ABSTRACT
European construction, as we know it in the early 21st century, is arguably a late phase of a long utopian project of unification and rationalization dating back to the Roman Empire, perhaps even to Alexander and the Hellenistic period. The particularly modern segment of that enterprise, however, begins with the innovations in the international state system brought about by the Treaty at Westphalia in 1648. At Westphalia, war in Europe was transformed into European war. The notion of ‘war in Europe’ builds upon a geographical de-limitation.
The conflicts of the Thirty Years’ War were atomized conflicts played out side-by-side on one great battlefield of Europe. But they were fought in the name of local, even feudal, interests. The new world order at Westphalia gave content to a universal concept of sovereignty. It thereby also gave content to a universal concept of war, a concept based on new notions of sovereignty, collectivity, recognition and political rights. War was no longer war in Europe, but rather European war. The modern European versions of the questions of just war and peace, from Hobbes to Michael Walzer, build upon the conceptual tools and political materials provided in this new international system. The purpose of this chapter is to formulate a special case of the question ‘What is Europe?’ by asking ‘In the name of what Europe may just war be waged?’ The very old question ‘What is Europe?’ can be reformulated in a number
of ways and answered from a number of angles. One may, for example, answer the question of what Europe is by seeking out its origin, by trying to find out what it originally was and by identifying with that origin, its eternal essence. Or one may adopt a psychological approach to the question by surveying and cataloguing what Europeans feel when they feel European, or a more social-behaviourist approach by studying the ‘impact’ or change in behaviour as a function of changes in the European political or social reality. Or one may adopt a more simple, geopolitical approach to the question by asking what territory corresponds to the term Europe. This chapter will take a pragmatic approach (in the sense of Pierce or
Dewey) to the question of what Europe is. In other words, it will reformulate the question based on the presumption that Europe is what Europe does.
More concretely, it will ask what acts may be carried out in the name of Europe? What institutions can be built and what concrete policies can be embarked upon in the name of Europe? Or to be brutally direct: what violence can be undertaken in the name of Europe? Not incidentally, the Treaty of the European Union takes explicit steps
toward the development of a European military, by articulating the founding terms of a Common Foreign and Defence Policy for the European Union. Just how ‘European’ is the European Union’s military policy? What is the European substrate in the notion of a European defence and security identity. Finally, and more concretely, what did the role of the European Union in the Kosovo crisis of 1989-99 have to do with European values, culture and destiny? In many ways, this question simply boils down to a question of sovereignty in a classical sense. In other ways, however, the Kosovo crisis demands a new analysis, a new model of understanding of international relations, with new consequences for an equally new and unheard-of political entity: the European Union. What is war waged in the name of Europe? The following attempts to
develop this question and provide some contours of a response through a simple and relatively conservative reasoning. I will begin by returning to the classical principles of the Augustinian just war tradition, and extracting one of its central principles, that of right authority. This principle will then be put into relation with the classical principles of war and sovereignty of Grotius and Hobbes. These notions will then be confronted with the 20th century challenge of globalization and the so-called post-national constellation. Finally, I will ask under what conditions the European Union’s ambition toward a unified European concept of security can fulfil the conditions of a European war. I will conclude with several comments on the European security and defence identity in the context of the Kosovo crisis.
