Shashank Joshi - 9th of December 2025

'Is Europe Ready for War?' The Russian President has recently said he is ready for war with Europe. Is Europe ready for war with Russia? In this edition of IIEA Insights, The Economist’s Defence Editor Shashank Joshi, will assess the progress democratic Europe has made in deterring attack since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, which caused a sea-change in thinking about the threat of Russia. Other issues to be analysed will include how European countries assess the reliability of the US position on Nato’s Article 5 mutual defence commitment and the threats posed by China, directly via espionage networks and indirectly via its support for Russia’s war. Shashank Joshi is The Economist’s Defence Editor. Prior to joining The Economist in 2018, he served as Senior Research Fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and Research Associate at Oxford University’s Changing Character of War Programme. He has published books on Iran’s nuclear programme and India’s armed forces, written for a wide range of newspapers and journals, and appeared regularly on radio and television. He holds degrees from Cambridge and Harvard, where he served as a Kennedy Scholar from Britain to the United States.