War is coming. Are we psychologically ready?

This “crisis of disbelief”, as Michta put it, is not evenly distributed. The further east you go, the closer you get to the Russian border, the more alert the people of a nation are to the threat, and the more psychologically prepared.

Sweden has not had a war for 200 years. She has been pursuing a policy of neutrality for centuries. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, it gave up and in a very short time became one of the most psychologically prepared countries in Europe.

“Russia is obviously dangerous,” Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson told The Economist last month.

“We don’t know when [the war in Ukraine] end, but how it ends will define the security situation in our part of the world for at least a generation.”

Sweden has a system of partial conscription, in which every school-leaver must register for military service. The Army selects – and hires – the best candidates. The conscripts then undergo up to 15 months of compulsory training before returning to civilian life, work or higher education. At the same time, they become part of the great reserve power of their country.

“There is a lot of civic engagement,” says Minna Alander, an analyst at the Stockholm Center for Eastern European Studies think tank. “It was almost an internet joke in 2022 and 2023 that everyone wanted a call. Sometimes people get frustrated if they haven’t been called in a long time. It’s certainly an expectation.

“For example, Sweden has identified civil engineers with some relevant skills in, for example, power supply that can be exercised in the event of a disruption. So Sweden can access this pool of civil engineers. [who know] what they can do and how they can be activated.”

When Kristersson was asked if Russia should be seen as a potential aggressor even after the war in Ukraine is over, he said: “Yes. We have a few hundred years of experience from it… We know Russia quite well.”

The three Baltic republics – Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia – also know Russia quite well. They only regained their independence from Moscow in the 1990s. German troops invaded Lithuania in the 1940s and are now back on Lithuanian soil, this time by invitation, to strengthen the defense of that country against the threat from the east. A thousand British troops lead a multinational force in Estonia for the same reason.