On October 7th 1571, two great fleets collided off the coast of western Greece in one of history’s greatest naval battles –and one of the most consequential for the history of what we once were pleased to call “Western Civilization.” As part of its ongoing campaign to claim Europe for Islam, the Ottoman Empire assembled a huge fleet of war galleys, intending to wrest control of the Adriatic Sea — and ultimately, the entire Mediterranean — from the several Christian powers, notably Venice and Spain. To counter this threat, Pope Pius V called into existence the “Holy League,” a coalition based upon the combined naval resources of Venice and Spain. Under the leadership of Don John of Austria, the illegitimate half-brother of King Phillip II of Spain, the fleet of the Holy League won a resounding victory, known to history as the Battle of Lepanto. In terms of numbers involved, and casualties, Lepanto was one of the greatest naval battles in all of history. The opposing fleets combined numbered some 130,000 men and nearly 500 ships. The Holy League lost in the neighborhood of 10,000 killed, the Ottomans perhaps two or three times as many, with corresponding massive losses of ships. World War One’s great clash of fleets, the Battle of Jutland, featured half the number of ships and fewer than 10,000 killed. But was Lepanto decisive in any meaningful sense? The simple answer would be “not so much.” It would take another century of warfare before the threat to Christian Europe from the Muslim Ottoman Empire would be irrevocably broken at 1683’s Battle of Vienna. Even then, the struggle continued for many years before the threat receded altogether with the steady decline of the Ottoman Empire. Still, Lepanto made a genuine difference, serving as a much-needed moral victory for long-beleaguered Christianity — instead of constantly losing ground against the Ottoman threat, Europe could take heart in the demonstration that victory was possible and that the inevitability of decline could be averted. It was a win for hope and for belief in the future of European civilization. Much good would flow from this, including, far from incidentally, our own place in the world. One struggles to equate either J.D. Vance or Marco Rubio with Pope Pius V, but their messages at successive Munich Security Conferences, taken together, offer a clarion call for unity in the face of a genuinely civilizational threat, one comparable in every way to the one stymied at Lepanto. In 2025 Vance bluntly called attention to Europe’s apparent unwillingness to stand up for the values that had made European civilization a model for the modern world. Just days ago, more gently, but still firmly, Rubio delivered much the same message. Rubio’s speech is so richly nuanced and yet so powerful that it defies reduction to a few lines of summary. And it is so important that it deserves to be read in full — it’s not a five minute read, but every minute rewards the thoughtful reader. At its heart, however, lies very much the same message delivered by Vance the year before. The time has come to stand up for our shared civilization, not some watered-down globalist simulacrum thereof. The time has come to uphold once more the values of our shared heritage. The time has come to rearm ourselves once again, not simply by pledging to some arbitrary GDP percentage of military spending, but by returning to that which we once found worth fighting for. More, we must be honest with ourselves about the threat we face, and here is where it behooves us to recall the situation in Christian Europe on the eve of Lepanto. Then Christianity was divided against itself, not simply nation versus nation, Protestant versus Catholic, or sect versus sect, but very nearly a rampant tribalism that defied finding any common purpose against the looming Ottoman threat. Much the same is true today, perhaps even more so. Our statesmen are right to be concerned about China, for Xi and his minions genuinely pose a civilizational threat. They make no bones about wanting to replace us as the world’s forthcoming leading civilization, and they don’t mean to be gentle about it. Ask Jimmy Lai, and ask the anonymous thousands upon thousands who have shared his fate. So by all means let’s continue to press our European allies to build up their defenses, to become worthy military partners once again. We might also pause to consider the thugocracy that is Putin’s Russia. One can choose not to worry about the military threat posed by Russia, one can dismiss it as “Italy with nukes,” one can assume that it’s only a matter of time before it implodes, but one shouldn’t dismiss its capacity for great mischief whichever way it goes. In particular, we should beware of Russia’s increasingly evident role as a pawn of the Chinese regime, not an equal partner but rather a client state like North Korea. Putin might resist the comparison with Kim Jong-un, but we shouldn’t deceive ourselves or fail to recognize the obvious implications. Still, we deceive ourselves if we focus too much on Russia or China. We deceive ourselves all the more by concluding that, by “pivoting” to the Chinese threat, we assure our future security. Instead we must finally accept that radical Islam, in all its varied yet ultimately unitary manifestations, represents the most important and insidious threat to our way of life. Furthermore, we need to finally face up to the fact that the greatest enabler of radical Islam is the flaccid tyranny of our own secular left. How so, you might ask? The mullahs of Iran have been rocked back on their heels, and Arab leaders show every day their most transactional face — Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states are, in the popular phrase, “open for business.” Surely we’ve entered a phase in which the Islamist threat can be regarded as contained, something aggravating rather than existential. After Operation Midnight Hammer where are radical Islam’s nukes? Where are the ships that rival the U.S. Navy in numbers and increasingly in capability? We’re not done, however, with the mullahs and their pawns, nor has the transactionalism of Arab elites erased the fact that the so-called “Arab street” remains deeply radicalized. The same might be said of Turkey, where Erdogan has sown the seeds of a radical Islam that grows more powerful by the day. Across north Africa ISIS and others grow more powerful and more urgent in their pursuit of a caliphate — ask Nigeria’s Christians. And nukes? Let’s not forget Pakistan, a begetter and enabler of all manner of Islamist mischief. But the main threat from radical Islam is even more powerful, not least because it’s the most insidious. The nations of western Europe, the chief targets of both Vance’s and Rubio’s messages, have been overrun by successive waves of Islamic immigration, an invasion that surpasses the worst we experienced under Biden. The secular leftists and the weak-willed moderates who’ve dominated European politics for decades have consistently refused to acknowledge what this means, clinging instead to the same “diversity is our strength” fantasies that poison so much of our own political discourse. We witnessed the direct effects of this during the tidal wave of pro-Hamas demonstrations that followed the October 7th, 2023 massacres. European capitals were flooded by massive crowds, both Muslim immigrants and home-grown radicals, all rejoicing in the murder of innocent Jews, all clamoring for the destruction of both the “little Satan,” that is, Israel, and the “great Satan,” the United States. The political elites had no meaningful response, in some cases because they actively sympathized, in others from fear of being called “Islamophobic.” The underlying fear in many instances was simply that those in authority were actively afraid of confronting the problem their immigration policies had invited. The story of the British government’s feckless response to a decades-long rape gang crisis tells the tale. Not only did the “good Muslims” within their several communities fail to forthrightly condemn this monstrous behavior, but secular leftist governments recoiled from the reaction a public crackdown might have provoked. The attacks on Christian churches in France tell a similar tale, and not just in France. After all, in this country each year brings a further escalation in attacks on churches and synagogues. So by all means let’s continue to press our European allies to build up their defenses, to become worthy military partners once again. Let’s applaud Elbridge Colby’s call, also at Munich, for very specific steps to expand NATO capabilities in the face of Russian threats, so that we can shift our military and naval focus to the Indo-Pacific. These are good and necessary measures, each and every one, necessary, but far from sufficient. Above all, however, we should heed Marco Rubio’s larger message, namely that our civilization itself hangs in the balance, and, contra Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s muddled mendacity, it is a civilization worth defending and more, worth celebrating and promoting once again. We can hope that others, both here and in Europe, will harken to his call. We may not prevail in one decisive battle, since the danger presents itself across the world and very much inside our own societies. Our Lepanto won’t come on a single afternoon, and we can’t assure victory by simply spending 5 percent of our GDP on planes, tanks, ships, or even drones and “discombobulators.” We can’t claim victory in a single missile strike or special forces raid. But we can’t win if we don’t fight, and our Lepanto moment has come. READ MORE from James H. McGee: American Lives: Frozen Moments, Lasting Sorrow Time to Stand With the People of Iran The New York Times Keeps Getting It Wrong on Nigeria James H. McGee retired in 2018 after nearly four decades as a national security and counter-terrorism professional, working primarily in the nuclear security field. Since retiring, he’s begun a second career as a thriller writer. He’s just published his new novel, The Zebras from Minsk, the sequel to his well-received 2022 thriller, Letter of Reprisal. The Zebras from Minsk finds the Reprisal Team fighting against an alliance of Chinese and Russian backed Venezuelan terrorists, brutal child traffickers, and a corrupt anti-American billionaire, racing against time to take down a conspiracy that ranges from the hills of West Virginia to the forests of Belarus. You can find The Zebras from Minsk (and Letter of Reprisal) on Amazon in Kindle and paperback editions.