Europe sometimes makes the correct diagnosis, but almost never takes the appropriate measures to protect itself and stay ahead of the adversary.
By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published by La Razón, 20 September, 2026
Lately, we’ve become more aware of the evolving nature of the threats that loom over us. We’re no longer just talking about visible enemies, about powers pushing the limits, each using the methods they find most effective. We’re talking about a war that wears no uniform, that goes undeclared, and that doesn’t respect the old boundary between peace and war. Europe sometimes makes the right diagnosis, but it almost never takes the appropriate measures to protect itself, much less to stay ahead of the adversary.
On September 17, Reuters published a report that should be read in every defense ministry on the continent. It asks, without mincing words, whether NATO is prepared for the next war. Five Ukrainian and Western defense officials respond with a devastating statement: Ukraine adapts in weeks; the Alliance takes years, sometimes decades, to acquire. Russia has chosen wars of aggression and, against Europe, a gray war . China doesn’t need to fire weapons: it needs credit that creates dependency, control of straits and ports, and a monopoly on batteries, solar panels, electric motors, and rare earth elements. The Volkswagen cuts, which already affect around 100,000 jobs, are a dramatic wake-up call. The oligarchic-jihadist regime in Tehran has been sponsoring terrorism since 1979 through the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah, the Houthis, and pro-Iranian terrorist groups in Iraq, and is the main proliferator of the Shahed drones that Russia launches every night against Ukraine.
War is not declared
Wars in our time are not declared. That is why the siren songs of some US congressmen demanding a formal declaration of war against Iran are absurd, if not malicious. The United States has not formally declared war since 1942. If even open wars are not declared, then gray wars never will be. Waiting for a declaration before reacting is tantamount to never reacting at all.
In 1948, George F. Kennan defined “political warfare” as the use of all means available to a nation, short of war, to achieve its objectives. In 2013, General Gerasimov wrote that non-military means had, in many cases, surpassed the effectiveness of weapons. Our adversaries write this in black and white. We are the ones who refuse to read it.
Lies as ammunition
Disinformation is the cheapest and most difficult weapon to attribute. It doesn’t aim to make us believe a specific lie, but rather to make us stop believing in any truth at all. In December 2024, Romania had to cancel the first round of its presidential elections after a TikTok campaign that its intelligence services linked to a state actor. The Russian network Doppelgänger cloned the websites of major European newspapers to spread fake news disguised as theirs. According to NewsGuard, the pro-Russian network Pravda published some 3.6 million articles in 2024 not for us to read, but for artificial intelligence to absorb, which then repeated its falsehoods in about a third of the cases. The well from which the machines will drink is being poisoned.
These campaigns need local megaphones, and in Spain they have them: pro-Russian analysts who spread misinformation and justify the repression in Iran by attributing the protests to Mossad and the CIA. The answer is not censorship, which is what distinguishes us from Moscow and Tehran, but transparency about who amplifies what and with what money, and media literacy from schools onwards, as Finland does.
There is no ceasefire in cyberspace. Russia shut down part of the Ukrainian power grid in 2015. On February 24, 2022, an hour before the invasion, a cyberattack against Viasat’s satellite network left some 5,800 wind turbines in Germany without remote monitoring. What is most unsettling is what goes unseen: in 2024, US authorities reported that the Chinese group Volt Typhoon had infiltrated energy, water, and transportation networks, not to steal, but to be able to sabotage them in a crisis. These are logical time bombs planted in peacetime. Last July, a coordinated attack struck more than thirty water networks in Minnesota. For me, it was a test run.
Everything depends on electricity: the water pumped by electric motors, gas pumps, payments, hospitals, the cold chain, traffic lights, and trains. On April 28, 2025, we experienced this firsthand . In about five seconds, 60% of the power generation disappeared, and the Iberian Peninsula was plunged into darkness. It wasn’t an attack, but a cascading technical failure. Even so, those with cash and a battery-powered radio were better prepared than those who relied entirely on their mobile phones. What a failure could do for hours, an attack could do for weeks.
Around 99% of intercontinental data traffic travels via submarine cables , and the Baltic Sea has become a testing ground for their sabotage, with anchors dragged for tens of kilometers. GPS interference is now commonplace: Ursula von der Leyen’s plane suffered it in 2025 as it approached Bulgaria.
There is a threat that almost no one talks about: electromagnetic pulse weapons. A high-altitude nuclear detonation doesn’t kill anyone with the blast itself, but its pulse can damage electronics and large transformers across thousands of kilometers.
Anything containing a microchip—cars, phones, computers, water pumps, hospital systems— can be rendered unusable. This is not science fiction. In 1962, the US Starfish Prime test knocked out streetlights in Hawaii some 1,400 kilometers away, and a Soviet test over Kazakhstan set a power plant ablaze. There are also high-powered, non-nuclear microwave weapons, mountable on missiles or drones, that can fry electronics in an entire neighborhood. The US Congress has just issued another warning about this threat and about Chinese advances against Taiwan. The United States has had an executive order in place since 2019 to protect its network. Europe has nothing: no shielded transformers, no strategic spare parts, and no common policy.
While governments remain silent, the wealthiest are preparing. Mark Zuckerberg is building a 570-hectare estate in Hawaii with an underground shelter and food and energy self-sufficiency. As The New Yorker reported in 2017, more than half of Silicon Valley’s billionaires already had their “apocalypse insurance.” Douglas Rushkoff recounted how investors asked him how to keep his security detail loyal when money was worthless. They are preparing for an apocalyptic and dystopian future with fenced-in, completely self-sufficient farms.
This isn’t a trivial matter, but a symptom: those who best understand the fragility of social networks, because they’ve built them, don’t trust states to protect them. When survival is privatized, the social contract breaks down. The answer isn’t to imitate them, but to make their bunkers unnecessary. Finland has shelters for some 4.8 million of its 5.6 million inhabitants. In 2024, Sweden sent every household a guide for crisis or war. Brussels has merely recommended a 72-hour kit; it’s so shocking it borders on the ridiculous.
Lies as ammunition
In the military sphere, Europe remains stuck in 20th-century tactics. A Ukrainian officer told Reuters that some NATO manuals are still based on World War II scenarios. The commander of the Ukrainian National Guard, Oleksandr Pivnenko, says that allied troops know how to assault positions, but if there’s a drone overhead and they don’t even look up, “you can imagine what will happen to the platoon,” he quipped. A drone costing around five thousand dollars can destroy a Leopard 2 tank worth over thirty million euros. However, we shouldn’t simply abandon what works based on dogma: the veteran A-10 has been decisive in the Gulf against Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats.
It’s unacceptable that we have the best air-to-air missile in the world, the Meteor, and yet lack sufficient arsenal for more than a week of conflict. We need an industry capable of rapid replenishment, one that increases production when necessary and decreases when not, and realistic, not optimistic, strategic reserves.
Finally, European systems
There is good news. Europe has begun to build alternatives to the American Patriot, on which it is dangerously dependent. The Franco-Italian SAMP/T NG, which Denmark has chosen over the Patriot, will be deployed in Ukraine. Ten countries launched the Freyja anti-ballistic missile project in July, led by the Ukrainian company Fire Point. The German IRIS-T has been shooting down Russian missiles for years. Rheinmetall’s Skyranger and interceptor drones co-produced with Ukraine shoot down drones at a fraction of the cost of a missile. The British DragonFire laser can be fired for around ten pounds.
Brussels has launched four major projects: drone defense, surveillance of the eastern flank, and air and space shields. The Spanish company SENER is coordinating the European project against hypersonic missiles. The problem is no longer a lack of projects, but their fragmentation and slow pace. It is necessary to expedite procurement, accelerate the development of laser interceptors that have proven so effective for the US Navy against Iran, and learn from the Gulf states, which have already adopted Ukrainian technology against Iranian drones.
A very clear message must be sent to Ireland and Austria: this is not the time for political or philosophical posturing. Austria has already joined the European air defense shield, proof that neutrality does not preclude collective defense. Ireland, through whose waters pass vital cables for the entire continent, cannot monitor them. Its vulnerability is everyone’s vulnerability. Vegetius wrote it sixteen centuries ago: if you want peace, prepare for war. Today, preparing for war means producing more , making faster decisions, protecting what keeps us alive, and preparing the entire population, not just a privileged few in their bunkers. War is already here. Europe just needs to dare to see it.