The new order of the day?

No post-war dystopia has gone as far as Ursula von der Leyen with her announcement of a normative programme to remilitarise Europe. European governments can now prepare for war. ReArm Europe aims to rebuild the military industry by lending to member states and freeing them from budgetary constraints in order to exceed the limits on public deficits. The Europe that was rebuilt on the idea of ​​a lasting peace (anchored on the control of the raw materials that had made the war) is the same Europe that is now industrialising for another.

ReArm Europe is not a declaration of war, but it does put Europe and Europeans on the path to the abyss: the inevitability of stumbling upon a past that has not passed. It is a return to the spirit of armed peace of 1871 that led Europe into the First World War. It is a tragic return to the inverted spirit of 1935 that then led Europe into the Second World War. ReArm Europe is not (yet) a declaration of war, but it does destroy the legacy of Adenaeur, Schuman and Monet. Europe as a geographically mobile place of stability and at the same time as a deterritorialized idea of ​​peace. That world is over. There is a new order of the day.

The power to interpret the implementation of the programme could easily be appropriated and confined within legal mazes, but at some point Europeans will have to politically assess its impact on the national sovereignty of each Member State and on the terms of European integration itself. Should public opinion discuss sovereignty narratives in light of ReArm Europe or not? Should national parliaments return to the spirit of the treaties that built the European project or not? To put it another way, since it is a political issue, should the remilitarisation of Europe be assessed through mechanisms of popular consultation, such as referendums?

It is true that we cannot escape the context in which ReArm Europe emerged. Europe finds itself lost between the emotional abandonment of the United States and the fear of a Russian invasion that could extend the experience of the Ukrainians to all Europeans. It is precisely these times of reduced awareness of reality and excessive presentism that require politicians capable of walking into difficult places. Places that could mean opening the gates of heaven to barbarians. Just as Willy Brandt did to build impossible dialogues in a shared territory of recognition of the truth of the other. For now, the precautionary principle demands that we remember that when Europe prepares for war, Europe starts its own war.