The Return of Great Powers: Russia, China, and the Next World War

by Jim Sciutto

Kallas’s study of history is intended to avert a war with Russia, not to start one. Throughout our many conversations, she expressed deep fears about how devastating such a new war with Russia would be for Estonia and for Europe. She wants to learn from her predecessors’ decisions—good and bad—to help prevent another, and the hundreds of tanks aren’t about offense, but defense and deterrence. “We have fought together before,” she said of Estonia and Russia. “I sound like we are going to have a war. I don’t want to say that. I hope that we are going to avoid the war.” The history of this new great power competition in Europe continues evolving under our eyes and will into the next months and years. And so she and her fellow European leaders must make decisions today with outcomes that will become clear only years later—decisions such as how to defend Ukraine now, including how many tanks to send or whether to send fighter jets, and how to defend themselves and their NATO allies in the east. “The dilemma that the prime ministers have,” she said, “is that we have to make decisions. But we will [only] know if they are right or wrong in five years’ or ten years’ time. But you have to decide now, if we go and send the planes there, does it mean that the war will stop, or does it mean that the war will expand?” More and more, she sees power in the alliance migrating toward allies with greater urgency about the Russian threat. “The center of gravity in NATO,” she told me, “is movi...