We love our life as we are used to it.

We travel the world, meet people from all continents.

We can say what we think, we take to the streets: against global warming or for equality;

fearless, carefree and without any risk of being mistreated or disappearing.

We love our lives, in freedom and in prosperity.

We don't notice that we are balancing on a tightrope between two skyscrapers, over which a thunderstorm is brewing.

Lorenz Hemicker

Editor in Politics

  • Follow I follow

It would not have taken ruins and war dead in Ukraine to warn us of the fragility of our existence.

The world has enough worries already.

There is no end in sight to the coronavirus pandemic.

The planet is getting warmer, with India reporting an unusual heat wave this spring, with temperatures exceeding 45 degrees.

There is no lack of gloomy forecasts, and there are also security policy calls for cassandra that go beyond the Russian-Ukrainian war.

One is about the year 2030: the summer in which the West loses, Europe falls apart and NATO has to admit defeat to a superior alliance.

The summer in which Western warships are sent to the seabed in the China Sea and at the North Cape, in which Russian troops take over the Baltic states in a coup d'état and China occupies Taiwan.

The summer in which democracy in Europe is subject to autocracy and is de facto giving up.

So it says in Future War, an analysis of Europe's threats and defense capabilities.

The book was published last year by a renowned military researcher and two former American generals.

One of them, Ben Hodges, warned as early as 2015 that Russia was preparing for a war that could take place five to six years later.

It is our natural reflex to dismiss this book's scenario as lurid after so many decades of living in peace, surrounded by friends.

When a cultured Covid-29 virus knocks out European troops, swarms of drones equipped with artificial intelligence (AI) shoot down the British aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elisabeth and, at the same time, refugees, terrorist attacks and cyber attacks paralyze western countries, then that doesn’t sound like one to German ears realistic prognosis than material for a Netflix blockbuster: Game of Drones.

Could China and Russia orchestrate such a storm in the future and unleash upon the West a war in which everything works together: destruction and disinformation, deception and disruption, destabilization and plagues?

Maybe not in the perfection as portrayed in "Future War".

As this essay is being written, the Russian armed forces are mired in the mud of Ukrainian reality.

The Kremlin is not demonstrating military feats, let alone hybrid operations.

It also remains to be seen whether China and Russia will actually become allies, chained together for better or for worse.

And yet: Moscow and Beijing have one thing in common: they are aggressively seeking to expand their sphere of power and influence.

With a West that lives up to these 19th-century desires.

Century - with the exception of the USA - for a long time could or did not want to oppose much.

Imagine all the people.