Russia.

Finally, this article is both a wake-up call and a final announcement for those, who still hesitate and doubt that “our Europe is mortal, it can die”, as Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, put it in his speech last year on April 24 at the Sorbonne University.

Don’t look around!

In 2006, when a former FSB officer and critic of Putin, Alexander Litvinenko, was poisoned with Polonium-210 on British soil, there were very few doubts as to who was behind the attack. Litvinenko’s resulting death from acute radiation syndrome significantly strained relations between the UK and Russia, leading to diplomatic expulsions and increased scrutiny of Russian activities in the UK.

As much as this event became pivotal in the relationships between London and Moscow and called for a major reassessment of the Kremlin’s intentions and capabilities on European soil, it was still regarded by the rest of Europe mostly as a matter of Russia’s internal issues — Litvinenko was Russian, he ardently criticised the Russian leadership and he was a high-ranking defector. Therefore, he was targeted by the Russian special services. The consensus in the West was that Russia targeted its own renegade citizens, and not citizens from European countries.

This proved to be a rather comfortable position for the political leadership of the EU at that time (primarily German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy), which was in the middle of exploring deeper economic ties and a more intertwined commerce with Russia.

This position allowed the economic and political powerhouses of Europe to safely qualify Moscow’s explicitly hostile actions around the same time towards countries like Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, and Georgia as mere quarrels between the former Soviet republics. The Kremlin’s distribution of Russian passports in Latvia in 2004; the Kremlin’s blockade of rail and ports and manipulation of theDruzhba pipeline oil supply in retaliation for losing the bid for Lithuania’s only oil refinery Mažeikių Nafta; or Russia’s complete ban of imports of Georgian wines as a punishment for Tbilisi’s pro-Western stance in 2006 – all these events were disregarded as merely regional tensions between the former USSR cohabitants.

The Swedish airspace incursion that happened the same year, when a Russian military aircraft without active transponders flew simulated attack runs near Gotland, didn’t match this story, but was mainly ignored as an unfortunate mistake in the then non-NATO sky.

In 2007, when the websites of Estonia’s government, parliament, banks, ministries, newspapers, and broadcasters websites faced the most massive cyber-attack in history, which coincided with a dispute with Russia over the relocation of the Bronze Soldier of Tallinn, a Soviet-era monument paramount for the Kremlin’s WW2 mythology, the same whispering was heard in EU high cabinets – “it’s a matter of Russia’s backyard”. Nobody would dare to openly call an independent EU state “Russia’s backyard”, but the reaction towards this incident, widely considered the first major state-on-state cyberattack, was telltale.

The same year, Putin gave his notorious ‘Munich speech’ —‘’The speech in which Putin has told us who he was”, as Politico has put it. Among his disturbing and grim messages, one was particularly ominous: ‘Whether we should be indifferent and aloof to various internal conflicts inside [other] countries? Of course not.’

This message didn’t take long to materialize. In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia under the pretext of protecting Russian citizens and peacekeepers in the separatist regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. This was the climax of the “Russia’s backyard” attitude. Numerous former members of Mikheil Saakashvili’s team, the then-president of Georgia, said that in private conversations with Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel, Condoleezza Rice and their teams, these foreign leaders and their advisors articulated the futility of resistance and the need to accept the reality imposed by the Kremlin. “Accepting this reality” would mean recognizing that Russia does indeed hold a claim on Georgia, which naturally derives from the common soviet history. (Later in 2014 some representatives of the EU behind closed doors were promoting the same thought regarding Crimea).

Unfortunately, these and many other hostile actions failed to seriously alarm both the American and European political elites of that period, who were seriously engaged in a “Russian reset”. In 2009 Russian military aircraft again violated Swedish airspace, Moscow cut off gas supplies to Ukraine in the dead of winter (affecting also European countries dependent on gas transiting through Ukraine), and Kremlin-backed hackers attacked the German government.

In the 2010s Russia, either directly or through its proxies, effectuated cyber attacks on the German and Finnish governments, as well as on energy distribution networks in Sweden; sabotaged arms depots in Czechia; stirred up ethnic tensions in Germany with the ‘Lisa Case’; hacked TV5Monde and manipulated social media to encourage chaos during Yellow Vests protests in France; infiltrated the Aviation Sector and the Spiez laboratory in Switzerland; attempted to assassinate an arms dealer in Bulgaria; and targeted US and Canada diplomats in Cuba and later in other countries (the ‘Cuba syndrome’).

Moscow supported anti-fracking movements in Romania to prevent it from developing its own natural gas resources; attempted a coup in Montenegro; jammed Finland’s and Norway’s GPS signals; backed the hacking of the World Anti-Doping Agency; and attempted to sabotage the global internet infrastructure by exploring vulnerabilities in undersea Internet cables connecting Europe and North America.

Closer to the 2020s Russian operatives attempted to intercept secure military communications from a French military satellite; the Kremlin imposed trade restrictions on Moldovan agricultural products and manipulated energy prices in response to Kishinev’s increased engagement with the EU; and Moscow manipulated the energy market in Bulgaria by restricting gas supplies.

Russia systematically meddled in top tier popular voting across the globe, with the following being subjects of major investigations for alleged Russian interference: the 2016 UK Brexit referendum, 2016 US presidential elections, 2017 French presidential elections, 2017 German federal elections, 2018 Finnish presidential elections and the 2019 European parliament elections.

The amount of money and effort spent by the Kremlin to fund and cultivate separatist, xenophobic, anti-Western, Eurosceptic, anti-Americanist, radical, extreme and divisive parties, movements, groups and organizations across the Transatlantic community since Putin came to power is overwhelming.

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The impenetrable depth of peace

It looked like all these events were mainly ignored in the West, disregarded as something accidental, if not marginal, which hardly meant anything within the context of the long and deep peace that Europe had seen since the end of WWII.

Appearing initially as a bitter reminder of the brutality of war, the 8th of May slogan “Never again” has evolved over decades from a yearly admonishment of human tragedies to a concept that was to be enforced literally. For any war to be “never again” meant that peace must be “forever”. Hence, attaining peace morphed from a righteous and pragmatic complex objective into a quasi-religious ideology that rejects the mere plausibility of conflict – “a deep peace”.

A "Deep peace" is not merely a state of prolonged absence of war. The doctrine posits that the very discussion of potential martial threats or military readiness could, paradoxically, invoke the specter of war itself. This ideology has been perpetuated by a sustained period of peace which, rather than being seen as a delicate, demanding and maintained state, is viewed as a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This means that for ‘peacewalkers’, the modern-day political apostles of this new security cult, peace is self-reinforcing. The longer they can keep the peace, the stronger on their opinion it gets, and the less probable war is. Hence the obsession with preserving peace at all costs, even if such costs are clearly whetting the appetite of the predator, who never really bothered to camouflage his hostile intentions. This almost irrational refusal to accept any possibility of another conflict on the continent, as if it were a fantasy, a fairytale, a myth, has been ruling out the very discussion of the flaws of current peace and its disproportions, as these very discussions were believed to invite war.

It seems that only at the Munich Security Conference of 2025 western leaders finally realized that war is now not just at their doorstep – it has already rung the bell.

This state of “deep peace” is precisely the reason why all the signals of hostility from Russia have been ignored by the peacewalkers. This was seen in the reaction of the major western governments’ defence budgets to the overt military interventions conducted by Russia in Georgia, in the Middle East and in Ukraine before 2022—the increase of defense spending was literally marginal.

Both European and American defense spending remained disproportionately low. The European Union's defense budget gradually declined from 4% of GDP in 1960 to a historic low of 1.3% of GDP in 2014. It wasn't until 2020 that European defense spending saw a “noticeable” increase of 0.3% - up to 1.6% of GDP.

A similar trend was observed in the United States, where defense spending as a share of GDP stagnated and mostly declined throughout the 2010s, following the peak of the War on Terror. U.S. military expenditure steadily fell from around 4.5% of GDP in 2010 to 3.2% by 2017, even as Russia ramped up its global assertiveness under Putin’s second presidency. It wasn’t until 2020 that U.S. defense spending rebounded to 3.7%, reflecting a shift in priorities as geopolitical tensions escalated.

The fact that both European and American defense spending remained stagnant for most of the 2010s, suggests that the West did not perceive even Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine as a serious enough threat to warrant an immediate military buildup. This delayed response underscores the extent to which policymakers in both Europe and the U.S. underestimated the long-term implications of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the war in Donbas, as much as Russia being a direct threat.

Once again, the pervasive—almost sacrosanct—belief in the enduring power of 'deep peace' has led to the deliberate overlooking of clear signals of impending conflict. This illusion of unassailable peace, fostered by decades of relative stability and economic interdependence, has engendered a dangerous complacency among western, but mainly European, nations.

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False Idols

In order to start thinking about how to fix this situation, we first need to understand how we got here. What beliefs guided decision makers? Within what ideological framework did they operate?

The first reference point is the perception of national security through the lens of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

The evolution of the role and, more importantly, the capabilities of NATO in the minds of its members happened under the influence of a prolonged peace on the European continent, with some successful military interventions of its members in the 1990s and 2010s, as well as of a certain image of a hi-tech undefeatable army produced by American pop-culture.

As a result, NATO has become more of a religious icon, rather than a real military force. The belief in NATO’s capacity has become unconditional and it has fastened the religion of “deep peace” (which is indeed very similar to a religion because of its irrationality), by providing an image of an almighty protector, which will always intervene in case of trouble.

The truth is, however, a bit different. While NATO might have proven itself successful in regional conflicts like Yugoslavia or the Middle East, it was never ready to face a full-scale war with a proper adversary like Russia or China. It was even less prepared to face hybrid warfare, with war being waged not only with bombs and bullets, but with information and narratives.

The reliance on nuclear power was paramount in NATO’s deterrence strategy. The war Russia has launched against Ukraine, however, has shown that nuclear weapons deter only the use of other nuclear weapons – not conventional ones.

One might argue that the aggression against Ukraine is very different from a hypothetical aggression against NATO, and if Russia were to invade a member of the Treaty the retaliation would be dramatically different. Perhaps. How can, however, the nuclear arsenal defend even member countries against ‘the green men’, the scam referendums, the total blackouts due to cyber-attacks, the skirmishes with emigrants along the borders, arson of ammunition stores and further hybrid tactics? This begs a clear answer.

Therefore, a NATO membership can hardly serve as a justification for not having a powerful military able to defend one’s country against an invasion. This, however, was precisely the belief of the ‘peacewalkers’ for decades: ‘NATO will take care of us, and it has nukes. We’re safe’.

Russia has proved them wrong. And now the new White House administration is considering a major NATO policy shift, where the U.S. might not defend a fellow NATO member that is attacked, if the country doesn’t meet the defense spending threshold. Given the alternative view on global security the new U.S. leadership has taken, the moment Washington refuses to invoke Article 5 following a hypothetical encroachment on a member-state – the world as we know it is finished.

Another belief where Russia has proved everyone wrong is the naïve idea that it can be deterred by trade. And yet, even the current U.S. administration seems to be falling into this trap once again.

This illusion has deep roots. Since the early 2000s, the dominant Western orthodoxy held that deeper trade and economic interdependence with Russia would tame its aggressive instincts and gradually bind it to the liberal international order. From Germany’s embrace of Wandel durch Handel to the U.S. push for Russia’s WTO accession in 2012, the assumption was always the same: prosperity would soften Moscow, and mutual gain would deter aggression.

It did the opposite.

The trick is that the fruits and benefits of trade relations are used very differently in democracies and autocracies. While democracies invest the spoils of trade into raising the quality of life of their citizens—because that is the social contract at the heart of their legitimacy—autocratic regimes like Russia spend those same profits on the quality of oppression: strengthening their propaganda machines and expanding the coercive reach of their security services. These are the twin pillars of modern authoritarian rule.

In the 2000s, as Russia reaped massive windfalls from energy exports, it poured resources into rebuilding and modernizing its military. Military spending jumped from just $9 billion in 2000 to over $60 billion by 2014. At the same time, Putin’s regime systematically increased funding for the security services and domestic repression apparatus. By 2025, Russia will allocate a staggering 6.3% of its GDP—over $145 billion—to defense, surpassing even Cold War-era levels. In parallel, the budget for internal security, which includes the FSB and National Guard, accounts for over 10% of the federal budget, while state propaganda organs like RT and VGTRK are receiving $1.4 billion annually, an increase of 13% over the previous year.

Meanwhile, spending on social programs in Russia is projected to fall by 16% in 2025. The regime is not interested in improving the lives of its citizens—it is interested in controlling them.

Hence, while Russia has been methodically preparing for war, both externally and internally, the West spent the same decades investing in the illusion of a deepening peace. Defense budgets shrank, armies were downsized, and strategic industries were allowed to atrophy. Europe, in particular, funneled billions into Russian energy infrastructure like Nord Stream, while simultaneously allowing itself to become strategically dependent on the very regime it hoped to pacify.

In the end, the West was trading with Russia under the illusion that it was exporting stability. In reality, it was importing vulnerability.

Epilogue: the trench of the Saints

In the end, however, it is not doctrines, nukes, trade or alliances that hold the gates. It is the trench of the saints—where exhausted, ordinary Ukrainians still stand between us and the abyss.

And yet, instead of standing behind them as one would behind the gates of a besieged city, much of the West regards their resistance with fatigue, irritation, even suspicion—treating Ukraine not as a rampart, but as a liability. The war, they whisper, drags on. The costs are too high. Perhaps it’s time to talk peace, meaning: surrender something, accept something, pretend that nothing essential is lost.

But what is being lost is everything.

The trench of the Ukrainian soldier is not only a physical line against Russian advance. It is the symbolic front line of a deeper war—between freedom and tyranny, law and brute force, future and regression. Just as in the 20th century, when the free world had to rally to crush the Nazi regime not with half-measures but with full moral clarity, so too must the West now realize: Ukraine is not the cause of this war’s duration. Ukraine is the reason we still have time.

If we abandon that trench—or fail to fully support it—we are not avoiding war. We are inviting a greater one.

“On both sides they imagined that ‘bluffing’ would suffice to achieve success. None of the players thought that it would be necessary to go all the way. The tragic poker game had begun.”

C.Clark, ‘’The Sleepwalkers: How Europe went to war in 1914”

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