It was October 15, 1860 when a general almost in his sixties, having won his umpteenth battle with a heterogeneous army composed of volunteers and deserters, a decisive one for the fate of the nation, tired of wars and massacres, sat down on a stone in a small town in southern Italy between Naples and Rome, called Sant’Angelo in Formis and began to dream of a future of peace, not only for Italy but for the entire continent.
“Suppose that Europe formed a single State,” he wrote in his Manifesto, “who would ever think of disturbing it in its home?”
This man was Gen. Giuseppe Garibaldi, the most famous man in the world at that time.
Yes, he, the hero of two worlds, the warrior of a thousand battles, the generous strategist of many victories, who had had to assist and comfort so many of his fighters, amputated or on the point of death. He, who after having conquered the Kingdom of the South and about to donate it to the nascent Kingdom of Italy, already with his mind turned to his voluntary retreat to his beloved island of Caprera, rich only in a sack of seeds to sow, now flew high with his imagination, to envision a remedy that would prevent the repetition of other wars like the one just fought: in Italy, in Europe. And he recognized such a remedy in a factor that today we would call “deterrence:” our entire continent, grown united in a single State and strong, since equipped with a powerful army.
Nor did Gen. Garibaldi fail to consider the other advantages that a unitary state could benefit from. A Europe whose national armies – abolished as separate structures (except for the quotas necessary to maintain local public order) – by merging into a common army, through a process of streamlining of expenses and integration, could have achieved those “economies of scale,” as we would call them today, that could come to it (again to use his words) “with the growth of industry, with the security of trade,” and with the development of the “merchant navy:” an “incalculable quantity of jobs created by peace, association, security”, a source of employment and prosperity for the entire Union.
In his plan, streamlining and integration would have led to a reduction in military spending itself: “the immense capital – he wrote – almost always torn from the needs and misery of the people to be lavished on the service of extermination, would instead be converted to the advantage of the people in a colossal development of industry, in the improvement of roads, in the construction of bridges, in the digging of canals, in the foundation of public plants and in the erection of schools that would save from poverty and ignorance so many poor creatures who in all the countries of the world, whatever their level of civilization, are condemned by the selfishness of calculation and by the bad administration of the privileged and powerful classes to degradation, to the prostitution of the soul and matter.” Who can remain insensitive to all this?
Next October 15th will have been 165 years since then. The European Union has become true; it has integrated laws, institutions and economy, free circulation of citizens and goods, and a common currency: however, Gen. Garibaldi’s dream of a unified state with a common military defense has not yet come true.
While for eighty years, after the Second World War, we were protected by the US umbrella against threats, first from Soviet Russia and then from Federal Russia, the signals we are today receiving from Washington show such an umbrella no longer certain and given for granted. And Europe, due to this lack of deterrence, should now become aware of its weakness and seek a remedy to avoid finding itself defenseless or crushed between these two superpowers. To paraphrase what Priscilla Ruggiero wrote in the Italian newspaper Il Foglio a few days ago, Europe must realize that the 300 million Americans who once promised the 500 million Europeans to defend them from the threat of the 140 million Russians, with Mr. Trump’s administration, today they are suddenly leaving them defenseless, or worse, those 300 million seem to be crossing over to the other side. A bitter awakening! A terrible prospect!
So must we rearm ourselves as Mrs. Ursula von der Lyen, president of E.U. Commission, proposes and as the leaders of the European states in the E.U. Council have unanimously approved? Not only that. Not indiscriminately. If we sum up together the military expenditure of individual NATO and non-NATO states in Europe, in the past it amounted to approximately the total of that of the United States and twice that of the Russian Federation. Today, with the war economy undertaken by Russia, they are slightly more than Europe. It is therefore not only necessary to increase expenditure, but to make it more streamlined, merging the redundant ones, eliminating overlaps and waste, highlighting excellence, filling the gaps and inefficiencies. What is the point, for example, of having so many general staffs, isn’t just one made up of the best military personnel from the various states of the Union enough? What is the point of having dozens of different models of tanks, or fighter planes when you can have just one, cutting-edge, built in the various factories of the Union that today produce several, perhaps belonging to less advanced generations? What is the use of so many different cannons and howitzers with incompatible projectiles, when you can have only one of each type that uses a single line of ammunition? In short, there is much to be done and to be saved. And the right time is today, because now we are beginning to feel aware of both the need to defend ourselves, without giving in to the lure of rearmament for rearmament’s sake: to quote Gen. Garibaldi “in Europe the great majority not only of the intelligentsia, but of men of common sense, perfectly well understand that we could spend our poor lives without this perpetual state of threat and hostility of one against the other, and without this necessity that seems fatally imposed on peoples by some secret and invisible enemy of humanity, to kill each other with such science and refinement.”
After all, the fifty states that make up the U.S.A. do not have 50 armies. What use would national armies be, here in Europe, if the European continent were now a Union? And as divided, do we perhaps plan to fight each other again? So what is the point of separate armies if we can take a step further and become a single State, that is, a European Confederation, as Gen. Garibaldi dreamed?
Someone objects that if we were to unite and also merge our military systems, we would be a single State, with a single Defense indeed, but without an atomic umbrella, we would practically be defenseless against the five to six thousand warheads (a hundred more or a hundred less makes no difference) owned by each of the two blocs that are crushing us. It’s correct. Even if France pooled its warheads and, dare we say, the United Kingdom did the same, we would have a ratio of 1 to 10 with each of our cumbersome neighbors. Too little.
Really too little? If we check the definition given by Treccani Encyclopedia to Nuclear Deterrence we read that it: “refers to the nuclear attack and counterattack strategies implemented […] to discourage any aggression,” in other words, such “deterrence consists in preparing measures such that the enemy, in view of the consequences of its attack, is dissuaded from implementing it.” As can be seen, reference is made to the “strategies implemented” not to the “number of warheads.”
And these strategies are more complex than the simple number of warheads, they involve additional qualitative and quantitative factors (for example, the efficiency of intelligence in predicting a possible attack, the speed of action and reaction, the level of training of personnel, the construction and supply chain of systems and materials, the ability to identify the sites most sensitive to deterrence, and no less important in totalitarian systems, the permeability of management to corruption and nepotism as well as the recruitment and career advancement of management and project staff based on merit and not on compliance with the bosses, and so on). As can be seen, it is not only the number of warheads that makes the deterrence system (including warheads) capable of dissuading a potential attacker.
This is why, in the approximately eighty years of the Cold War, neither of the two contenders ever dared to carry out a nuclear attack, regardless of the number of warheads that have fluctuated in number over time, going up and down, but always keeping the dissuasive balance intact. Therefore, even the sole umbrella of the French arsenal possibly provided to the European Union, even in the absence of that of the United Kingdom, when such an umbrella was or appeared to be highly performing (i.e. highly dissuasive) would prevent a reckless attacker from putting their main cities and their capital at risk from a possible retaliation, suggesting that any international disputes be resolved by peaceful methods. In any case, nothing excludes that such an initial arsenal, with a view to common financing for defense, could be expanded and made more effective and efficient by reducing the relationship that has been said with neighboring superpowers.
The issue, therefore, is not this one alone, it is not the common army alone, it lies in the lack of initiative and political will to reconstitute the Union on a unitary state basis. A confederation, as Gen. Garibaldi envisioned it, equipped with a single political executive, to which the powers of the entire Union are entrusted. Indeed, a common army is of no use if there is no common government from which to receive orders and to which report. Are we, European citizens, ready to accept that the foreign policy of the country to which we belong were devolved to a government other than that of our country? Probably the shock to be suffered, in order to justify such a transfer of sovereignty to a government of “our” Europe, must reach such a degree of disturbance in our public opinion as to make such a transfer less repugnant than what would be suffered in the event of an imminent invasion and seizure of our overall sovereignty by a power which is “not ours” or hostile. The events of the last few years, aggravated by those of the last few days, are pushing us to reaching such a threshold as to foretell that with Hannibal ad portas the shock is imminent, and probably even if reluctant, we Europeans will have to stop procrastinating and accept a common government with the necessary ordinary and extraordinary powers.
The next days will give the answer to us, and to the spirit of Gen. Garibaldi that hovers and judges us. Let us hope, as Europeans, to live up to his expectations.
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