Europe Secularized Power. It Did Not End War

 

Editorial illustration comparing secular Europe and politically active America, highlighting the debate over religion, power, and modern conflict in democratic states.

Europe removed religion from state authority after centuries of devastation. The Enlightenment challenged clerical supremacy and replaced divine legitimacy with constitutional law. Bishops no longer crown kings. Parliaments no longer legislate doctrine.

Yet war did not disappear.

The Thirty Years’ War (1618–1648), one of Europe’s last major religious conflicts, killed an estimated 4 to 8 million people, devastating Central Europe (Encyclopaedia Britannica). That catastrophe deeply shaped European political thought. Over time, states reduced church power to prevent religious absolutism from destabilizing governance.

But secularization did not eliminate mass violence.

World War I caused roughly 16–20 million deaths. World War II resulted in more than 40 million European deaths alone (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum). These were not religious crusades. They were nationalist, racial, and ideological conflicts.

Europe secularized authority. It did not secularize ambition.

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The Enlightenment Shifted Legitimacy, Not Human Nature

Historian Charles Taylor, in A Secular Age, argues that secular modernity did not erase belief. It altered the conditions under which belief operates. Religion became one moral framework among many, rather than the organizing authority of the state.

That shift was significant.

Modern Western Europe rarely invokes scripture in legislative debate. According to the European Social Survey, regular church attendance in countries such as the United Kingdom, France, and the Netherlands sits in the single digits to low teens. Public policy debates revolve around law, rights, and economics rather than theological doctrine.

Yet ideology filled the vacuum.

Nationalism became sacred in the 19th and 20th centuries. Race became sacred under fascism. Class struggle became sacred under Marxist regimes. Political theorist Mark Lilla describes this transformation as the migration from “political theology” to secular ideological absolutism.

The vocabulary changed. The structure of moral certainty remained.

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Modern Europe Is Peaceful — But Not Pacified

It is important to acknowledge that Western Europe has achieved something historically unprecedented: internal peace among major powers for nearly eight decades. The European Union was explicitly designed to prevent another Franco-German war.

Still, security competition has returned.

After Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, European military spending surged. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), European defense expenditure rose sharply, with NATO European members increasing spending by more than 13 percent in 2023 alone (SIPRI Military Expenditure Database).

Germany announced a €100 billion special defense fund. Finland and Sweden abandoned long-standing neutrality.

None of these developments are religiously driven.

They are strategic.

Europe secularism and war now intersect in a different form. Secular states still mobilize power when threatened.

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Comparing the American Path

The United States followed a different trajectory. Religion remained socially vibrant. According to the Pew Research Center, about 45 percent of Americans say religion is very important in their lives, far higher than most Western European countries (Pew Research Center).

Evangelical networks influence electoral politics. Religious rhetoric appears in campaigns and judicial debates. Faith communities play visible roles in public life.

Yet modern American wars have not been officially framed as religious campaigns. They have been justified through national security, counterterrorism, and geopolitical containment.

This comparison complicates simple narratives.

Europe demonstrates that secularization does not eliminate conflict. America demonstrates that public religiosity does not automatically produce religious war.

In both systems, state violence ultimately rests on national interest.

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The Deeper Pattern

Europe secularism and war reveal a sobering truth.

Secularization limits clerical authority over governance. It reduces the risk of theology dictating state policy. That is a meaningful institutional achievement.

However, it does not eliminate the human tendency to sacralize something.

If divine mandate retreats, national destiny can replace it. If theology weakens, ideology can intensify. If church authority fades, identity politics can rise.

War requires moral permission. Secular modernity changes the source of that permission. It does not abolish the need for it.

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Why This Matters Now

This debate is not academic.

Across Europe, nationalist movements are rising. Across the United States, Christian nationalism is a subject of intense political dispute. Globally, identity politics shapes electoral coalitions from Warsaw to Washington.

The real question is not whether Europe “grew up” or whether America is “too religious.”

The real question is this:

Can modern democracies prevent any single moral framework — religious or secular — from monopolizing political legitimacy?

Europe weakened church dominance. It did not solve the problem of absolutism.

That remains the harder challenge.

China and India to Drive 43% of Global GDP Growth in 2026, IMF Projects

Editorial-style graphic showing China and India highlighted on a world map with IMF 2026 global growth projections and economic trend visuals.

 According to the IMF World Economic Outlook, China and India are projected to account for roughly 43 percent of global GDP growth in 2026. That single statistic explains more about the future balance of economic power than most geopolitical speeches.

The engine of global expansion is no longer Atlantic. It is Indo-Pacific.

What the IMF Data Actually Shows

The International Monetary Fund does not publish a neat table called “Top Contributors to Global Growth.” Analysts calculate these shares using GDP levels and projected real growth rates from the IMF’s World Economic Outlook database.

Using the IMF’s latest projections:

China is expected to contribute roughly one quarter of global incremental GDP.

India contributes close to one sixth.

The United States contributes around one tenth.

Germany contributes under one percent.

You can verify growth projections directly in the IMF database here:

https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO⁠�

and through the IMF Data Portal:

https://www.imf.org/en/Data⁠�

China’s economy is large and still growing at around 4–5 percent. India’s economy is smaller but expanding at 6–7 percent. Multiply growth by economic size and the arithmetic produces the 43 percent figure.

Arithmetic does not vote. It accumulates.

 Growth Gravity Has Shifted

In the early 2000s, the United States and Europe accounted for the majority of global incremental GDP. Today, that balance has moved.

IMF projections show:

China ~26 percent of global growth

India ~17 percent

United States ~10 percent

Germany <1 percent

That distribution reflects a structural change. Asia is no longer catching up. It is carrying.

Even if Western economies remain wealthy, the marginal dollar of global output is increasingly Asian.

 Germany’s Sub-1% Signal

Germany’s projected contribution of under one percent deserves attention. Europe’s largest economy faces:

Energy price adjustments after the Ukraine war

Manufacturing contraction

Demographic aging

A stagnating industrial core reduces Europe’s relative influence over global growth momentum. The continent remains affluent, but it no longer sets the pace.

The IMF growth tables make this visible without rhetoric.

Why Growth Shares Matter

Global growth shares shape:

Capital allocation

Trade negotiations

Commodity demand

Currency leverage

Institutional influence within bodies like the IMF and World Bank

If nearly half of new global output originates in two Asian economies, bargaining power follows that direction. Investment banks notice. Energy exporters adjust. Supply chains recalibrate.

This is not ideology. It is weight distribution.

⚠️ Human Angle Here

But growth contribution is not lived prosperity.

I think about this sitting in Karachi traffic, watching fuel prices climb again. Asia may drive 43 percent of global growth, yet middle-class households across South Asia still calculate grocery bills carefully.

India’s 17 percent share of global growth does not guarantee affordable housing in Delhi. China’s 26 percent does not eliminate youth unemployment in Shanghai. Strong macro numbers can coexist with household strain.

Pakistan does not appear on the contributor list at all. That absence carries its own message. We absorb global price shocks, but we do not meaningfully shape global expansion.

That asymmetry fuels quiet anxiety.

The Structural Reality

The twentieth century was defined by Atlantic dominance. The twenty-first century is increasingly defined by Indo-Pacific arithmetic.

The United States remains powerful. Europe remains wealthy. Yet the incremental momentum of the world economy is concentrated elsewhere.

The IMF numbers do not suggest collapse in the West. They suggest redistribution of dynamism.

And redistribution of dynamism changes everything over time.

Not suddenly. Gradually. Then all at once.

Tejas vs JF-17 vs J-10: Why Production Speed Is the Real Air Power

 

A side-by-side visual comparison of India’s Tejas, Pakistan’s JF-17 Thunder, and China’s J-10 fighter jets. The infographic highlights aircraft in service numbers and development timelines to illustrate how production speed influences air power balance in South Asia and East Asia.

The loudest argument in South Asian airpower right now is not “whose jet turns tighter”. It is “whose factories and supply chains can keep squadrons alive”. The recent run of Tejas headlines—crashes in 2024 and 2025, followed by a February 2026 runway-overshoot and a reported precautionary fleet pause—lands on an already sore point: India needs combat aircraft at scale, fast, because Indian Air Force is operating far below a long-stated squadron requirement. 

Against that, Pakistan has built its force structure around steady JF-17 production and has added J-10C fighters in meaningful numbers, while China has already done what “Make it here” dreams of: moved from dependence on foreign aircraft engines toward operational domestic powerplants, and produced fighter fleets at volumes India has not matched for its light-fighter programme. 

This report uses (and cross-checks) official contract announcements and capacity claims from Press Information Bureau and Ministry of Defence, audit findings from Comptroller and Auditor General of India, fleet counts from FlightGlobal based on Cirium datasets, transfer-dependence statistics from Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, export/inventory context from the United States Department of Defense, and engine-supply reporting from Janes. 

A key conclusion emerges: capability matters, but tempo is what converts capability into deterrence. A jet programme that cannot reliably deliver 15–25 aircraft a year (and keep them serviceable) becomes a strategic vulnerability—especially for an air force trying to climb from 29 fighter squadrons back toward 42. 

Timelines and fleet scale

Comparative milestones and outputs

The table below is structured for investigative writing: it emphasises not just “when it flew”, but “when it started to matter” (induction + numbers in units + exports).

Dimension	Tejas	JF-17	J-10 / J-10C
Programme start (public record)	Initial government sanction funding traced to Aug 1983 (audit record).	Design offered to Pakistan as a joint project in the mid‑1990s; development narrative links back to earlier Chinese efforts.	Development under way through the 1980s; engine availability and design changes repeatedly delayed it.
First flight	Jan 2001 (audit schedule table).	Prototype first flight reported in 2003 (Livefist notes May 2003; other accounts differ, so treat month as approximate).	Prototype first flew Mar 1998.
Operational induction (anchor date)	Government says first version inducted into IAF in 2016.	First JF‑17 squadron inducted 18 Feb 2010 (secondary but specific record from a defence research journal).	“Ready for service” in June 2004 after series production start.
Current in-service / delivered scale (open-source fleet data)	IAF: 31 Tejas (with 83+97 on order shown in the same dataset).	PAF: 123 JF‑17 fighters + 25 JF‑17B (two-seat) trainers; additional 35 on order.	China: PLAAF 243 J‑10 + PLANAF 25 J‑10 (active fleet listing); Pakistan: 20 J‑10C (and additional on order in the same dataset).
Export customers (confirmed recipients / contracts)	No confirmed export customer; crashes explicitly described as harming export hopes.	Export recipients include Myanmar, Nigeria, and Azerbaijan (DoD listing). Pakistan also signed a contract to sell JF‑17 Block III to Azerbaijan (quantity undisclosed).	Exported only to Pakistan; DoD says 20 delivered to Pakistan as of May 2025 and total orders since 2020 equal 36.

Milestone timeline chart

The timeline below is deliberately “production-centric”: it foregrounds induction, supply, and losses alongside first flights.

Key dates are drawn from government and audit records for Tejas, credible defence analysis for J‑10 milestones, and multiple reporting streams for JF‑17 production/induction. 

Production tempo and industrial models

The tempo problem in numbers

There is a trap in many fighter-jet debates: counting “orders” instead of “aircraft in squadrons”. Orders are promises; open squadrons are power. Using the same independent fleet dataset for in-service counts, we can estimate how quickly each system translated into squadron mass after induction:

Aircraft	Induction anchor used	In-service fighters (dataset)	Approx. years from induction to dataset snapshot	Implied average annual induction into service (fighters only)	What the programme claims it can do
Tejas	2016 entry into IAF service	31	~8–9 years	~3–4 fighters/year (rough)	Capacity stated as 8/year, rising to 16/year by 2025, then 24/year within the next three years.
JF-17	2010 first squadron induction	123	~14–15 years	~8–9 fighters/year (rough)	Earlier Pakistani reporting projected ramping production capacity toward 25/year (ambition; actual appears lower).
J-10 (PLAAF only)	June 2004 ready for service	243	~20 years	~12 fighters/year (rough)	China’s broader trend is rising domestic capacity reducing import dependence; the J‑10C’s domestic engine milestone is part of that.

These are not “factory throughput” measures; they are force-structure outcomes that include basing, training pipelines, acceptance, and (sometimes) attrition. Still, even as rough indicators, they show the central thesis: production systems that consistently output high single digits to low double digits annually will reshape regional fleets; those that output 3–4 a year will not. 

Industrial model differences that drive tempo

India’s Tejas is manufactured by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, a state-run defence manufacturer. Government statements describe a deliberate ramp plan—8 aircraft per year, then 16, then 24—plus wider vendor participation, and higher indigenous content in the 2025 contract.  Yet the same programme’s history in audit shows repeated schedule slippage and mismatches between planned and realised production capability (for example, plans for building facilities for eight aircraft per year but only four being created at that point in the programme). 

China’s model is not “private-sector competition”; it is state-led scale with a maturing domestic industrial base. One clean indicator is from SIPRI: China’s arms imports have fallen as it builds its ability to design and produce major systems, and it increasingly supplies others (with Pakistan as a major recipient of Chinese exports).  For the J‑10 line specifically, credible defence analysis frames series production beginning after flight testing completion and a rapid (relative) transition to service readiness by 2004. 

Pakistan’s model is hybrid: co-development and local assembly/production around a Chinese spine. The JF‑17 story, even in sympathetic write-ups, reads like a production-first programme (deliver aircraft, then upgrade through blocks), with early deliveries from China, an eventual start of series production at home, and a long-run goal of replacing multiple legacy fleets.  But there is also a ceiling: recent reporting describes capacity constraints—“fewer than 20 per year”—and uncertainty about whether the line can expand quickly enough to meet new export interest. 

Squadron impact and force structure

India’s fighter shortfall is no longer a quiet, technical concern—it is now described in mainstream reporting as a strategic risk. By early 2026, reporting tied to Indian defence approvals described the air force as down to 29 fighter squadrons, far short of a long-stated requirement of 42. 

That gap matters because it changes how deterrence is perceived. A force sitting at 29 squadrons has less surge capacity for simultaneous contingencies (for India, read: western and northern theatres) and less resilience to maintenance cycles, accidents, and retirements.  It is also why an Indian defence committee explicitly pushed for broader private-sector involvement, and why the air force leadership has been quoted arguing India needs 35–40 new fighters annually to rebuild strength—numbers that are an order of magnitude higher than Tejas’ realised historical induction rate and still above HAL’s near-term capacity claims. 

This is where Tejas vs JF‑17 vs J‑10 stops being a fan-war and becomes procurement math. If Tejas output stabilises at 16–24 aircraft per year as planned, it becomes a genuine force-structure repair tool. If it does not—because engines arrive late, subassemblies bottleneck, trials slip, or acceptance slows—India will keep living in a stopgap ecosystem (life extensions, imports, and mixed fleets). 

Capability and supply-chain dependencies

Capability snapshots that matter for “production-speed airpower”

A rigorous capability comparison could run 10,000 words; for this feature’s thesis, the most relevant capability question is simpler: can the platform be produced and sustained with predictable inputs? The table below focuses on the parts of capability that most strongly intersect with supply chains (engines, radars, and weapons integration).

Attribute	Tejas Mk1/Mk1A	JF-17 (baseline → block upgrades)	J-10C focus (and its export relevance)
Engine	F404 family; GE describes the F404‑GE‑IN20 as the highest-rated F404 model and links it to Tejas flight testing and early operational squadron engine orders.  Ongoing Tejas Mk1A schedule risk has been directly tied to F404 deliveries.	Powered by the Russian-made Klimov RD‑93, described even by sympathetic analysts as reliability-limited.	Prototype flew with Russian AL‑31FN; later, an operational J‑10C with a “domestically made engine” was highlighted by FlightGlobal as a milestone.
Radar / sensors	Government-stated Mk1A upgrades include AESA radar and EW-suite improvements; the 2025 contract explicitly cites the indigenous UTTAM AESA radar and additional self-protection items.	Early reporting describes Chinese-origin avionics on initial batches, with later batches expected to incorporate improved radars and possibly European radar ties (historical).	J‑10C described as introducing AESA radar, with earlier J‑10B using PESA; discussion also flags that “AESA” is not a single capability level but a spectrum.
Weapons integration signals	HAL’s annual report-style disclosure lists Astra and ASRAAM compatibility for Mk1A, alongside a modernised avionics stack (mission computer, SDR, CIT, etc.).	Earlier public weapon-package snapshots included SD‑10A and PL‑5, plus anti-ship and strike munitions appearing in displays.	J‑10 series evolution is described as moving from PL‑11/PL‑8 era to PL‑10 and PL‑15, and incorporating strike loads with targeting + ECM pods.
Export reality check	No confirmed export deliveries; Reuters explicitly framed crashes as damaging export hopes and depicted Tejas as reliant on Indian orders.	Export recipients listed by DoD include Myanmar, Nigeria, Azerbaijan; Reuters confirms a signed contract with Azerbaijan (numbers undisclosed).	DoD describes Pakistan as the only export customer; as of May 2025, 20 delivered, orders totalling 36 since 2020.

Supply-chain dependency as a strategic constraint

For Tejas, supply-chain dependency is not theoretical: it has been publicly tied to U.S.-origin engine delivery schedules. Reporting tracked how a supplier disruption (including a South Korean supplier issue) slowed F404 deliveries, with revised delivery rhythms (for example, “two engines a month”) effectively becoming a gating factor on aircraft deliveries.  Government messaging tries to close that loop through negotiated technology transfer and rising indigenous content claims. 

Pakistan’s dependency pattern is different. SIPRI’s data shows Pakistan’s arms imports becoming even more China-dominant over time—82% of Pakistan’s arms imports came from China in 2019–23—which is less a vulnerability if Beijing is your strategic partner, and more a structural choice that prioritises assured supply over supplier diversity.  The JF‑17 itself sits inside this logic: a Chinese avionics and weapons ecosystem with a Russian engine dependency that Pakistan has historically managed through the China channel. 

China’s J‑10 story is the “endgame” of this arc: start with a foreign engine, then transition to domestic engines on an operational platform, reducing exposure as industrial maturity rises. 

Safety record and transparency

What is clearly documented

Two Tejas crashes are clearly documented in high-reliability reporting: a March 2024 crash in Rajasthan with pilot ejection, and a November 2025 crash during a Dubai Airshow demonstration flight that killed the pilot.  In February 2026, reporting described a runway overshoot/ground incident followed by precautionary fleet checks; the manufacturer disputed “crash” framing and described a minor ground technical incident. 

What cannot be cleanly computed (and why)

The user request asks for “incidents vs platform flight hours”. Here is the uncomfortable truth: public sources do not provide a stable, official, up-to-date Tejas fleet flying-hours total in the same way some Western programmes do. Without a verified numerator (total hours), accident-rate arithmetic becomes guesswork—especially when “fleet grounded” reporting mixes airborne crashes with ground incidents and with “written off” vs “repaired” ambiguity. 

For JF‑17, at least one widely cited figure exists: reporting in 2016 claimed the fleet had logged “more than 19,000 operational flight hours” (at that time) and connected that claim to an aviation journalist who tracks PAF.  But that number is both old and not an official running total; it is useful context, not a definitive denominator.

The investigative way to handle this in a feature is to be explicit: the trend is observable (Tejas’ safety narrative is under pressure), but precise per-hour comparisons are not currently defensible from open official data. That transparency is part of the “hard-hitting” tone: if governments want credibility, they publish the maintenance and flying-hour baselines that let citizens judge risk honestly.

One: The Tejas did not just overshoot a runway; it overshot India’s production reality. Thirty jets grounded is not an engineering headline—it is a force-structure headline, because India is sitting at 29 squadrons when it says it needs 42. 

Two: South Asia keeps arguing about “4.5 generation”. Meanwhile, China is quietly winning the only category that pays dividends in war: how many aircraft you can field, fix, and replace every year. 

Three: The Tejas is not “bad”. The problem is crueller: India built a jet; Pakistan built a production rhythm; China built an industrial system. Those are three different achievements, and only one of them scales deterrence. 

In February, the Tejas story stopped being about a single aircraft and became about an entire air force. Reports said a Tejas overshot the runway and the fleet went into precautionary checks; the manufacturer pushed back, calling it a minor ground incident. Either way, the message was the same: when you only have around a few dozen jets of a type in frontline use, any pause is loud. It is loud because the Indian Air Force is down to 29 fighter squadrons—far below the 42 it says it needs. That is not a gap you patch with speeches. You patch it with deliveries. 

This is the part most debates dodge: airpower is not a beauty contest between platforms; it is an industrial contest between calendars. Tejas exists—it is inducted, it is flying, it has two operational squadrons, and it is positioned as a centrepiece of India’s modernisation story. The government has also sold the public a ramp plan: HAL at 8 aircraft a year, then 16, then 24. Two major contracts—83 aircraft in 2021 and 97 more signed in 2025—are meant to turn Tejas into a fleet, not a symbol. 

But production is where symbolism dies. The Tejas programme’s own audited history reads like a warning label: milestones that slipped by years, planned production facilities that did not match intended throughput, and cascading delays from early design and systems integration decisions. That audit is old (2015), but its logic is timeless: complex weapons programmes fail when governance, integration discipline, and user involvement are weak. And when you combine that with an external engine supply chain, it gets sharper. Recent reporting has tied Tejas Mk1A delays directly to F404 engine delivery schedules—down to the cadence of engines arriving per month. 

Now look across the border and the contrast is not subtle. Pakistan’s JF‑17 is not marketed as mystical; it is marketed as available. Its origin story is blunt: a China-backed programme offered in the mid‑1990s, prototypes flying by 2003, early production arriving by 2007, and series production beginning by 2009. By 2025 fleet datasets list more than a hundred JF‑17 fighters in service plus a meaningful trainer fleet. Pakistan is also signing export deals, including a contract with Azerbaijan, and discussing possible sales with Bangladesh. This is not proof that JF‑17 is “better”; it is proof that a repeatable production pipeline can be built in the region—and that pipeline itself becomes a strategic asset. 

China’s J‑10 takes the argument further: it is what scale looks like when a state decides a fighter is going to become the backbone of a force, not a boutique programme. Analysts describe the J‑10 moving into series production by the end of 2003 and being ready for service in 2004, then evolving through radar and weapons upgrades into the J‑10C era of AESA and long-range missiles. Fleet data lists hundreds in Chinese service. And while China began with foreign engines—prototype J‑10s flew with Russian AL‑31FN—later reporting highlighted operational J‑10Cs with domestically made engines. That arc matters: it is the difference between a programme whose output is hostage to foreign bottlenecks and one whose output can be planned politically and executed industrially. 

The supply-chain picture exposes why Pakistan’s “success” is not simply a story of genius; it is a story of alignment. SIPRI reports that 82% of Pakistan’s arms imports came from China in 2019–23. That is dependency, yes—but it is dependency aligned to a strategic patron that also supplies aircraft, missiles, radars, and the broader technology spine. Pakistan’s J‑10C story reflects that: the U.S. DoD assessed 20 J‑10Cs delivered to Pakistan as of May 2025, with total orders since 2020 of 36, and it described Pakistan as the only export customer. When supply, finance, and geopolitics pull in the same direction, production moves. 

Tejas still has a path to being a real “numbers fighter”, but it requires an uncomfortable shift in what India treats as victory. Winning is not signing a contract; it is delivering aircraft into squadrons at the tempo the air force chief says is required—35 to 40 fighters a year across programmes. Winning is cutting engine and subsystem uncertainty, so acceptance schedules stop being a hostage to someone else’s factory. Winning is publishing credible fleet flying-hour baselines so safety debates are about verified rates, not viral jokes and “flying coffin” memes. And winning, ultimately, is admitting the real contest: not Tejas versus JF‑17 versus J‑10 in the sky—but HAL versus time.