Discover why Europe needs a Peace College after this notice…
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If this lands, leave a comment. Over 1000 people read each week, but the comments are (REALLY) quiet. No perfection needed, just what you felt.
— Gregg
Where is Europe’s Peace College? and what Starfleet can teach us
When I was thinking about what to write this week, I never imagined that I would be mentioning, let alone quoting, a Star Trek line. And bear with me here, it’s more relevant than you may first think. And yes, busted. I am a Star Trek fan. I would not dare call myself a Trekkie. I certainly do not know all the technical ins and outs. But it is something I have enjoyed since I was a kid.
I remember watching the original sixties reruns in the seventies, glued in front of the TV, with the “missing” lids of my mum’s two washing baskets she was always looking for, held together to form my saucer. Boldly going on adventures with Kirk, Spock, and crew. Little did I know back then that Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic, utopian vision of a future, a post scarcity society dedicated primarily to exploration, science, and diplomacy rather than military conquest, would quietly influence me as I grew older.
So like many fans, I have been counting down to the latest adventures. Starfleet Academy has just arrived, and in this week’s episode a line landed that has played over and over in my mind.
The Academy’s Chancellor tells her students that the War College teaches you how to fight battles. But Starfleet teaches you how to end wars. And that empathy and patience are essential, because responding to the opposition does not have to mean resorting to violence.
On reflection, it is such a simple distinction. And I cannot shake how painfully relevant it feels right now.
Because when I look at Europe, I see our War Colleges everywhere. NATO as the constant frame. Defence ministries. Military strategies. Procurement plans. Readiness briefings. Security summits. Hard power headlines. We have built entire systems that train people to win.
But where is the equal institution that trains people to prevent escalation, repair trust, and end cycles of conflict.
Where is our Starfleet Academy? Or better yet, where is our Peace College?
The Starfleet question
Starfleet is not soft. Starfleet is trained.
I think that is the part people miss when they hear words like empathy and patience. They hear kindness. They imagine indecision. They picture naïveté.
But the Star Trek version of empathy is not a vibe. It is a capacity. It is an intelligence. It is the ability to understand what fear does to people and to groups, and to respond without becoming what you are trying to stop.
Patience, too, is not passivity. It is restraint with intention. It is the ability to stay steady long enough to choose a response that reduces future harm, not just releases present rage.
The more I thought about this, the more I realised something.
A War College asks: How do we win?
A Peace College asks: How do we stop needing to win?
And I find real importance in that difference, because it shapes what a society becomes fluent in. If we only invest in the skills of fighting, we should not be shocked when fighting becomes the plan.
And with the constant news cycle of governments talking about increasing militarisation, this sounds awfully familiar.
Europe’s Peace College: The imbalance
So I find myself circling another uncomfortable truth.
In Europe, defence is centralised. Peace is distributed.
We have clear institutions, budgets, status, and cultural legitimacy for defence. We do not have an equal flagship system for peace building, conflict prevention, reconciliation, and de escalation.
Instead, peace work is scattered across a patchwork of places. Some of it is diplomacy. Some of it is humanitarian response. Some of it is development. Some of it sits in justice systems and rule of law programmes. Some of it lives in universities and mediation trainings. Some of it lives in communities: neighbourhood initiatives, youth workers, teachers, organisers, and the unglamorous daily work of social cohesion.
And I am certainly not saying this to dismiss any of that. I am simply pointing at the structure.
Peace is treated like an add on. Like a supporting character or a moral accessory.
Meanwhile, defence is treated as the main storyline.
And then we keep acting surprised when escalation becomes our default language. Ask yourself: when was the last time you heard someone casually talking about peace building? Now think about how often threats from Russia, China, the United States, and “we need to militarise” show up in everyday conversation.
So who is the Peace College in the EU?
Researching this article, I discovered that if you zoom into the European Union, you can see the same pattern. The work of peace exists. But it does not exist as one clear institution with equal weight.
There have been dedicated EU stability and peace funding instruments explicitly aimed at stability and peace, such as the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace. In the current budget architecture, similar aims sit within broader external action funding.
This sentence matters more than it seems.
It tells us the EU has recognised the need for peace building and conflict prevention. But structurally, peace still sits inside wider baskets, rather than being treated as a central public capability with its own gravity.
Then there is a naming twist that almost feels like satire, if it was not so serious.
The European Peace Facility sounds like a peace institution, but it is explicitly an off budget mechanism to fund actions with military and defence implications, including military assistance.
Yes, you may want to read that again slowly. I had to check and recheck it, over and over.
A Peace Facility that funds military assistance.
This is where the metaphor becomes a mirror. Because it shows how easily our language blurs. How peace becomes a label attached to war adjacent spending. How we can start to believe we are building peace when we are primarily building capacity for violence.
In the EU, the work of peace exists, but the institution of peace is fragmented. Defence is centralised. Peace is distributed.
Can we stop pretending defence equals security
At this point, I expect some people will be thinking: But we need defence.
Maybe we do.
We do, after all, have a lot to answer for. There are some pretty upset people with us here in the ‘West’. I have said before, we all heal at different speeds. And in a world where threats exist, defence can be necessary.
But here is what I want to challenge.
Defence is not the same thing as security.
Security is also health systems that hold under pressure. It is social cohesion. It is trust. It is reliable information. It is resilience in the face of disasters. It is climate adaptation. It is functional housing. It is education. It is dignity. It is the ability of a society to stay connected when fear is trying to fracture it.
If you starve those things, you manufacture instability. Then you call the instability a security threat. Then you justify more defence spending to manage the consequences of what you neglected in the first place.
That is not security. That is a loop.
And loops are exactly what Starfleet is trained to break.
READ 'Radical Acceptance - Do You Dare Play?' here.
What Europe's Peace College would teach
So what would it look like if Europe treated peace as a discipline, not a slogan. Not a poster. Not a ceremony. Not a branded facility name.
A real Peace College.
- It would train people in skills we keep pretending are innate, or optional, or only for idealists.
- It would train de escalation and negotiation
- It would train mediation, conflict transformation, and repair
- It would build trauma literacy and collective grief awareness
- It would teach information integrity, propaganda resistance, and fear narrative awareness
- It would teach restorative justice and accountability without dehumanisation
- It would develop community resilience, mutual aid infrastructure, and social cohesion
- It would treat climate risk prevention as peace building, because destabilisation is not coming, it is already here
- It would teach diplomacy that is not performative, and listening that is not a branding exercise
- It would defend imagination, storytelling, and cultural exchange, because if you cannot imagine the other as human, you cannot build peace with them
And crucially, it would have equal status.
- Equal funding
- Equal prestige
- Equal career pathways
- Equal legitimacy
If we are going to keep a War College, we must build Europe's Peace College with such equality. Otherwise we are training ourselves into a future where war is the only language we are fluent in.
The simplest way to say it
Here is a thought I keep coming back to.
We have built War Colleges as if violence is a profession. But we never built Peace Colleges as if peace is a craft.
That is the imbalance. Not the existence of defence. The absence of peace infrastructure that can stand beside it, not beneath it.
Europe's Peace College: A small action
If this lands for you, here is one small thing you can do this week.
Ask a real question, out loud, in a real place. Ask your local representative, your community council, your university, your workplace, your favourite political voice:
- What are we funding to prevent conflict, not just respond to it?
- What are we funding to build social cohesion, not just build capacity for force?
- Where is the Peace College in our budgets, our institutions, our cultural prestige?
Because peace does not happen by accident. It is built. It is trained. It is resourced.
READ 'The Give and Take Society' here.
Europe's Peace College: Boldly Going...
As we boldly go into the strange new world of the times we are living, I cannot stop thinking about that kid on the floor with two washing basket lids, dreaming of a future built on exploration and diplomacy. What I have come to realise through watching Star Trek is this. Starfleet does not teach people to be harmless. It teaches people to hold tension without turning it into violence. It teaches people to stay curious when fear is demanding certainty. It teaches people to stay human when the world is trying to make us smaller.
And that is why this metaphor will not leave me alone. In Europe, defence is centralised. Peace is distributed. So I will leave you with the question that has been following me since that episode ended.
If Europe can fund a War College with seriousness, why can it not fund a Peace College with the same seriousness?
FAQ's - Europe's Peace College
What is the difference between defence and security?
Defence can be necessary, but security includes the deeper conditions that prevent conflict: trust, cohesion, health systems, truthful information, resilience, and dignity.
Does the EU already fund peace building?
Yes, parts of it. The EU has funded stability and peace instruments, such as the Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace, but the work is spread across wider frameworks rather than held in one flagship peace institution.
Why is the European Peace Facility controversial in this metaphor?
Because it is described as an off budget instrument connected to actions with military and defence implications, which complicates how the word peace gets used in public narrative.
Is this anti NATO or anti defence?
No. The argument is about imbalance: war capability is central and prestigious, while peace capability is scattered and underfunded.
What would a Peace College actually teach?
De escalation, mediation, trauma literacy, propaganda resistance, restorative justice, community resilience, climate risk prevention as peace building, and diplomacy that is serious rather than performative.
What is one small thing I can do?
Ask your representatives and institutions what they fund to prevent conflict, not just respond to it, and what they fund to build cohesion, not just force.
Additional off site Reading:
- Instrument contributing to Stability and Peace - An EU overview explaining what the IcSP was designed to fund, including crisis response and conflict prevention goals.
- European Peace Facility - A Council of the EU page explaining the European Peace Facility as an off budget instrument that can support actions with defence and military implications.
- Conflict prevention, peace building, and mediation - An EEAS page outlining EU work on conflict prevention and mediation support, including how the EU approaches peace building in practice.
Gregg Hone
Gregg Hone aka Gregg the Artivist is a climate storyteller, artist, and activist using the power of creativity to challenge systems of injustice and inspire meaningful change. Working at the intersection of climate and social justice, Gregg creates content that is bold, accessible, emotionally resonant — and deeply human.
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