DIFESA EUROPEA E NUOVO ORDINE MONDIALE

Over the past three years, the European Union has adopted a number of decisions in the European defense sector. They are the most important decisions sixty years after the failure of the European Defense Community and this means that we are facing a structural change in this field. The European Commission"s decision to establish the new Defense and Space Directorate-General confirms that defense policy is by now an EU structural policy. The change of the American military strategy, with the shift of attention from European to Asian theater, as well as the progressive American disengagement from the Middle East and the questioning of the role of NATO, are all signs of a progressive weakening of the role of the USA in the world and explain European defense policy activism. The coming to an end of three treaties for the reduction of conventional and nuclear weapons on European territory, are also contributing to this change of European attitude toward defence matter. This paper analyzes a possible way out of a new arms race on the European continent, taking up the proposals of Gorbachev and Mitterrand for a "Common European home" which, by strengthening the role of the Council of Europe and the OSCE, include Russia and the United States itself. It also resumes the indications of Altiero Spinelli concerning the conditions necessary for the setting up of institutions that overcome traditional alliances in order to restore lasting peace, not only on the Eurasian continent, but also in the relations between the latter and the American continent.