INTERNATIONAL TRADE CRISES AND EU ECONOMY
Prof. Massimo Maria Caneva
AESI President
We need to prepare the young generations for this new geopolitical reality, which affects international relations between states and shapes many of its activities in the context of a new international order that calls on Europe to take on greater leadership for peace and solidarity.
We are facing an epochal change in relations between states, which are mainly influenced by economic interests, particular interests, and geopolitical control of areas of influence in the trade and finance sectors, as well as the use of natural raw materials.
An economy and finance that tends towards competition, in contrast to the values of solidarity and sharing the common good that underpin the United Nations Charter on Human Rights, which has always been a reference point for all political and institutional cooperation at the international level.
Unfortunately, the lack of constant commitment by international organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union on issues concerning peace and solidarity, especially in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, has left a void that has paved the way for dangerous nationalism and polarization in relations between states. Certainly, more needed to be done, and more must be done.
It is time to roll up our sleeves and finally promote a strategy that brings peace and dialogue in favor of a new culture of solidarity that takes into account the needs of all and that strives firsthand, through a renewal of the United Nations and the foreign policies of the European Union, to consider diplomacy as the primary strategy to pursue, even before sanctions and armed confrontation.
Preparing the younger generations together with European and United Nations institutions is an urgent challenge that universities must take into consideration when reformulating their educational programs.
There is too much talk of theory and too little of substance and current geopolitical realities. This is due to the absence of universities in many international crisis situations, as they remain closed off in their own academic world, forgetting that their primary mission is to serve society and the international community.
AESI strongly wishes to reaffirm that peace is a science and an art of solidarity that draws its deepest meaning from diplomacy capable of analyzing, sharing, dialoguing, building together, and promoting the common good.
Educating new generations in this professionalism, but even more so in humanity, is an urgent and priority task for states not only in the European Union but throughout the world.
Europe must rediscover itself and its roots by referring to the principles promoted by its founding fathers who, after the Second World War, rediscovered and helped the peoples affected by the tragedy of war to reestablish dialogue, common harmony, and mutual respect. Peace is possible, as Pope Leo XIV reminds us today, as Pope Francis has always reminded us in the past.
Peace is possible if those in power renounce the power to use peoples for their own selfish well-being and instead devote themselves to the common good and do not sell off their states to serve the military powers of the arms trade.
These are not left-wing or right-wing slogans; they are reality. Pope Francis reminded us of this when he said that peace is possible and that it is always the peoples, the young, the children, and the families who lose out. And those who always win and profit the arms dealers. The latter are those who, through communication, provoke a state of agitation and conflict between states and peoples and influence the purchase of weapons for the defense of their borders. Of course, state borders must be respected, but this is certainly not the way to continue living in a democratic context, as we see every day, always blaming others for one’s own failures.
