Past days have seen the European political classes turning up the volume to maximum on clearly concerted – and shared – speaking-notes: "War with Russia is coming; Russia intends to strike NATO; we must prepare; stock up on bottled water, tinned food, and be ready to offer your children to military conscription" – "Many will die; but it is their duty to defend their country."

What nonsense! To make the point, European leaders, including EU High Representative Kallas and German Chancellor Merz, recently deliberately dressed in field camouflage to signal "defence readiness" during the European Arctic Summit on 14 September. (These European politicians can be viewed in military fatigues here).

They look absurd. Yet that cannot detract from the question – What exactly is this hysteria gripping European technocrats?

On the face of it, the unified messaging that Russia is about to attack Europe and that war is coming makes no sense at all. Europe has neither the men, munitions, the finance, nor the industrial capacity to wage war on what today can be considered a leading military "great power," as well as the state possessing the highest nuclear weapons inventory.

ZeroHedge observes that,

Among the loudest purveyors of this unsubstantiated narrative [of threatened Russian attack] include leaders of the Baltic states. For example this week Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics has gone so far as to say Russian 'attacks' on the EU and NATO have already started. Baltic nations are even issuing emergency preparedness plans for their populations, alleging a Red Dawn style scenario.

'We are not talking about a conventional war. We are talking about all kinds of provocations, all kinds of acts of sabotage, all kinds of tests, and definitely this is something that is already happening as we speak,' the Latvian leader said.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has claimed this week that Russia could launch sporadic attacks which it pretends are 'accidental" in order to "paralyze or at least weaken the motivation of NATO countries,' as cited in The Associated Press. 'There is a real risk that drones or other types of projectiles will enter the territory of one or several countries on the eastern flank and even cause destruction,' Tusk added, warning: "Moscow may go as far as to launch an air attack in some form on NATO territory in the coming months to show the military alliance's Article 5 common defence pledge is little more than a few words on a piece of paper.

Yet against all accumulated evidence, European leaders nonetheless are hyping themselves up to be psychologically prepared to pull that Article 5 trigger against a major nuclear-armed power.

In wake of this hype, FM Sergey Lavrov explicitly warned:

I would like to emphasise that we have no interest in engaging in this [attacking Europe], but if Europe, which is talking about preparing for war against Russia on a daily basis, attacks Russia, it will be a completely different war – and it will be very short.

What lies behind this apparent absurdity? On the one hand, it is clear that the Brussels ruling strata see their strategic errors (unconstrained support for Ukraine, the sacrifice of the European business model on the altar of pressuring Russia, their support for the Iran war, and their indifference to suffering in the Middle East) coming home to roost.

Their fear-mongering towards Russia smacks of desperation, rather than careful thought and due diligence about the very real risks of hyping war in this way. The Establishment no doubt sees the energy crisis arising from the US-Israeli war on Iran is no longer "coming," but has come.

They can see living-costs escalating, jobs evaporating and the coming collapse in markets – principally in the bond market (whose interest-rate level defines the value of all other risk assets). Seeing this, these imperilled politicians may have concluded that triggering fear is the only way to divert from their own failures, and perhaps allow them the hope that they can survive the election cycle.