In 1978, Gen. John Hackett vividly imagined how a global war between NATO and the Soviet Union might play out in The Third World War. The novel, based in part on interviews with members of the military and other experts, was a sensation at the time. It depicts the United States and Europe battling an invading Soviet army, with one chilling chapter describing the nuclear annihilation of Birmingham, England.

If Russia Wins, written by German international relations scholar Carlo Masala, starts from a similar basis. Like Hackett, Masala has consulted with experts and government officials to author a thriller-like work of speculative fiction, focusing on a Russian challenge to NATO via Estonia after a victory in Ukraine.

In 1978, Gen. John Hackett vividly imagined how a global war between NATO and the Soviet Union might play out in The Third World War. The novel, based in part on interviews with members of the military and other experts, was a sensation at the time. It depicts the United States and Europe battling an invading Soviet army, with one chilling chapter describing the nuclear annihilation of Birmingham, England.

If Russia Wins, written by German international relations scholar Carlo Masala, starts from a similar basis. Like Hackett, Masala has consulted with experts and government officials to author a thriller-like work of speculative fiction, focusing on a Russian challenge to NATO via Estonia after a victory in Ukraine.

But in reflection of today’s world, the book is less focused on military strategy than Hackett’s was. Instead, it centers on the political question: If Russia were to challenge NATO, would NATO respond? In other words, would NATO really risk the destruction of Birmingham for a bit of Estonian territory?

As with any speculative work of political science, it’s easy to quibble with the minutiae of the scenario that Masala sketches. Yet it’s not hard to see why If Russia Wins has quickly become an international bestseller. Masala’s depiction of the near-future is not only plausible—it also acts as a serious examination of the tensions at the heart of NATO today.

The book—a breezy 120 pages that range from conference rooms in Seattle to the streets of Mali—starts from the premise of a Russian victory in Ukraine. Moscow takes control of the territory it has occupied, and Kyiv agrees to forgo NATO membership. Ukraine, riven by economic stress and Russian influence operations, drifts toward alignment with Russia.

Amid all this, Russian President Vladimir Putin unexpectedly retires and puts in place a young, Western-oriented reformer as his successor: the fictional Obmanshchikov, whose name is derived from the Russian word for deception.

Meanwhile, politics in both the United States and Europe take a turn that favors Russia. With war in Ukraine over, Republicans and Democrats in Washington coalesce around a plan to draw down troops in Europe. A right-wing president is elected in France. In Germany, which has a long history of tight trade ties with Russia, many politicians are eager to take the new Russian president at face value.

True to his name, though, Obmanshikov is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. In a bid to maintain Russia’s position as a global superpower and break NATO’s cohesion, Obmanshikov cooks up a plan with his generals to occupy the Estonian border city of Narva.

After years of grinding war with Ukraine, Russia’s military is far from ready for a full-on confrontation with NATO. However, Obmanshikov’s team counts on two factors to pull off an invasion without provoking a response from the alliance: First, Russia plans to send a message that it is willing to risk nuclear war for Narva; second, in the event of an aggressive NATO response, it can simply withdraw forces. In short, it’s a bluff.

When the time comes to take a stand on Narva, Washington blinks. The U.S. president is not willing to risk nuclear war over such a small city and is taken in by Russia’s claim that its aims are limited to “liberating” Narva’s ethnic Russian majority. Right-wing France is similarly skeptical. Russia wins a small victory on the ground—and a larger political victory by cracking the presumption that NATO will guarantee the security of its member states.

There’s any number of objections one can make regarding Masala’s assumptions. For one, would Putin, who has served as Russia’s de facto leader since 2000, really step aside for a reformer?

The obvious precedent is the 2008 presidential election of Putin acolyte Dmitry Medvedev. Putin, however, clearly thought that was a mistake and resumed the presidency in 2012, with Medvedev now relegated to the role of internet troll. Assuming Russia does not change its term limits (again), Putin could be president until 2036. With Putin in charge, and Europeans’ generally negative attitudes toward Russia, it’s hard to imagine Europe being quite so trusting of Russia.

The idea that Estonia would so lightly give up Narva also seems far-fetched. A Russian assault to capture the city would need to be a large operation to succeed, raising the risk of serious combat that could derail the measured, conference-room diplomacy described in the book. In short, Masala maps the scenario of Russia’s capture of Crimea—which was enabled by Kyiv’s weak control of the peninsula—onto Estonia, which is well-armed, motivated, and politically influential within the European Union.

Thanks to U.S. President Donald Trump, some assumptions are also far outdated. In Masala’s book, Washington is depicted as merely mooting a withdrawal of troops from Europe. Real-life events are moving faster. Late last year, the United States ended a rotational deployment to Europe and subsequently reportedly told European countries to be ready to take charge of conventional defense capabilities by 2027. Top Pentagon official Elbridge Colby, without setting a date, reemphasized that goal at the Munich Security Conference earlier this month.

Meanwhile, in a twist stranger than fiction, Trump has doubled down on a threat that once seemed far-fetched—to take Greenland away from Denmark—setting up a potential scenario where it is the United States, not Russia, that could challenge NATO cohesion with a land grab.

Those developments, in turn, may make other aspects of the scenario less plausible. At the Munich Security Conference, European leaders appeared more convinced than ever about the necessity of stepping up their defensive capabilities to take the United States’ place. Although there are doubts about how efficiently money is being spent, it’s feasible that Europe could defend against Russia without looking to Washington.

The broad strokes of the book, however, hold up to scrutiny and offer a welcome dose of imaginative thinking. For instance, while European militaries typically assess that Russia will not be ready for another war for several years, there’s no reason to believe that Russia won’t try something sooner and then threaten to use nuclear weapons, as Masala suggests. Russia has a history of using small forces to pull off bold moves, including its occupation of Crimea in 2014 and defense of the Syrian regime in 2015.

Likewise, it’s plausible that the West might be cowed by a Russian nuclear bluff. Such threats played a key role in the Biden administration’s at-times hesitant provision of military aid to Ukraine, and it’s easy to imagine Trump, with his transactional approach to foreign policy, hesitating to risk a nuclear escalation if he believed Russia’s aims were limited. Although he has embraced military action in Iran and Venezuela, Trump has so far been unwilling to be drawn into messier, long-term wars, avoiding ground warfare in Iran or occupying Venezuela.

Some may argue with the very premise of the book. Russia, as analysts often point out, is a far weaker power than Europe—and far less potent than the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies were. But, as Masala notes, the threat that Moscow poses to Europe is less about a hard calculation of economies and military power than an assessment of what countries are willing to do. And Russia, as history has shown, is more than willing to gamble on its success.