Yeah, I'm really trying to figure out what the parallels are - especially since the biggest take away stated (the dynamism created by having competing smaller s

Yeah, I'm really trying to figure out what the parallels are - especially since the biggest take away stated (the dynamism created by having competing smaller states has a downside of being relative vulnerable to external pressure from large unified blocs) clearly doesn't quite hold. Modern Europe has two-ish major (EU and NATO-ish) supra-national systems that are notionally designed specifically to bind European states together to help resist and compete against these external pressures (though obviously NATO comes at the cost of binding together along with one of the large external forces to buffer against others). I guess the message might be that the EU is important for Europe? I dunno. Like it's not exactly wrong, but I don't think it's a particularly interesting point... I guess it's probably interesting to consider that the title (and article ending) is referencing a Tuchman book from 1978.