Europe's military might : the fearful lion in search of peace

European construction, built on the ruins of the great European powers in the aftermath of the Second World War, has maintained an uncomfortable relationship with military power, too closely linked to the empires of the past. This is evidenced by the delegation of the continent's defense to NATO, dominated by the United States, and still persisting thirty years after the end of the Cold War. The ethical question of whether or not a peace alliance such as the European Union should have its own army is profound, complex and as old as the idea of continental unification. In this concluding lecture, we will return to the philosophical sources of this debate in the Age of Enlightenment, between advocates of military deterrence and those of negotiation - a debate born of the forced coexistence of peace and war in the same spatial and temporal continuum. In the wake of Russia's military aggression against Ukraine, we will finally consider the prospects for the ethos of peace in Europe, in a world where the balance of great powers continues to dominate international relations.