Carlo Masala

Carlo Masala is one of Europe’s most forthright and influential strategic thinkers. Professor of Security and Defence Policy at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, he also serves as Director of the Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies and leads the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight.

Earlier in his career, Masala was Deputy Director of the Research Division at the NATO Defense College, where he worked at the heart of transatlantic strategic debate. In 2023, he was awarded the Lichtenberg Medal in Gold by the Lower Saxony Academy of Sciences for both his academic scholarship and rare ability to communicate complex security issues to the wider public.

Carlo Masala’s authority broadened significantly with the publication of If Russia Wins — an immediate number one bestseller in Germany and now published across multiple territories. Framed as a near-future political thriller, the book imagines Russia testing NATO’s resolve by seizing territory in Estonia after a fragile “peace” in Ukraine. Yet the novel is less fiction than strategic stress test. Its core argument is stark. Deterrence fails not through dramatic collapse, but through complacency, hesitation and the slow erosion of political will.

Masala’s warnings echoes through defence and foreign policy circles. In a world defined by multi-polar competition rather than rules-based consensus, he insists that security is no longer cyclical policy theatre but a permanent condition requiring industrial depth, financial mobilisation and psychological resilience.

Shifting transatlantic dynamics, particularly under leaders such as Donald Trump, also demands that Europe assumes far greater responsibility for its own defence. As a speaker, Carlo Masala speaks on European rearmament, NATO credibility, transatlantic relations, the future of deterrence, defence finance and innovation, hybrid warfare, and the psychological dimension of geopolitical competition.