A single Russian missile hitting Berlin, London or Washington would trigger a response so overwhelming that humanity would be lucky to emerge from it at all. And yet munitions manufactured and guided by NATO powers are now routinely hitting Moscow. With no democratic legitimacy — they hold favourability ratings of 15-40% in countries that have no real say on questions of war and peace — Europe’s ruling elites openly state their aim of dismembering Russia. To give their intentions teeth, they have embarked on an armament drive that now exceeds the annualised increases in military spending in the years immediately preceding the First World War. Even the tensest moments of the Cold War, which we now know put us seconds away from annihilation, provide no precedent for the scale of the folly unfolding today. Since there is no meaningful anti-war movement in Europe, we have reached the incredible point where our main barrier to nuclear annihilation is the thinning patience of the leadership in the Kremlin. I don’t think we have ever faced a situation so brittle and been so deeply unprepared to confront it.