By: Walter E. Block and Oded J.K. Faran
Screengrab via Youtube
While Russian jets violate European airspace daily, Europeans obsess over distant conflicts. This puts European security at risk.
September 2025 brought brazen Russian aggression against European sovereignty. Between September 9-10, 19 to 23 Russian drones entered Poland’s airspace, forcing closure of Warsaw Chopin, Rzeszów, Modlin, and Lublin airports¹. Estonia reported three Russian MiG-31 fighters violating its airspace for twelve minutes on September 19². Russian fighters breached safety zones around Polish drilling platforms³.
Moscow is probing European defenses and testing NATO’s resolve?. Poland scrambled its jets into the air multiple times in September alone, treating each incursion as a violation of its sovereignty.
Walk through any European city today and the contrast is jarring. More protesters denounce Israel’s actions in Gaza than demand action against Russian forces literally flying through European airspace. University campuses host elaborate “Free Palestine” demonstrations while staying silent about the missiles that could target their own lecture halls tomorrow.
This backwards priority system stems from fifty years of post-colonial guilt that has warped European strategic thinking. Generations have been raised hearing they descend from racist colonizers who destroyed the world and deserve whatever consequences follow. The narrative contains historical truths about colonial abuses, but it produced something perverse: Europeans now feel more comfortable defending distant causes than their own legitimate security interests.
The 1980s offer a telling parallel. European activists then rallied around “Free Nelson Mandela” and were boycotting South African apartheid. The moral case was clear and the cause felt righteous. But the practical result devastated Africa’s most successful economy without building viable alternatives. Today’s “Free Palestine” movement follows identical logic, allowing Europeans to feel progressive while avoiding harder questions about their own survival, even the well-being of peoples in far-off lands.
This is not about diminishing Palestinian suffering or defending every Israeli action. Russian pilots are drawing flight paths through sovereign European territory while Europeans debate Middle Eastern politics they cannot influence. The asymmetry is staggering: Russia’s violations of European airspace generate diplomatic protests and closed-door consultations. Israel’s military actions thousands of miles away generate mass demonstrations, university boycotts, and endless media coverage. One threatens European civilians directly. The other dominates European political discourse.
It is as if Jones is threatening, and actually violating the rights of Smith, and Smith pretty much ignores all of this and is instead almost solely concerned with the welfare of Green, who lives far away. Smith can do nothing to alleviate the supposedly unjustified suffering of Green, nothing whatsoever. Smith could make inroads against Jones, but can hardly be bothered to do so.
Decades of being told that European civilization is inherently problematic have produced citizens who feel more legitimate defending other peoples’ (supposed) rights than their own. The extreme right monopolized European patriotism, leaving the center and left uncomfortable with basic assertions of European interests. So Europeans critique Israeli settlements more easily than they confront the bomber that might target European settlements next month.
What Europe needs is defensive action, not more diplomatic theater. The September airspace violations demand that NATO nations look to their own welfare, of which they can control. Every European capital should be demanding emergency NATO Article 4 consultations? instead of debating ceasefire resolutions for conflicts they cannot control.
European weakness invites the very authoritarianism that makes distant injustices worse. A continent too guilty to defend itself becomes too weak to help anyone else.
The facts speak for themselves. Recently, Russian aircraft have violated European airspace at least six times across four countries?. Copenhagen and Oslo airports closed for hours due to unidentified drone activity?. Polish airports shut down multiple times. Estonian airspace was breached for twelve minutes?. The European response consisted of diplomatic protests and NATO consultations behind closed doors while Russian aircraft kept coming.
Europeans must rediscover legitimate confidence in their democratic institutions, market economies, and open societies. These values deserve defense against authoritarian aggression without requiring abandonment of concern for supposed global injustices. It simply requires prioritizing threats based on proximity and severity rather than moral satisfaction.
The choice facing Europe is stark: defend European airspace with the same passion currently reserved for Palestinian solidarity, or watch both causes suffer as European democracy withers under authoritarian pressure. Historical guilt has become an expensive luxury that Europe cannot afford while Russian aircraft treat European borders as suggestions.
If European nations put half the effort into tending to their own gardens, in which they have a comparative advantage, of history, knowledge, information as the do they regarding the far away Arab – Israeli conflicts, of which they know very little, they would be far better off. They are now playing nothing less than the role of the minister or rabbi who is concerned, pretty much only with his flock, and virtually not at all with his own immediate family. The buttinski Europeans should take care of business at home, where they are in disarray.
Sources:
² NBC News: Estonia says Russian fighter jets violated its airspace in ‘brazen’ incursion
³ CNN: NATO intercepts three Russian jets over Estonia’s airspace
? Security Council Report: Emergency Briefing on Drone Incursion into Poland
? Al Jazeera: Estonia, NATO slam ‘brazen’ Russian air incursion, Moscow denies claim
? Notes From Poland: Poland requests NATO raise defence spending minimum to 3% of GDP
? Estonian Government: Estonian Government to request NATO Article 4 consultations
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