Can Europe Manage Its Frontiers?
Part 1 of an analysis explaining why Europe is worried about a new global order.
By Ridvan Bari Urcosta
For centuries, European security depended on control not only of the Continent but also of its periphery.
The defeat of the Ottomans, Russia’s expansion into Crimea and Poland, and the rise of European colonial empires consolidated that position.
Between 1917 and 1945, the Continent entered an era of military and strategic dependence on the trans-Atlantic relationship.
Today, Europe retains much of its territory but is losing dominance over its periphery.
It is moving from a position in which it defined the political order in neighboring regions to one in which independent regional centers can exert pressure on Europe itself.
But the loss of supremacy does not automatically mean the loss of agency.
Europe faces a question once faced by empires of the past: Can a large political entity retain its agency and compel others to recognize it after its dominance has passed?
Until 1945, Europe was a major source of global military and economic expansion.
After 1945, it had to outsource its security as it was divided between two superpowers.
The end of the Cold War gave Europe relative economic autonomy, but its security architecture remained largely unchanged.
That architecture is now shifting.
The United States is redefining its role on the Continent, while Europe is contending with forces along every frontier.
Internally, it must confront issues such as deindustrialization, energy insecurity, dependence on imported rare earth minerals and migration.
This two-part analysis thus focuses on the borderlands and their importance to Europe.
The Eastern Flank
Historically, many of the most serious threats to Europe came from the east: the Persians, the Mongols, the Turks and later the Soviets and Russians.
Ottoman expansion also pressed on Eastern Europe, the Balkans and Central Europe from the southeast.
Today, NATO’s eastern flank is becoming the Continent’s central military frontier.
The Russia-Ukraine war shows little sign that either side is prepared to accept strategic defeat, and both increasingly see the outcome as essential to the future political order of Europe.
Relations between Russia and Europe have historically moved in cycles, with each side at times penetrating deep into the other’s geopolitical space.
What began as a coalition supporting Ukraine has become a broader contest over Europe’s future and its relationship with the United States.
For this reason, many European capitals view separate negotiations between Moscow and Washington as a possible prelude to another division of the Continent.
A trilateral arrangement among the U.S., China and Russia would be even less welcome because it would be seen as an order built without Europe rather than with it.
Europe would not be the only party concerned, though several major powers outside the West have openly favored a multipolar order managed among great powers.
Europe has responded through a coalition of the willing, deeper cooperation in the Baltic and North Sea regions, integration with Ukraine, Moldova and the South Caucasus, and economic engagement with Central Asia.
Its economic opening to Mercosur in South America follows the same logic of building links beyond the trans-Atlantic relationship.
European leaders are also preparing for possible confrontation with Russia with less U.S. support.
This raises the prospect of a contest for primacy in Eastern Europe and the Baltics, reminiscent of the Great Northern War.
Moscow would take any signal that the U.S. would decline to confront Russia directly as a sign that it has freedom of action in Europe.
For Europe, holding the line in Ukraine with reduced U.S. support would demonstrate that it can act as an independent strategic actor.
The shift in European vocabulary from strategic “autonomy” to “sovereignty” is occurring alongside the integration of the Ukrainian and European defense industries into something increasingly distinct from the U.S. defense ecosystem.
Europe sees Ukraine as a pillar of its security, militarily and geopolitically.
It is therefore unsurprising that European governments resist any settlement negotiated primarily between Washington and Moscow.
Kyiv and Brussels have framed the war’s outcome as decisive for the shape of the next European security order, and both expect that order to reflect their terms rather than Moscow’s.
Less attention is paid to the fact that the U.S. built the security architecture that made the West’s eastward expansion possible.
The question is whether Europe can hold that position without the same level of U.S. involvement.
The greatest risk for the northern coalition, then, is that a major war in the Baltic region would push capital, technology and logistics southward, much like how Russia has redirected trade and logistics toward Central Asia.
Historically, such shifts have been very difficult to reverse.
The Eastern Mediterranean
The Eastern Mediterranean has historically produced centers of power capable of projecting influence into the Balkans, the Black Sea basin and Central Europe.
Rome, Byzantium and the Ottoman Empire all tried, with varying degrees of success, to dominate the Black Sea-Mediterranean space.
The Ottomans controlled the Black Sea and came close to wider Mediterranean supremacy after the Battle of Preveza in 1538.
Their northward expansion ended in 1683 in Vienna, where Polish intervention helped halt the advance.
The broader pattern matters: The Eastern Mediterranean was never simply Europe’s periphery but an autonomous geopolitical system capable of projecting power deep into the Continent.
If the historical cycle turns again, Eastern European states may also come to play a larger role in Europe’s affairs than they have in recent centuries.
Starting in the 19th century, European powers pushed the Ottomans back and turned much of the Eastern Mediterranean and North Africa into European-controlled or semi-colonial spaces.
In various forms, this arrangement lasted until the 2010s, when the Arab Spring, civil wars, Russian intervention and the rise of Turkey accelerated the erosion of Western dominance.
The region now lies increasingly outside European control.
This is a partial return to the pre-colonial status quo in which autonomous regional powers could challenge Europe along its southern borderlands.
Turkey in particular has re-emerged as a regional power in its own right.
Israel, Greece, Cyprus and France have deepened their cooperation in anticipation of the current stalemate ending in the coming decades.
The problem for Europe is that it already faces a contested zone in the east.
Contention could spread to its Eastern Mediterranean borderlands and, over time, leave Europe more dependent on regional powers, particularly for logistics and energy.
Pressure from the east and southeast is only half the picture.
Europe’s western and northern frontiers, once its most secure spaces, are now in flux as well. Part 2 will examine the Western Mediterranean, the North Atlantic and the technological contest that underpins them.
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