Europe is in a transition in which we know what we are leaving behind but cannot imagine what may be coming.

But we do know that in the last century alone, the continent sank into the vortex of two world wars, and that the postwar system of global governance secured for its nations the longest period of peace and security they have known. It’s sobering to think that exactly 110 years ago, the conflict in Western Europe was so intense that in the Battle of the Somme in northern France alone, from July 1 to November 18, 1916, a million soldiers from Britain, France, Germany and their allies were killed or injured. At the end of the war, the dead numbered some 24 million, from the fighting, illness and harsh conditions in prisoner-of-war camps. The “war to end all wars,” the war that was started by the rash actions of empires, killed off four of them – the German, Russian, Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman – but did no such thing to war itself. The rise of nation states, the political and social upheaval caused by poverty in many countries (in conjunction with the triumph of communism in Russia), the despair and anger of the defeated Germans, who were looking for the chance to overturn the conditions that had been imposed on them at the end of the Great War, led to an even bloodier conflagration. In Europe alone, the dead of World War II came to around 40 million. This marked the end of imperial Japan, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, but also of the empires of the European victors – Britain, France, the Netherlands. The United States and the Soviet Union – the two great powers – and their allies took opposing sides in the shaky balance of the Cold War. The European nations were no longer masters of their fate, but they adapted to the new regime, where America and the Soviet Union determined the course of their allies. The levels of freedom and prosperity differed between Western and Eastern Europe, but, with the exception of Yugoslavia’s dismemberment, the wars that had regularly drenched the continent in blood had stopped.

Today, the conditions that followed 1945, and the collapse of the East Bloc in 1989, are no more. The European countries are dependent on powers and developments beyond their borders. The United States and China behave like empires of old, without a thought for their allies. Opportunistic alliances are forged, with little consideration as to where they may lead (which had tragic consequences in 1914). The ostensible “theoreticians” of the New Right who are riding on Donald Trump’s coattails believe in an old-fashioned clash of civilizations, where the world will be controlled by the great powers and some regional ones, with no one caring about democracy and justice. In the United States, China, Russia, Turkey, Israel, and a number of European countries, extremist nationalist forces compound problems. As dangers gather, the international system is shaken, and in European countries faith in unification and in liberal democracy are consistently undermined.

There are proposals for the EU’s reinforcement, on the basis of Mario Draghi’s report. But first the Europeans must understand that if they do not change mentality, if they do not make survival their priority, they will carry on down the road which led to 1914 and later to 1939.

Home

Europe and shades of 1914 and 1939