[Ideas Festival] Robert Skidelsky: Europe Should Not Rearm

When
29/11/2025
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM
Location
Full Circle House, 89 Ch. de Vleurgat, 1050 Ixelles
Spaces left
59

Registration

a) Single Ticket - Full Circle members – €15.00
Single event ticket for Full Circle members.
b) Single Ticket - Non member – €25.00
Advanced booking. NOTE: Ticket price is 30€ from the start of the Festival
c) Concessions - Students, interns, unemployed, under 18 – €10.00
This single entry ticket is for students, interns, unemployed, under 18. Please provide proof of status at the check-in.

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EUROPE SHOULD NOT REARM

A Salon with Robert Skidelsky

Ideas Festival / Sat 29th Nov / 6:30-8 pm

With this year’s ‘ReArm Europe Plan’, Europe committed to rearmament. The present geostrategic landscape might have us believe the old adage that in the international anarchy none are safe, so we arm ourselves to the teeth, prepare to fight and win, and deter the enemy by promising ‘MAD’ – mutually assured destruction. And just like that, we are back to Cold War times.

Economic historian Robert Skidelsky challenges the rearmament programme. He lucidly discusses the justifications for rearmament and, data at hand, also considers its economic implications. War is a classic case of wasteful spending on a big scale, he states, and to ready a nation (let alone a continent) for war requires radical shifts in mindset and culture - the creation of a war mentality, which makes war more likely. Ultimately this does not guarantee security and peace for us all.

He makes a compelling argument for global cooperation instead. The solution to the disorder inherent in a world of sovereign nations is to develop rules of coexistence and practice the arts of diplomacy and conflict resolution.

GET THE WEEKEND OR DAY PASS

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Robert Skidelsky is a British economic historian and Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. He is the author of a three-volume biography of the economist John Maynard Keynes (1983, 1992, 2001) that won five prizes, and of other notable works. He was made a member of the House of Lords in 1991 (he sits on the cross-benches) and elected a fellow of the British Academy in 1994, and chairs the Centre for Global Studies.

GOOD READS

The Machine Age (2024); What’s Wrong with Economics? A Primer for the Perplexed (2020); How Much is Enough? The Love of Money and the Case for the Good Life, (2012, co-written with Edward Skidelsky); Keynes: The Return of the Master (2010); John Maynard Keynes: 1883-1946: Economist, Philosopher, Statesman (2003).