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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Peace as a Priority

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Chapter 9 underlines how since its inception the European Union has presented itself to the world as a great “peace project”. The European project consists in creating a “community of peace and democracy” based on the conviction that peace does not emerge from dissuasion but rather out of cooperation. Europe attempts to remodel the world by realising the Kantian dream of “perpetual peace”, which is not based on the balance of military powers (or the supremacy of one of them) but rather on the universal recognition of the dignity of the human being, on the universal guarantee of human rights, and on sustainable human development, which means superseding the current neoliberal model of globalization. From this perspective, the chapter analyses the confrontation between the Hobbesian paradigm of “the inevitability of war” and the first theoretical models which tried to establish the possibility of lasting peace in Europe. Secondly, the discussion also considers the failure of the bellicist paradigm and Schmitt’s theses, which are taken up by North American ‘neocon’ ideology and responsible, to a large extent, for its current decadence in relation to the emergent European model, which reformulates the Kantian paradigm as realisable, and which has become a global point of reference.