Brexit

[Rudy Tamasz]

You haven't studied history have you?

None of those wars that I listed really involved Western and Eastern against each other. They were all about Western European powers fighting other Western European powers. Starting with the European Coal and Steel Union, it was about tying up Western Europe.

If the EU wasn't about that, then where is the war between West Germany and France in 1973? History never ran down that path.

Never been strong at history, so the rest of the post is just my speculation. Let's go back to 1973 and imagine what might have happened. The u.s. is stuck up to its neck in Vietnam. India and Pakistan fight over Bangladesh. Arabs try to pay Israel back for 1967. And all of a sudden Germany raises the issue of Alsace. Hmm, says Politburo, what a nice chance! All types of leftist activists on the Soviet payroll both in Germany and France start vocally protesting the revanchist plans of disguised Nazis. In the worst case scenario, the Soviet Union gets a good opportunity to invade Germany, in the best case scenario, the governments of involved Western countries fall like flies. That's why another war between France and Germany did not happen. Maybe EU had something to do with it, but before 1989 everything else was just a side show to the Soviet - American rivalry.

Speaking of earlier times, the situation in Europe was the result of the balance of power between a few leading countries at least since the treaty of Westphalia. Some dropped out of the club like Denmark, Sweden and Poland, some joined it later like Prussia. Everything depended on whether they could peacefully figure out their differences or not. In the process they fought their battles from Lisbon to Moscow. For instance we in Belarus have as many battlefields of the Napoleonic wars and WWI as they have in Flanders.

I can understand though that from your island it is difficult to see anything farther than Rhine. It gets misty 'round Lorelei, doesn't it?

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