Europe should not rearm

With this year’s ‘ReArm Europe Plan’, Europe committed to rearmament. The present geostrategic landscape might have us believe the old adage that in the international anarchy none are safe, so we arm ourselves to the teeth, prepare to fight and win, and deter the enemy by promising ‘MAD’ – mutually assured destruction. And just like that, we are back to Cold War times.

Economic historian Robert Skidelsky challenges the rearmament programme. He lucidly discusses the justifications for rearmament and, data at hand, also considers its economic implications. War is a classic case of wasteful spending on a big scale, he states, and to ready a nation (let alone a continent) for war requires radical shifts in mindset and culture - the creation of a war mentality, which makes war more likely. Ultimately this does not guarantee security and peace for us all.

He makes a compelling argument for global cooperation instead. The solution to the disorder inherent in a world of sovereign nations is to develop rules of coexistence and practice the arts of diplomacy and conflict resolution.


ABOUT The Speaker

robert Skidelsky is a British economic historian and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of a three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2001) that won five prizes, and of other notable works. He was made a member of the House of Lords in 1991 (he sits on the cross-benches) and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994, and chairs the Centre for Global Studies.