Western Europe is falling apart – we should prepare for what comes next

Europe’s political crisis may bring new leaders, but Russia has little reason to assume they will choose peace over confrontation For Russia, developments in the rest of Europe matter primarily insofar as they affect our national interests. Above all, this concerns security given that, for centuries, Russia has faced its greatest challenges from the West, and there’s little reason to assume that this historical pattern has disappeared.Western Europe’s leading countries now stand at a crossroads, yet the choice confronting them isn’t simply between competing models of domestic development, it’s between war and peace with their neighbors, foremost among them Russia, whose size and historical role have repeatedly made it the principal obstacle to Western European expansion.The unrest sweeping several European countries this autumn marks a new phase in the continent’s systemic crisis as it reflects the convergence of two long-term problems that much of Europe’s political establishment has proved incapable of resolving.The first is the exhaustion of the socioeconomic model that sustained Western European prosperity throughout the Cold War and its aftermath. That model depended on Europe...