Starting from the famous sentence by pope Paul VI (1967): “Development is the new name for peace”, the paper argues that a credible and effective strategy to achieve peace in the Ukraine war as well as in the other 168 wars being fought in the world, today, is to build up new institutions of peace, both in the political and in the economic arenas. Meanwhile, the paper advances a concrete proposal to arrive, in a short time, at a peace negotiation that is credible and enforceable. The spirit of the paper is the same as the one crystallized in Erasmus’s sentence: "An unjust peace is better than a just war".

At dawn on 24 February 2022, troops of the Russian Federation invaded Ukraine. The number of military and civilians dead and wounded, the more than 6.2 million Ukrainian refugees (of which more than 5.8 in Europe), the heavy damage to cities, villages and infrastructure, the quantities of weapons already deployed or ready for use, are just some of the figures that make this war one of the most serious in recent decades. The direct and indirect involvement of the planet's main nuclear powers, the presence of mercenary militias, the sending and use of weapons banned by international conventions such as the so-called cluster bombs, the use of armed naval and aerial drones, depleted uranium munitions, sanctions, naval blockades and sabotage, also make it a particularly complex 'hybrid' war, capable of producing unpredictable effects on a large scale and in the long term. However, after a phase of considerable media attention, marked by strong polarisation, the substantial stalemate in military operations, the absence of peace talks and the prospect of an indefinite prolongation of the conflict risk producing a 'normalisation of the war'. Within this framework, we have invited the world of research to propose their own analyses of the ongoing war, on the basis of which we can build possible paths to a just and lasting peace. The authors who have decided to participate in this monographic issue of the journal have offered valuable contributions in this direction, starting from different disciplinary perspectives and ideological positions. This introduction proposes a transversal reading of the different works, in order to highlight the different answers offered to some questions that we consider fundamental: What are the different points of view on the war in Ukraine and is there a way to reach a synthesis and recomposition of them? How has the armed conflict in Ukraine been narrated and what effect has this narrative had on the understanding of the war and the prospects for pacification between the different actors involved? What arguments have been used in the public debate to justify the use of armed force? Why was the belief established among Western governments and in part of public opinion that the main (if not the only) possible support for the invaded Ukraine was military in nature? What are the proximate and what are the deeper causes of the ongoing war? Taking into account the manner in which the war has been conducted, as well as its root causes, what non-violent ways out are feasible? We trust that the papers included in this issue can contribute to a better understanding of the current conflict, while at the same time offering valuable indications for its diplomatic conclusion and the building of a lasting peace, within the framework of a balanced world order.

This paper discusses the scope and degree of implementation of the principle of solidarity, which justifies action being taken by the European Union both within and external to its own member states, in relation to the International Convention on the Rights of the Child and the reality of the violation of these rights in Brazil, as exemplified by the large numbers of juveniles deprived of liberty in socio-educational detention centers. Literature on the subject is reviewed to identify the legal possibility of the European Union operating outside of its own bloc of member states, for the purpose of protecting the human rights of these young people. Secondary data are employed to illustrate the reality of such violations of the rights of young people, either when they come into conflict with the law or are the victims of state action, as a way of justifying possible European Union action in Brazil. The precepts of decolonial studies are used to examine how this application of the “principle of solidarity” might be operationalized, in the understanding that the only possible way to achieve this would involve taking responsibility for economic investment in reducing inequality.

Ukraine’s conflict is helping to highlight the underlying logic of conflict representation and participation, including affective and empathic involvement. In particular, some interpretations in the literature suggest that media images would draw viewers’ attention to the conflicts of Others, whether geographically or culturally distant. This theoretical paper examines such mechanisms in the complex ecosystem of online platforms, which are sometimes naively perceived as powerful triggers for affective participation. Using classical approaches to understanding media’s role in conflicts, such as the CNN Effect, we will explore how visibility mechanisms activate sensible politics. In this way, the Ukrainian conflict is a laboratory for observing scenarios in the making.

Russia's aggression against Ukraine has had, among other consequences, that of, once again, legitimizing war and, more generally, the military as the key instrument for conflict resolution. The escalation of the conflict has also highlighted how strong remains in our political culture the idea that peace essentially means the absence of war. But the idea of peace as mere absence of war strongly resembles what Tacitus puts in the mouth of the Caledonian leader Calgacus: "Where they make a desert, they call it peace." In Peace Studies, peace is generally understood as being something much richer and more articulate than the mere absence of war. Alongside a "negative peace," characterized by the absence of physical violence, we thus find, thanks to a fortunate insight of Johan Galtung, the broader idea of "positive peace”, based on the absence of not only physical but also structural and cultural violence (1964). In this article, expanding on the reflection on "positive peace," we reformulate the concept of peace by reconnecting with the biblical idea of peace-shalom, and then we focus, from a systemic perspective, on the interactions between means and ends, providing exemplifications of what has been argued.

Two kinds of security constellations are imaginable among great powers: the classic balance of power (Realism) or cooperation in the form of collective security (Liberalism). This article posits that the latter has more chances to prevent wars than the former. The case-study that is developed is the relationship between Russia and the West after 1989. The West failed to integrate Russia (on an equal footing) in the Euro-Atlantic security architecture after the Cold War. NATO did not only remain into existence; it also expanded on a regular basis, with the promise in 2008 to include Georgia and Ukraine. The result was the continuation of the balance of power game between Russia and the West, finally ending up with the war in Ukraine, something that could have been predicted on the basis of the theory, and that was actually predicted by experts like George Kennan already in the 1990s.

This article intends to point out the geopolitical and social impacts that the war in Ukraine-Russia will cause in the medium and long term, in relation to the multiple crises (energy, food, etc.), facing world society. The methodology is a comparative study between two ways of confronting capitalism from a Western and an Eastern bloc. In addition, we use the Transcend Method, which constitutes a way of thinking from Research for Peace perspective through a process of diagnosis, prognosis and therapy, accompanied by a bibliographic review of the latest events. The facts point to a crisis of capitalism and the provocation of confrontations to maintain its hegemony against other actors such as China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and others, who are interested in a new world order in which the US ceases to be hegemonic. The Ukraine-Russia war is one factor in the multiple cards that are being shuffled to break globalization. The conclusion points to a new world order that will emerge as a more plausible one in which the US and China will clash in the coming years to build a new security paradigm with their respective satellites. This will further polarize relations between the US and the EU on the one hand, and China and Russia on the other, as extremes of future conflicts.

The enlargement of NATO in the 1990s was driven by multiple reasons, but mainly by the strong desire of some former socialist countries to sever all ties with Russia, due to concerns about a potential resurgence of Russia's imperial ambitions. Moreover, the negotiations for NATO accession served as a tool for Eastern European countries to expedite their inclusion into the European Union. The conflict in ex-Yugoslavia also presented a new task for the Atlantic Alliance, which, since its armed intervention in Bosnia, reinvented itself as an instrument for pacification, democratization, and the defense of human rights in Europe and elsewhere. The European Union initially proceeded slowly and cautiously, but the security concerns raised by the conflict in Bosnia likely forced the Union to accelerate the inclusion of Eastern countries. In the beginning, European leaders aimed to include only a few countries, such as Poland and the other members of the Visegrad Group. Finally, in 1997, when the European Union decided to open its doors to all Eastern countries, except Ukraine, the political and economic reforms imposed on the candidate states facilitated their accession to NATO, including the Baltic states. This helped to resolve some political issues, such as the position of minorities within the new democratic states, which could have hindered their inclusion into NATO.

The support of the Ukrainian government in the war against the Russian invasion is justified, in Italian (and European) public opinion, by the need to defend a people under attack: comparisons are drawn between the situation in Ukraine and the partisan fight against Nazi-fascism, and emphasis is placed on the fact that peace cannot be built without re-establishing the right violated by Putin's government. This article points out that such a justification has two weaknesses that make it difficult to accept. The first is an oversimplification: being based on crude conceptual pairs (good/evil, aggressors/offenders), the argument of the need to defend a people under attack does not allow one to grasp the complexity of the situation and, therefore, to propose effective solutions. The second weakness is the incoherence between the means one wants to use (war) and the objective one wants to achieve (the defence of the Ukrainian people): an incoherence due to the fact that war - especially if protracted in time and conducted with highly destructive weapons - necessarily implies for the people suffering it a burden of death and destruction at least comparable to the evils of foreign domination. In conclusion, the article reflects on the duty of men and women of thought, which is not to declare war just (or inevitable, or holy), but to remind the ruling classes and public opinions of democratic countries of the need to put an end to violence, to put the solution back to negotiations and reason, to try to build bridges between peoples despite everything.

The war in Ukraine has been going on for more than a year, without agreements on temporary 'ceasefires' or evidence of real negotiations. The difficulty in launching effective negotiations, the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO and the remilitarisation of States, are re-proposing an international disorder scenario and reducing the spaces for 'third' and 'neutral' subjects, which should act impartially and guarantee justice and respect for international law. The article aims to rehabilitate the categories of 'neutral' and 'third' in international dispute resolution processes and raise problems and contradictions that their disappearance is causing for a world order of peace and security.