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Nonetheless, all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it. You could argue that the EU kept the peac
by philwelch 3y ago
Nonetheless, all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it. You could argue that the EU kept the peace, but I think that overlooks the role of NATO and of the hundreds of thousands of American troops who never actually left western Europe after 1945. For instance, do you really think there's a serious risk of war breaking out between the UK and France since the UK left the EU? Of course not.
- wolverine876 3y ago> all of this was not the cause of peace being restored in Europe after WWII; it was the consequence of it How do you establish the arrow of causality (and of course, to some degree, it points both ways)? Objectively, we know that a major intent and design of the EU (and its earlier iterations) was to prevent another war.
- philwelch 3y agoThe one thing we know about the arrow of causality is that it doesn’t point backwards in time. The founding members of the EU all had friendly relations with each other prior to the founding of the EU. That’s why they formed the EU!
- wolverine876 3y agoYou might recall WWI and WWII. During WWII, Churchill and others were already planning what became the EU.
- philwelch 3y agoYes, but rather than engaging Nazi Germany with trade agreements and hoping that would somehow transform it into a peaceful democracy, Churchill and others fought WWII and attempted to conquer Germany with massive armies. The EU was a strategy for how to rebuild the ruins afterwards, it wasn’t a strategy for how to resolve the differences between Britain and Germany. So this isn’t a very good analogy for the current situation between NATO and Russia, or between the US-led allies and China.