This week, households in Sweden received a government pamphlet entitled ‘In Case Of Crisis Or War’, while similar manuals were published across Scandinavia. Some European nations are evidently preparing for war, but are they ready? Andrew Mueller is joined by Monocle’s Gunnar Gronlid to speak with Richard Shirreff, the former Nato Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, and Cathryn Clüver Ashbrook, former director and CEO of the German Council on Foreign Relations. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This week, households in Sweden received a government pamphlet entitled In Case of Crisis or War.
It suggests practical preparations for those eventualities and offers advice on what to do if either occurs.
This edition of In Case of Crisis or War is much thicker than its predecessor.
Similar manuals have also recently been published or updated in print and online by the governments of Finland, Norway and Denmark.
The peoples of the Nordic nations are famously unflappable folk.
If they're this worried, how worried should the rest of us be?
Europe faces gathering storms on several fronts.
Russia is on the march in Ukraine, if slowly and at terrible cost.
This week, Russia launched what it claimed was a new mid range hypersonic ballistic missile at Dnipro, threatened to do similar to Ukraine's allies, and ostentatiously lowered its threshold for the use of nuclear weapons.
In eight weeks, give or take, the United States will swear back in President Donald Trump, whose attitude to Europe is a combination of contempt and indifference, and whose opinions of Russian President Vladimir Putin have long been rather more favourable.
Europe should be able to look after itself, and President Trump was not wrong during his first term to suggest as much.
It is unclear, however, whether Europe's citizens, militaries and leaders are ready, should they have to.
Has Europe properly absorbed any of the many recent hints that it might one day be on its own?
What still needs to be done?
And what happens if it isn't done?
This is the foreign desk.
I think in Finland they've taken it seriously for a much longer period of time.
In Sweden they are ramping up that seriousness.
In Norway, there's still a feeling that surely it can't happen to us.
With the right leadership, Europe could defend itself.