Europe did not lose security. It lost the belief it controlled it.
For decades, the US-Europe deal sustained: the United States carried the risk, Europe carried the calendar. Under Donald Trump, everything changed! The security alliance would now come at a cost.
In 2025, Washington withdrew Ukraine funding and billed Europe for it.
In January 2026, Trump publicly mocked Denmark over Greenland. That month, the EU defence commissioner said a US takeover of Greenland would end the NATO alliance. By February, NATO was already planning an Arctic mission, led by France. They even dispatched their Charles de Gaulle Aircraft Carrier to the North Atlantic.
Europe lacked discipline, not resources. Defense Procurement was treated as an industry rather than a strategy. The counterexample is New Delhi.
Under PM Narendra Modi, India’s Atmanirbhar (self-reliance) Bharat defence policy is built on one unbreakable rule: no one else will fight India’s wars.
That single sentence drives everything. India has chosen to build, maintain, repair, and upgrade its own core military systems — from engines and radars to missiles and fighter aircraft. It now exports many of these systems to other countries.
Foreign partnerships are welcome, but only when they clearly serve India’s long-term interests and never come at the cost of strategic control.
After World War II, Europe had almost everything it needed to build a strong defence industry: plenty of money, advanced technology, well-connected supply chains, established aerospace and defence companies, and most importantly, more than seven decades of protection under the American security umbrella.
In January 2026, the EU and India concluded a Free Trade Agreement and signed a Security and Defence Partnership: compartmentalisation by contract, resilient supply chains, defence industry cooperation, maritime security, and technology built to outlast election cycles.
India gains market access, technology, and scale — while firmly keeping strategic control, key production, and decision-making at home.
Europe now tries to institutionalise that discipline at home: SAFE is necessary, not decisive; Eurofighter proves Europe can build complex systems at scale. Correct dependence on Washington, but do not import new veto points into EU design: self-reliance with an exposed flank.
That flank is Turkey.
Folding Ankara into flagship EU defence schemes, through SAFE-enabled procurement or deeper admission into supply chains such as the Eurofighter Typhoon club, is no longer theoretical.
SAFE opens joint procurement to participants outside the EU, including candidate countries and partners with EU security agreements, with further eligibility possible through additional arrangements. Fit for Ukraine and trusted partners, reckless without conditions.
Cyprus was the first test case. Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and still occupies 37 percent of its territory. Cyprus is an EU member state. The occupation is a territorial fracture inside the Union. The EU chose to treat it as manageable and negotiate around it, rather than allow it to shape relations with Ankara.
That choice produced habits. The EU normalised an unresolved occupation while deepening functional cooperation with Turkey, where convenient. It also outsourced the management of key vulnerabilities, such as migration.
The 2016 EU Turkey Statement turned Ankara into a gatekeeper for Europe’s most politically volatile policy area. Turkish leaders repeatedly threatened to open the gates, and in February 2020, they did. When pressure is outsourced, leverage follows.
Europe learned the lesson, then normalised it; apply the same logic to defence procurement.
Embedding Turkey in EU rearmament would hand Ankara a future lever over European readiness precisely as Europe seeks to lower reliance on Washington. Greece and Cyprus have said so openly.
Athens has tied any Turkish access to EU defence funds to the lifting of Ankara’s casus belli threat. Nicosia has linked the issue directly to the occupation.
This is risk management. A self-reliance framework that includes an actor occupying EU territory and maintaining an explicit threat against an EU member state undermines autonomy. Once production lines, sustainment chains, and industrial constituencies are entangled, Europe’s willingness to enforce red lines diminishes, even when its security requires it.
The Eurofighter case illustrates the cost. Germany has approved the delivery of Typhoon jets to Turkey, with the UK facilitating the pathway.
The justification is industrial continuity and alliance cohesion. The industrial logic is real, so is the strategic price. The more Turkey is embedded in Europe’s advanced defence ecosystem, the harder it becomes to enforce boundaries in the Eastern Mediterranean, over Cyprus, or in any future crisis testing European unity.
Integration should not be confused with stabilisation. Integration becomes pressure when the integrated actor retains policies that undermine the bloc’s integrity. India’s instinct is clearer. India partners, buys, and coproduces, but it retains domestic control points. No partner becomes a single point of failure.
Europe is confronting the same lesson again in the High North. Greenland is now central. It sits on the North Atlantic hinge. Trump’s insistence that the United States must own Greenland forced clarity in European institutions. The Commission has confirmed the need for an Arctic security package and a European investment surge, including icebreakers. NATO has begun Arctic planning amid tensions among allies.
Europe did not lose Greenland. It failed to bind Greenland to its security imagination. After Greenland left the European Communities in 1985, Europe reduced its relationship with Greenland to fisheries and association arrangements, leaving defence largely unaddressed.
Meanwhile, US military presence remained continuous, with Pituffik Space Base integrated into missile warning and space surveillance. Europe’s surprise is therefore self-inflicted.
Correction remains possible. Through infrastructure that strengthens Greenland’s resilience, dual-use capabilities that increase visibility and response, a European maritime and air presence anchored with Denmark, and protection of undersea cables and Arctic routes as European security assets. The legal basis exists. Political will lagged.
India offers a parallel instinct. Peripheral geographies, especially islands and maritime approaches, are secured early through infrastructure, surveillance, and readiness protocols measures. Coercion begins with presence and ambiguity. Sustained investment prevents external actors from setting the terms later.
The sharpest contrast between Europe and India rests in managing the United States.
India maintains a deep, operational, and increasingly industrial relationship with Washington without replicating Europe’s dependence. Coproduction and local industrial footprint are central. Partnership is welcome, but production, sustainment, and repair must be buildable at home.
Europe is edging toward the same understanding. It must avoid confusing trusted partners with convenient ones. SAFE’s external component cap reflects early recognition that control matters. Yet Europe’s exposure runs deeper, through critical minerals and energy supply chains linked to China, Russia, and the Gulf. These interdependencies shape freedom of action long before any crisis turns kinetic.
When tensions with China escalated, New Delhi moved quickly to reduce Chinese leverage in digital and investment domains. The reflex mattered. Leverage points were addressed early.
Israel and the United Arab Emirates solve the same problem from different entry points. Israel combines deep partnerships with nonnegotiable domestic capability where disruption is existential. The UAE combines participation in coalitions with systematic local production, anchored by joint ventures. This is statecraft in supply chains.
Timing is the separator. The Gulf moves fast. The UAE builds options before pressure crystallises. Europe builds after costs are imposed.
Slogans no longer hide exposure. SAFE is necessary, Eurofighter proves capacity, and discipline decides. Self-reliance is not about higher spending; it is about removing leverage, not swapping one dependency for another.
These arrangements exist to close entry points before they harden into vetoes, which is why Turkey cannot sit inside them: an ally in form, coercive in practice, occupying EU territory and holding an explicit threat over an EU member state, because it enters through the inside lane.
Europe is already learning from India, whether it admits it or not: autonomy does not weaken alliances; it is what keeps them standing.
- Shay Gal is a strategic analyst in international security, crisis management, and strategic communications, advising governments and policy leaders on power dynamics, risk, and high-level decision-making.
- This is an Opinion Article. Views personal of the Author
