European long path to peace

In the shadows of the Ukrainian War I read Timo Miettinen′s book Europe - the history of a political community. (It seems to be that the book is only in Finnish). Timo Miettinen is an Academy Research Fellow and an Adjunct Professor (Docent) at?Helsinki University.

In his book Europe he presents exhaustingly many thoughts and ideas of many philosopher from the Ancient Greek to WWII - so much that I had to sometimes stop reading to be able to swallow the thoughts the writer has meant in a sentence. The book is nothing like Anglo-American book with a simple theory, which the writer is proving right from the page one to the final page.

However I managed to read through the book and picked-up some notes to support my memory. The idea that the membership of a community is not based on your origin and place of living was adapted already in Rome Empire. One could?be a roman citizen without having roots in Rome. Secondly scholasticism, enlightenment, technological and commercial inventions emphasized the role, responsibility and freedom of individuals - in contrast to kingdoms, feudalism and the role of catholic church. Thirdly, both the idea of European community and the importance of commercial activities between countries to keep peace were already expressed first time many hundreds years ago - so not a new inventions. For Europe - unfortunately - it took until mid of 20th century, after WWII, to establish a framework of a peaceful European co-operation across nations and countries, the current European Union, where the economic ties play important role keeping the peace.

My own comment: Unfortunately and with a clear recent evidence in terms of War in Ukraine the commercial ties with Russian were not yet strong enough to bind Russian to be part of Europe peace era. Too many development phases that western Europe has gone through - reformation, enlightenment, liberalism, separation of powers etc. - are still in phase or to be started in our eastern neighbor.?