Imagine someone who, in the middle of a fire, orders a fire extinguisher by mail to put out the flames. This grotesque image suggests the way in which Europe has suddenly decided to solve its security problems, which are anything but imaginary. The change of script brought about by Donald Trump's stumbles in international politics has aggravated the situation, but it has not created it. At least since 2014, the intentions to recompose the USSR and its former areas of influence were more than evident, and not only because of the occupation of Crimea. Putin has stated and repeated that the worst catastrophe of the 20th century was the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Anyone who did not want to hear about it in Brussels is either naive or completely irresponsible. The weakness of Europe under Trump is already good for him, because he never negotiates or engages in dialogue: he simply haggles, always playing with an advantage (and if not, he does not play). That is what he has done until now.
Will Europe rearm because it is no longer dependent on the United States, which is no longer its ally? I am convinced that this will not really happen, and not because of a question related to military budgets. It will not rearm because the issue is not about tanks and drones, but about political realism or ideological angelism, and right now the balance of power and leadership are what they are. It is surely a coincidence that the political parties and non-governmental organizations that have most clearly and resolutely expressed their opposition to rearmament are at the same time, without any significant exception, pro-Russian. Some of these forces are relevant in their respective countries. War is perceived by many Europeans as a distant and blurred abstraction, not as a real possibility. Consequently, the billions of euros that they want to put on the table to make it seem that something is going to happen will inevitably collide with a mainstream which goes another way.
I would like to retrieve a book by a little-known American philosopher, Jesse Glenn Gray (1913-1977). It was called The Warriors (1959) and had as a subtitle Reflections of man in battleHannah Arendt considered him a fundamental text. Glenn Gray was called up on the very same day he obtained his doctorate in philosophy; the anecdote is not at all banal. Comparing Hobbes with Rousseau in a university classroom, or analysing Kant's theses on perpetual peace, has little or nothing to do with contrasting – experiencing, living – those same ideas in a trench where the smell of corpses reaches. That is why Gray's perspective is of great interest. He is neither a philosopher who theorizes about war nor a simple soldier: he is both at the same time. The interest increases when we note that at the end of the 1950s, political correctness, that is, the prejudice against calling things by their name, did not yet exist. Nor was angelism, which consists of ignoring certain human impulses documented from the Paleolithic to the present day, fashionable. Gray shows his absolute disgust for violence, but does not commit the naivety of denying its existence. "Sometimes," he says, "it takes a penetrating look to realize the violence underlying the daily life of Western societies, and how skillful public authorities are at keeping the most obvious out of sight." This enigmatic expression – "the most obvious" – refers to events that we have all seen but that we often refuse to place in the context of what is more than probable: from a fight in a kindergarten – innocent for an adult, but experienced as something very violent by a child – to a military confrontation.
Gray does not generally fall into the old trap of deciding whether these events are the result of an innate or acquired impulse. This is impossible to prove without resorting to epistemological tricks, usually related to the old art of elevating ethnographic exceptions to the category of anthropological rules, such as those uncertain tribes whose behaviour is reminiscent of the fraternal love professed by the Teletubbies, etc. It seems more honest to limit oneself to stating, as Gray does, the existence of a substratum of violence that nothing and no one has ever managed to eradicate. But it is possible to keep it at bay, under control: this is the nuance that changes everything without this being the magic solution to anything. Before assuming the inadequacy of European security devices, it would be necessary to reflect on the underlying ideas that have led us to the current situation.
