EDITORIAL
The 20th century marked by world conflicts and the teachings for Third Millennium Europe
One hundred years ago, on June 28 1914, twenty-year-old Gavrilo Princip assassinated the archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo, heir to the throne of the Hapsburg Empire. Soonafter, Europe was overcome by the First World War and the world discovered that the international political system was globalized. 1914 Europe was much different that today’s. At the time, interlinked military alliances bound the nations within a system marked by rigid strategies that had to preserve the balance between the major powers, avoiding the dominium of a single player on the continent. However, this situation led to the general catastrophe at a time when a tile of the mosaic made a move and threatened to cause the collapse of the entire system. In the attempt of saving this balance (through war), the system collapsed all the same and everything changed. Europe entered a spiral of war and nationalism that lasted thirty years, caused tens of millions of deaths and marked the decline of its supremacy over the rest of the world. Today it all seems distant, unconceivable. Nonetheless, it’s still possible to reconsider those events drawing a lesson for our future, since some of the issues which at the time overturned the whole world, linger on within contemporary problems and dynamics. First of all, the role and the consequences of war: yesterday like today, in certain extreme cases war can be unavoidable, but to think that it may represent the tool for the resolution of complex political problems, that extend beyond the survival of a people and of a political unity is a serious mistake. However, some of the decisions taken by large and small contemporary powers show that certain mistakes continue being made, and the results are under everyone’s eyes to see. One of the most significant fruits of the two world wars was precisely the theoretical development of the European integration process – followed by its concrete implementation. Namely, it was acknowledged that in order to expel the horizon of war from the European continent it was necessary to undertake a path that led in the opposite direction of war. It began with the pan-European project conceived by Count Coudenhove-Kalergi in the 1920s, followed by the initiatives of Adenauer, De Gasperi, Monnet and Schuman after the Second World War, creating an unprecedented political alternative which today enables us to live in a completely different Europe, in peace. Another fundamental knot of past and present Europe is the link connecting cultural, national identity and political shape. In 2014, just as in the past, conflicts break out whenever this knot has not been untangled, where there exist discriminated groups and situations of serious inequalities, whether political or economic. The history of Sarajevo, which eighty years after the assassination of archduke Franz Ferdinand recovered a central role in a fierce war, is a clear example of such problems which today – only thanks to the spread of liberal-democracy and to the European integration process – have shifted to the borders of the continent, but whose ill-omened consequences drag on in various forms. At this point the conflict between Russia and Ukraine is a warning for us all. The third fundamental problem between the Europe of the past and the Europe of today involves democracy and its transformations. The arrival of democratic regimes within a national perspective led to the resolutions of most European problems dating back to one hundred years ago, providing a political shape capable of ensuring representation and effectiveness. The States which after 1945 entered the orbit of the Soviet Union realized there was a path they could undertake upon the fall of Communist dictatorships. In this new epoch relevant determination and elaboration efforts are needed in order to adapt political shapes to the needs of Europe and of the Southern shores of the Mediterranean.
