At a moment when Europe aligns itself with a logic of confrontation and rearmament, the question is no longer moral but strategic: can the continent still imagine its security beyond American dependence and the clash of blocs?
War as a Structural Requirement
In Répondre au cri du peuple, Jacques Cheminade argues that war is not an inevitable outcome of history but the expression of a system in crisis. What he calls “the Anglo-American financial oligarchy” no longer seeks stability but survival through disorder. By binding finance, technology, and military expansion together, the West traps itself in what Karl Polanyi might have described as a “headlong rush of total marketization,” where war becomes an economic extension of speculation.
This emerging “war economy” is today structured around the European Commission’s REARM-Europe plan. The European Union has become an eager architect of large-scale rearmament, often purchasing American equipment under NATO supervision. For Cheminade, this is not just a question of lost sovereignty: it is the fusion of financial and military power into a single complex destined to collapse under its own contradictions. In claiming to defend democracy, Europe has wagered its economic competitiveness on an industrial model dependent on war, allocating increasingly generous budgets to this purpose.
Russia as the Necessary Enemy
Within this framework, Russia is cast as the indispensable adversary. The logic draws on Carl Schmitt’s assertion that politics rests upon distinguishing between friend and foe. By rejecting Vladimir Putin’s proposals in 2008 and again in December 2021 for a new European security architecture, the European Union opted for confrontation instead of cooperation. NATO, now expanding its remit to the economy and so-called universal values, moves increasingly away from its initial defensive mandate. As Cheminade contends, Europe defines itself today more against an enemy than for a genuine political project.
Lessons from Confucius, Cusa, and Jaurès
To counter this drift, Cheminade turns to major figures of civilisational dialogue. Confucius reminded us that “to govern is to rectify the words,” underscoring that political action begins with truth. Nicholas of Cusa, in De Docta Ignorantia, developed the idea of the “coincidence of opposites”: the possibility of transcending contradictions through a higher form of reason. Pope Leo XIII drew from this tradition in Rerum Novarum, echoed later by Pope Francis, to outline a diplomacy based not on the balance of fear but on the pursuit of harmony amid diversity.
Jean Jaurès, for his part, understood peace not as naivety but as lucid courage: “War is made by people who do not know one another for the benefit of people who know one another all too well.” His clarity illuminates Cheminade’s criticism: war stems from intellectual inertia and the capture of state authority by private interests.
The Eurasian Option and the BRICS
Cheminade sees in the renewed dynamism of the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation a concrete response to the dollar-centred order. Representing nearly 80% of the world’s population, these groupings seek to build a new financial architecture based on national currencies and long-term development contracts. Inspired by LaRouche’s thinking, the approach emphasises physical economy: real production oriented towards human development rather than speculative gains.
China, in this sense, presents a model of stability grounded in long-term planning and broad consultation. By rehabilitating Confucius, Xi Jinping’s call for a “shared future for humanity” echoes, for Cheminade, the European humanist heritage of Cusa and Leo XIII: “to live in harmony within our common home, the planet.” This perspective inevitably arouses suspicion in the West, yet it offers a counterpoint to the logic of hegemony, militarisation and exclusion.
From Realpolitik to Universal Morality
What Europe lacks today, Cheminade argues, is not power but thought. The Union has surrendered to a principle-less Realpolitik, forgetting that diplomacy requires a balance between firmness and restraint. Pope Leo XIII already stressed in Rerum Novarum (1891) that social justice is a condition for lasting peace – a theme taken up by Pope Francis when he speaks of “universal fraternity.”
Cheminade thus joins a lineage of thinkers who refuse to see war as destiny. Echoing Nicholas of Cusa, he urges a return to the “coincidence of opposites”: unity through diversity, a balance between sovereignty and cooperation, and peace achieved through creativity rather than domination.
Towards a Luminous Awakening
In a world where military alliances increasingly replace human solidarities, Cheminade’s essential point is stark: only a moral and intellectual renaissance can pull us back from the edge. Drawing on Hölderlin – “Where the danger grows, so grows the saving power” – he views the decline of the Western financial system not only as a crisis but also as an opportunity for a “luminous awakening.”
War is not inevitable; it is the symptom of a world that has lost its sense of purpose. Recovering a “shared destiny of humanity” means re-establishing the priority of the common good over profit and dialogue over fear. As de Gaulle reminded us, “There is only one cause above all others: the cause of humanity.” The challenge today is to rediscover this truth before it is too late.
Ricardo Martins—Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics
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