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The
world of the XXI
Century is casting a very crude light on the capability
of the traditional international actors, not only to muster the
events, but even to understand the long term processes of
transformation which are under way, and the urgency of the
search for a different viewpoint, for a different approach and
for different research objectives. The approach our Centre
proposes is that of looking at the phenomena from the viewpoint
of the common European interest.
This is no easy task, as we are faced by an acceleration of
history in which phenomena that were either completely
unexpected, or only expected on a long term time horizon, are
taking place and accumulating one on the other like the sound
waves in a supersonic bang, but in a much more chaotic manner.
A think tank whose activity is specifically devoted to looking
at world affairs in European terms will not only represent a
stimulus for Europe as a whole, but will also help preventing
the governments of the different nations from thinking in too
restrictive terms. Our Centre therefore tries to perform a role
that the national world affairs institutes can no longer play.
Now, while it is comprehensible that governments, having
national constituencies, are pushed by the spontaneous play of
organised international issue questions that are indeed
"domestic European" problems (thus frequently losing the
perception of the relative importance of things), this is unacceptable by independent scholars. And of course, much more can
be expected from the specialists working in an institution
declaredly aimed at seeing world problems in the innovative
light of a common European interest.
That an actor of international affairs that can be named
"Europe" exists at all seems hardly disputable. It has been
forming, in its unique institutional form, in the 45 years since
World War II, and it shares with the Nation States the loyalty
of many (if not most) West Europeans.
"Europe" is most frequently criticised by the Europeans
themselves for not having a more active and autonomous role in
world politics, but —most meaningful— is increasingly perceived
as an actor of world affairs by the other actors. A crucial
element, for instance, of the Soviet novoje myslenie, the
new approach to foreign affairs which marked a crucial
difference between the Gromiko and the Gorbachev ages, was
indeed the perception of Europe as a unitary actor, and the
abandonment of the practice, which the USSR had stubbornly kept
as a politically meaningful point, of dealing only with the
individual countries of the Western half of the continent.
Europe, in other words, was recognized by common consent as
being an entity of its own, and actually an actor whose presence
is a characterizing feature of the post-Cold War world order.
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