Europe had fallen into a deep slumber beneath the shelter of an umbrella—a security guarantee provided by others. While the world fractured into unprecedented conflicts, Europe enjoyed a hard-won peace, purring contentedly as a unified, pacified market. Nothing proves more perilous than such complacent pacifism. No entity faces greater danger than a vast liberal democracy that promises only itself, recognizes no enemies, depends upon its neighbors for freedom, and whose sole preoccupation becomes being perceived as tyrannical by bored citizens. In Europe, absent the necessity of self-defense, absent any adversary, our liberties have begun to atrophy and decay.
Daily, self-censorship advances its territory. Well-intentioned sentiment masquerading as civil code demands conformity to unwritten laws under the guise of "respect," while the hypersensitivity of consumers spoiled by historical fortune functions as law beneath the law. Antisemitism flourishes disguised as anti-Zionism. Colonial paternalism recycles its nostalgia through the delusion that Europe remains responsible for all the world's ills, while a renewed racism manifests as racialized anti-racism. These symptoms reveal a democracy defeated by its own victory, a continent moldering in the complacency of peace.
Moldering—or was it moldering? Everything has changed. Europe now confronts threats on at least four fronts, each demanding awakening from decades of strategic somnolence.
First, the Russian titan returns, reminiscent of Cold War tensions, though with a crucial difference: no longer does communism threaten Europe, but rather illiberalism in its rawest form—manifested through wars of invasion and rigged elections. The subsequent annulment of these fraudulent votes paradoxically increases the perception that liberal democracy itself has become undemocratic, a dangerous narrative that corrodes faith in Western institutions from within. Putin's regime represents not merely territorial ambition but an ideological assault on the very concept of a rules-based international order, seeking to replace it with spheres of influence governed by raw power.
Second, Islamism views Europe from within as territory to be conquered, exploiting misunderstood tolerance to spread its ideology, abetted by useful idiots on the left perpetually seeking symbolic victims to champion. This threat operates through cultural infiltration and the exploitation of liberal democratic norms—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and multicultural tolerance—weaponizing these very liberties against the societies that guarantee them. European capitals have witnessed the rise of parallel societies where liberal values face open challenges, where educators receive death threats for teaching Enlightenment principles, and where religious fundamentalism finds fertile ground among disaffected populations.
Third, China floods European markets daily with millions of dangerous products while polluting minds through the most toxic of social networks. Beijing's strategy extends beyond mere economic competition into deliberate technological colonization—critical infrastructure dependencies, data harvesting operations, and the systematic hollowing out of European industrial capacity. The belt extending from Eastern manufacturing centers to Western ports represents not merely trade routes but vectors of strategic influence, binding European economies into relationships of asymmetric dependence. Meanwhile, TikTok algorithms subtly reshape the information diet of an entire generation, determining what young Europeans see, think, and believe about their world.
Fourth and most surprisingly, Trump's and Musk's America treats Europe as an adversary, despises the very idea of a united Europe whose emergence terrifies them, resurrects witch hunts, and punishes European attempts to regulate digital markets and services by banning former European Commissioner Thierry Breton from American soil. This rupture in transatlantic relations represents perhaps the most disorienting challenge, as Europe must suddenly contemplate a world where its primary security guarantor actively undermines its unity and sovereignty. Washington's erratic behavior—one moment demanding Europe increase defense spending, the next questioning NATO's fundamental purpose—has exposed the dangerous dependency at the heart of European security architecture.
Yet we would err grievously to lament this adversity. Being simultaneously hated and coveted signals awakening. The European dream required this sharp prod to recognize both the grandeur of its founding vision and the fragility of its ramparts. Such accumulated adversity constitutes not misfortune but blessing—a cunning of reason mobilizing contradictory passions to facilitate the realization of its work: the achieved utopia of a political Europe, conscious of its power, unyielding on its borders, and strengthened by three millennia of history.
For decades, Europe congratulated itself on transcending the power politics that had produced two world wars and countless conflicts across its blood-soaked territories. It constructed elaborate institutions—the European Union, the Eurozone, the Schengen Area—designed to make war not merely unthinkable but structurally impossible through economic interdependence. This architectural achievement deserves recognition as humanity's most successful peace project. Yet in achieving peace, Europe forgot that the absence of war differs fundamentally from genuine security, that soft power requires the backing of hard power, and that economic strength means little without the will to defend it.
The multiple crises now converging upon Europe—energy blackmail from the East, migration pressures from the South, technological competition from the Far East, and strategic abandonment from across the Atlantic—have shattered comfortable illusions. Europeans are rediscovering what their ancestors knew viscerally: that freedom requires eternal vigilance, that prosperity must be protected, and that values mean nothing without the capacity to defend them.
This awakening manifests in tangible shifts. Defense budgets dormant for decades suddenly increase. Strategic autonomy transforms from an academic concept to an urgent imperative. European capitals discuss continental defense capabilities, integrated military procurement, and joint military-industrial capacity with a seriousness absent since the Cold War's conclusion. France's nuclear umbrella, long considered a national prerogative, enters discussions about extended deterrence. Germany contemplates rearmament that would have seemed unthinkable merely years ago.
The awakening extends beyond military dimensions into technological and economic sovereignty. Europe recognizes that dependence on foreign technology companies for critical digital infrastructure represents strategic vulnerability. Efforts to develop European alternatives to American cloud services, Chinese manufacturing, and global semiconductor supply chains reflect a belated understanding that autonomy requires indigenous capacity. The European Chips Act, investments in artificial intelligence, and initiatives for energy independence signal a continent rediscovering industrial policy and strategic planning.
Most fundamentally, Europe confronts questions of identity and purpose. What does it mean to be European in an era of returning great power competition? How can diverse nations maintain unity while preserving distinctive cultures? Can liberal democracy defend itself without betraying its own principles? These existential questions, long deferred during comfortable decades of peace and prosperity, now demand urgent answers.
The irony remains that Europe possesses enormous latent power—the world's largest single market, sophisticated technological capacity, deep financial reserves, and combined military resources that dwarf most rivals. What Europe has lacked is not capability but will, not resources but resolve, not power but the willingness to exercise it. The current polycrisis might finally catalyze that transformation, forcing comfortable populations to recognize that their way of life faces genuine threats requiring active defense.
History suggests that great civilizations face cyclical tests—periods of comfort and complacency followed by crises that either destroy them or force profound renewal. Europe stands at such an inflection point. The old order, based on American security guarantees, cheap Russian energy, compliant global markets, and the absence of serious challengers, has collapsed. What emerges from the ruins remains undetermined.
Yet in adversity lies opportunity. A politically unified Europe, militarily capable, economically sovereign, and culturally confident, would constitute a formidable global actor—balancing American unilateralism, containing Russian expansionism, competing with Chinese techno-authoritarianism, and offering an alternative model of governance that preserves individual liberty while maintaining social cohesion. Such a Europe could champion the multilateral institutions and international law that smaller powers depend upon, providing ballast in an increasingly chaotic international system.
The awakening has begun. Whether it continues, whether comfortable populations accept the sacrifices that genuine security demands, whether fractious nations overcome parochial interests to forge genuine unity—these questions remain unanswered. But the slumber has ended. Europe faces a choice between relevance and irrelevance, between shaping its destiny and having destiny imposed upon it, and between resurrection and decline.
The adversity Europe now confronts represents not the end of the European project but potentially its true beginning—the moment when abstract ideals meet concrete challenges, when comfortable rhetoric yields to difficult action, when a collection of nations becomes genuinely continental in vision and capability. The rude awakening Europe experiences may prove, in retrospect, the greatest gift its adversaries could have provided.