My favorite factoid: the Baby Boomers are the first generation to go from birth to retirement (and I might hope: to death) without witnessing a war along the Rhine. The first, that is, since the death of Charlemagne.
The EU has its issues, but its core accomplishment is a singularity.
Why is everybody so certain that the EU is the reason for this?
Many other things changed in the same time England, France, Germany were no longer the powers they were before. The US and Russia dominated. There were nuclear weapons. The internal politics of many of these nations changed quite a bit as well. Idiotically changes of the people and even the political elites changed.
Also the EU has not always been the EU it has now. There were many iterations and those that are against the EU might not be against the general idea of a more united EU but rather against a specific iteration of these contracts.
These other visions of the EU might also have prevented war (and they might have in the time they were active).
EU was built on the ECSC which has been created with preventing war as one of its primary goals:
> The ECSC was first proposed by French foreign minister Robert Schuman on 9 May 1950 as a way to prevent further war between France and Germany. He declared his aim was to "make war not only unthinkable but materially impossible" which was to be achieved by regional integration, of which the ECSC was the first step. The Treaty would create a common market for coal and steel among its member states which served to neutralise competition between European nations over natural resources, particularly in the Ruhr.
Because one thing the EU established and maintained is the principle that countries should compete for resources and economic position in the market place and not the battlefield.
It's the one constant about the EU from 1957 to today.
There are indeed other visions of the EU that might also have worked, and we might need to switch to one of them in the future. But they would still have that one central element.
It depends. The questions is about institutional reform and how possible it is. I do not think the current EU will evolve in a good direction. I prefer countries to leave and establish new bilateral treaties along the same lines.
Maybe after the EU has failed we can have a new attempted that people will actually get on board with.
While I think that the EU should not (and if they try they won't be able to) try and become a "super country" and the bureaucracy can be excessive (but some of it is needed) it's a good idea in principle
> I prefer countries to leave and establish new bilateral treaties along the same lines
So that they have all the obligations of a member but no say on the discussions?
Bilateral treaties between n countries would mean a total of n*(n-1)/2 deals
If you have more than 3 countries, it's useful to have a common set of rules instead of just bilateralizing all deals
(Which doesn't mean all rules really need to be centralized, not all EU countries adopt the Euro, for example
However, when you sign a BT with the EU, your power on the decisions is diminished, but you still have to pay to be an "associated member" (that's what I meant above)
It's not an accomplishment of EU, it's because of the reduced significance of European powers.
When England and France and Germany etc fought, they were huge colonial powers (or wannabe powers), controlling large parts of the world. So they were in competition, and there were great stakes from the outcomes of such battles.
After the 50s or so such a war would have been insignificant as they don't have much to split. And of course Germany was in diapers and closely parented, split into Eastern and Western Germany.
So the US and USSR took their place on the global arena, as major powers that competed with one another at a global scale (and thus justified a Cold and several warmer proxy wars).
For the periphery of Europe (e.g. Balkans and Eastern Europe) there was another reason for the early 20th century wars: there were many nation states formed quite late and still fighting to define their borders and control. After they have solidified into a more or less homogeneous population and solid borders, there was less reason that war (and if there was one, it would be civil war).
But unlike the global ingignificance of the old colonial powers (which doesn't seem to reverse course), the above balkanization might re-appear again, in the form of a split between the "native" population and a large, not-really-assimilated immigrant population in some countries -- which, in 2030 or 2050 or so, can turn into wars between those parts of the population.
> When England and France and Germany etc fought, they were huge colonial powers (or wannabe powers), controlling large parts of the world. So they were in competition, and there were great stakes from the outcomes of such battles.
More importantly, Germany and Italy both came late to the colonial acquisition game, and both were trying to industrialize at a time when their access for raw materials like natural rubber could only be obtained by gaining colonies at the expense of other powers.
In 1945, the US imposed on France and Britain a new regime: they had to start letting go of their colonies, but in return, the US imposed peace would allow any country to complete for raw materials by price rather than by power.
>In 1945, the US imposed on France and Britain a new regime: they had to start letting go of their colonies, but in return, the US imposed peace would allow any country to complete for raw materials by price rather than by power.
I've never heard this before... Can you share reading materials?
In that article, the United Kingdom agreed that in return for U.S. lend-lease assistance, it would cooperate with the United States in devising measures to expand “production, employment, and the exchange and consumption of goods,” to eliminate “all forms of discriminatory treatment in international commerce,” to reduce barriers to trade, and generally to achieve the goals laid out in the Atlantic Charter.
[...] That describes the Lend Lease Act, which was expanded in effect into Bretton Woods
England, France and Germany (or HRE) fought before being colonial powers. They fought a lot of times even when they were just regional (the region being Europe) powers.
>They fought a lot of times even when they were just regional (the region being Europe) powers.
Which is part of my argument: they fought on their way up, to secure dominance in Europe, and then went on to divide the world between then (or failed to, like Germany).
I also mention something similar later, when writing about Eastern Europe, that nation there's also fought as they developed to define their borders and reach, until those "solidified".
But your argument ignores the fact that they were fighting amongst themselves long before the "up" part started. England and France fought each other for hundreds of years before they even knew the parts of the world they would eventually colonize even existed. Germans were fighting in France and Poland long before a state called Germany existed. The gold rushes of colonization intensified these conflicts, but they didn't create them.
And even if they had, why should we assume they wouldn't happen again if Europe was heading "down" instead of "up"? It's depressingly common in history for peoples in decline to fall into warring amongst themselves over who gets to keep the largest part of what's left. What makes Europeans exempt from that tendency, other than the fragile agreement the EU represents that warring amongst themselves just isn't something Europeans do anymore?
The general European peace is one of the great accomplishments of modernity. We shouldn't take it for granted, or assume that it will hold without the willingness of today's Europe to work at maintaining it the way yesterday's did.
>But your argument ignores the fact that they were fighting amongst themselves long before the "up" part started.
That's because it's not the "up" itself that matters, it's the upwards trend -- which they did have since the 10th century or so.
In my other example, the balkan/eastern european nations fighting were even less "up" by any definition of wealth, power, etc. But they were going upwards from peripheral parts of empires or serfdoms under foreign rule (e.g. under the Ottomans) to building their own nation states.
>And even if they had, why should we assume they wouldn't happen again if Europe was heading "down" instead of "up"?
Who said we shouldn't assume that?
What I said is that the peaceful period was because of an end to the power and big stakes that resulted from the upward trend. Those powers entered a stasis, so to speak, and didn't have much to win over one another anymore.
If a forceful downward trend emerges, we can certainly see wars again.
The EU has its issues, but its core accomplishment is a singularity.