| Topic: | Re:Has the EU prevented war ? | |
| Posted by: | Richard Greenhough | |
| Date/Time: | 11/03/08 14:12:00 |
| "To be fair no doubt partly because they see it has having prevented another massive war in Europe." Veterans of World War Two such as Ted Heath regarded this as one of the most important gains from the creation of the EU, and to be fair, it has made the idea of another war between France and Germany, following on from 1870, 1914 and 1939 seem unthinkable. How much that is a direct result of the creation of the EU and how much the result of the post-1945 settlement is another matter. However, for much of the lifetime of the EU the threat was not from a resurgent Germany but from the other side of the Iron Curtain, and it was not the EU but NATO that had most to do with preventing the Cold War turning hot. When the EU was called upon to deal with a hot war situation on its own doorstep it signally failed to prevent the massacres that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia which although not a massive war on the scale of the earlier conflicts nevertheless cost many lives. |