So again, other than the EU, what differentiates between those nations which have seen peace throughout that period and those who have seen war? MAD should, by your logic, have prevented the civil war in Yugoslavia and the later conflicts between the Balkan states. By my thinking it would be more likely to render those conflicts proxies. In either case they still happened and neither US/USSR posturing nor losses due to WW2 in any way prevented that. After all World War 11 was fought across the globe, but exhaustion doesn't seem to have prevented people fighting anywhere else. Likewise we have seen constant warfare outside of Europe in nations where your MAD theory would predict peace, as pointed out upthread WW1 had no similar affect. So why would the pacifying effect of nuclear arsenals have been so specific as to encompass the EU member states and no one else?
Well, let's say the Cold War was not responsible for internal peace in Europe. Without the standoff between Soviet and American forces, it is possible that the Soviets would have tried to expand farther westward than they did. But it is absolutely true that the cross-Rhine tensions that have produced regular wars in Western Europe ever since the break-up of Charlemagne's empire, with breakouts here and there across the continent depending on who was allied with whom and when, did not come to an end due to the Cold War. They came to an end because, for the space of a couple of generations, Europeans realized that with the improvements in technology, the next war would be significantly worse than the two previous ones combined. Peace in Europe was based on a firm committment to each other and to setting aside nationalistic goals and claims, among all the various forces on both sides of the two world wars, at least within western Europe. What is unfortunate today is that, with the rise of nationalism everywhere, that peace is going to be drawing to an end, probably within another generation and almost certainly within two more generations. We are very fortunate to have lived during this time, but those who don't remember the past are busy condemning their children or grandchildren to repeating it.
Why do you go ‘57 and Rome and not ‘52 and Paris for beginnings of EU? Considering the ECSC was specifically founded to make another European war economically impossible I’d go with it for this argument.
Good point, but the general outlook here is that the roots of the the EU are more in the treaty of Rome than the Paris agreement. If you go with the Paris agreement, though, it is even less true to say that only "thousands of nukes in the US and Russia" made sustainable peace in Europe possible. That's just plain and simple historical revisionism.
What post were you replying to? Could not be the one you quoted, which said nothing about nukes or MAD or US or anything outside EU/EEC. So far my disagreement has been on a single narrow topic (disputing your claim that leaving EU will make war on continent more likely). Anyway, EU's days are numbered to handful of years, once Germany sees that it will become more obvious - some speculate they might just last three more years before the breakup.
I agree that the future of the EU is in doubt, but I'm addressing two separate but related arguments you have made: 1) Peace amongst EU member states was due to lack of resources to engage in warfare 2) Peace amongst EU member states was due to the pacifying influence of nuclear powered superstates and MAD. My response is that neither of those individually nor in conjunction fit with the observed data which is that the EU has served as a geographical and historical bubble in which peace has been observed by, and only by, between member states who have at any other point throughout history known nothing but internecine warfare.
I realize it's a joke link but is there actually a difference between the two? (Like how in America we spell color while the UK spells it colour.)
Probably a lot like that, yeah. Minor differences, more to do with grammar than with spelling. For example, we'll often answer a question by repeating the verb. Are you there? I am. Did you get the job? I didn't. That happens because that's how it's done in Irish, which doesn't have words for "yes" and "no.
Indeed, take away the accent and you can still quite clearly distinguish a native speaker of one from the other.
There are about 400,000 cases of COVID-19 in Europe (a statistic that you who jibe the U.S. for being #1 should remember), so I don't think there are many spare ventilators on hand.
Remember when I said voting for Boris Johnson was fucking stupid and evil because Boris Johnson's an idiot who's going to get thousands of people killed, and then Ten Lubak said I was stupid, and then coronavirus started killing shitloads of people including Boris Johnson and Prince Charles, and Ten Lubak never apologized, and rightforge still thought he was smart anyway? I remember. I'll always remember.
