I arrived in Brussels on April 8, 2019, after a long flight from San Francisco. I took the train to the city centre, and a taxi to my Airbnb, located near the station where my train would leave for Beauraing the next day. This was my first visit to Brussel, and as the taxi passed through the middle of city I noticed several EU flags hanging from buildings, twelve gold stars in a circle set against deep blue. It struck me that I was in the unofficial capital of the European Union. The Council of the European Union and the European Commission have their home in Brussels, as well as part of the European Parliament. It is a challenge for me to think of Brussels as a political home for a united Europe. I am a child of the cold war, and the Europe I am familiar with from my youth was different; the very idea of a united Europe might raise suspicion and fear in the 70s or 80s. Divided East and West, countries had their own currencies, economies, border controls, governments, as well as their distinctive languages and cultures. Prosperity was dramatically uneven, particularly in the impoverished, communist East. But in the 60s, 70s and early 80s, times were a changin’, rock and roll, sexual liberation, pop culture, women’s liberation, racial and social justice movements, to name a few, swept through America and every country in Europe in some form or other, including countries in the communist East. Memories of World War II were still alive. Upheavals of the Cold war inspired fear, wars around the world, big and small, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa, and unknown wars on the Russian-Chinese and Vietnamese-Chinese borders–war appeared to be everywhere and nowhere, until you found yourself in the middle of one. And for many of us consciousness and dread of a new, horrible World War was ever-present but restrained, shrouded in unthinkable thermo-nuclear terror.

The fall of Berlin Wall on November 9, 1989 and Maastricht Treat of November 1992 brought an end to many of those fears and created dreams of peace and promise for Europe and the world. These hopes were enormous–free and open commerce, freedom of movement, social and political stability, trust between nations, justice and freedom for Europe and beyond–trusting in peace, the new country of Ukraine freely gave up a nuclear arsenal in 1994. There was hope for the peaceful expansion of the EU, and there was even some talk, however short-lived, that Russia may one day join the EU or NATO.

In August of 2025, as war continues to rage in Ukraine, and mutate with ever more terrifying and unpredictable drone warfare and intelligent weapons systems, these hopes of the 90s, and their tragic ends, should be remembered.

Peace seemed at hand. And then, in the Balkans, it was not. And then, in other parts of the world, Rwanda, 9/11, the Middle East, Afghanistan, escalating fear, violence, war, uprisings, economic crisis, revolutions, failed trust, lost collaborations, disruptions, fragile and shifting alliances, pandemic, global militarization, and then…it starts.

In Ukraine, the Middle East, and Asia boundaries between peace and open global war constantly tested–will they hold?

It starts again. The great hopes for Brussels, a united, peaceful Europe, and a just, prosperous and peaceful world, have been broken.

I would venture a guess that very few, regardless of political beliefs, have confidence that governments, leaders, and current social, economic and global structures are truly up to the task of keeping the peace.

War and reckless conflict on some level seem real for each one of us, here and now. But it is the promise of new, unforeseeable conflicts, fought by nations, peoples, groups with machines, programs and weapons whose cleverness and destructive powers we cannot comprehend, that bring us to the precipice of wonder and despair.

‘Maybe we won’t make it.’

Who has not had that thought?