Invitation to take action, to display at the windows the flag of peace that represents ours idea of Europe, to support the alternative to wars and to the arrogance of the strongest. It’s true for Ukraine and for Palestine. It’s time for a great European campaign to oppose the arms race and a war economy.
Today, which Europe are we talking about? Europe of peace or Europe of war? Armed Europe, or unarmed Europe? Europe that invests in arms by cutting welfare? Or Europe that invests in cooperation by cutting military spending? We oppose the dastardly decision to suspend the budgetary rules for armed defence spending, bringing us into a war economy.
We are with the Ukrainians. Fine, but how? By telling them ‘we give you the weapons and you fight’ or by diplomacy to save what can be saved ? We have always repeated that there is no military solution to the conflict: no one wins the war. The armed choice made to defend Ukraine from the Russian invasion has led to an obvious stalemate for the past three years, a war of attrition that has cost both sides tens of thousands of dead and an infinite number of widows, orphans and amputees. The military way is a failure and the evidence is there to prove it.
No one wins a war, but everyone can win peace.
The same goes for what is happening on the southern shore of the Mediterranean, is Europe ready to stand up for the recognition of the Palestinians’ right to self determination as recognised by endless
UN resolutions, or is the “double standard” policy being used for friends, tolerating war crimes, occupation and ethnic cleansing?
These are not provocative questions, they are sincere, necessary questions, to understand which Europe we have to rebuild, which security and foreign policy we want to support.
The Ventotene Manifesto, For a Free and United Europe, had the goal of freeing Europe, and progressively the planet, from wars. ‘What is the profound evil undermining European societies is now clear to everyone: it is modern total war, prepared and conducted through the employment of all existing social energies in individual countries. When it flares up, it destroys men and wealth; when it smoulders under the ashes, it oppresses all other activities like a consuming nightmare. The permanent danger of armed conflicts between civilised peoples must be radically eradicated if it is not to destroy everything that is cherished’. (Altiero Spinelli in United States of Europe and the Various Political Tendencies, 1942)
Europe, due to its size and economic weight, political culture and historical tradition, must take on the task of promoting the revival of multilateralism and global collaboration for a common future. It must divest itself of the posture of supremacy and place itself in a position of active neutrality in global competition. It must promote a ‘shared security’, and not ‘fortress Europe’, held up by force of arms, walls and restrictive, unfair and still fossil-based economic policies.
Given the highly sensitive nature of security, defence and foreign policy, the idea that the construction of a European military-industrial complex could result in a strengthening of ties between member states by fostering a better consensus is a tragic mistake. What is certain is that the European Army is currently only a rhetorical justification for decisions that aim at shifting huge resources from the civil tasks of the Union to funds at the disposal of the interests of the military industry without a vision and project of society for future generations, with the sole result of taking away funds from social and economic cohesion, cooperation and ecological transition.
Europe must remain a multinational space capable of becoming a great power of peace, which comes to terms with its colonial past and the need to remedy it, which excludes war from its political instruments, and which uses its great economic, scientific and technological capacity to promote the rebalancing of the distribution of opportunities and knowledge among peoples. Peace isan achievement of politics that is built over time: we know that there is always an alternative to the total failure of politics that is war.
For a Europe that builds peace and security for all peoples:
– Europe must act as a true political, democratic and economic community within a multilateral system and not of political-military blocs that compete and rely on military deterrence.
– Europe must have its own foreign policy based on cooperation and the building of shared and common peace, justice and security, governed by international law.
– Europe must strengthen the European social model by widening access and protections to human rights, allocating its resources to civil defence, ecological transition, cooperation and solidarity inside and outside the European Union, expanding the sphere of cooperation (economic, cultural, strategic) for the strengthening of democracy and the achievement of sustainable development goals starting from the neighbourhood areas, both East and South, and then extending to the rest of the world, and not for rearmament and the war economy.
– Europe must practise a coherent trade policy that is instrumental to the policy of peace and shared security: reduce the gap between rich and poor countries; reduce inequalities and defeat poverty and forced migration; invest in ecological transition; promote stability, peace and common security.
In this way, the concept of defence takes on a completely different connotation from the one being discussed, it is no longer military defence and rearmament to defend against an enemy or an invasion, but is the consolidation of a system of relations between cooperating states, governed by international law and strong economic, cultural, interdependence and exchange, with low investment in armies and weapons, and high investment in civil and non-violent defence, cooperation and mutual aid.
We renew our invitation to take action, to display at the windows the flag of peace that represents this idea of Europe and that cannot be used to justify the race and the expense of rearmament and war, but to support the alternative to wars and to the arrogance of the strongest, of those who want to impose the law of the strongest, of blackmail, of supremacy. It is true for Ukraine, it is true for Palestine, it is true for all the wars that populations suffer.
Our Europe must be a Europe of peace and shared security for all peoples.
It’s time for a great European campaign to oppose the arms race and a war economy.
Adhesions: segreteria@retepacedisarmo.org
