'So, which side won the air war?'

Maybe I'm just tired, but I don't get it.

Stephen,
You raise some interesting points. However, I disagree on the idea that a divided Europe will be economically weaker. Perhaps economic reform will be easier to institute at a smaller (i.e. national) level?
It seems that some Europeans are realizing that their state run welfare systems are unsustainable and I suspect that any type of meaningful reform would be much harder for an EU superstate to execute.
In the last century, the existing European states that entered the 20th century were remnants of monarchic systems that were already obsolete and on their last legs. The first half of the 20th century was dominted by two world wars and the second half was dominated by two super-powers. The Soviets stifling eastern Europe and the US allowing an artificial and ultimately unsustainable economy to grow in the west without any defense burdens or other necessary related costs to impede the growth of the 'nursury state' economies. They really haven't had that long to get their houses in order for the 21st century world. They are clinging to 19th century economic notions that just don't work.
Another possibility for Europe is a looser organisation that promotes economic cooperation while maintaining their separate national entities. For the time being at least.
However, the problems go deeper for them. Their populations are not even growing at a basic replacement rate and the mass influx of immigrants to supply the labor have not and are not being assimilated. They are just waking up to this problem.

Do you realize two countries have rejected the EU constitution now and Germany still hasn't invaded Poland? WUWT?

We fought two world wars to keep Europe fragmented? That's an, er, interesting interpretation.

I thought we fought two world wars because Europe was getting unified by the wrong guys...

Same diff, eh, Richard?

Seriously, a single Europe under the grip of a madman wasn't something the Brits could tolerate on the late 18th/early 19th centuries. And it was something they (and the US) couldn't tolerate in the 20th Century, either.

Even if Napoleon or Hitler had been gentlemen, wars to stop them would have been fought. Same goes for WWI. The Kaiser WAS (more or less) a gentleman - but Britain didn't fight to save Belgium. She fought to save her own position in the world.

But times have changed. A single Europe under the grip of Brussels would be a threat to... themselves, mostly.

But where is the evidence that the US was actively interested in a divided Europe, or even particularly cared about Europe's internal policies except in the rare instances where they infringed on US trade or westward expansion? Historically, we've always been reactive to Europe, not proactive. We didn't even have a navy to speak of until the French made it necessary in the 1790's, and the American invasion of Canada during the War of 1812 met with bitter internal opposition, as did, indeed, the entire war itself.

In the 19th century, with the exception of one diplomatic incident when the Navy arrested two Confederate diplomats off a British vessel, a dispute over the Oregon border that was resolved short of bloodshed, and a US response to French adventurism in Mexico that was resolved by a show of force along the border, the US remained cozily uninvolved in European affairs until the Spanish-American War, a conflict that was widely viewed as unnecessary and wasteful again by a substantial part of the American public.

In the 20th century, we remained so stubbornly aloof from European affairs that when we finally did get involved in WWI, after ignoring numerous provocations such as the Zimmerman Letter, we were so utterly unprepared for a war that had already been raging for three years that our troops had to go into battle largely armed with French and British small arms, artillery, tanks and aircraft.

And, as our yurpeen betters like to remind us, we were such isolationists before WWII that we sat out the first two years of the war and might have gone longer if the Japanese hadn't attacked us and Germany hadn't foolishly declared war on us as well.

So where is the support for any argument that the US had a policy of keeping Europe divided?

Richard,

Two propositions:

1) It is not in this nation's interests to see all of Europe under the fist of a single militarist.

2) Three times in one century, Europe was threatened by just that (the Kaiser, the Nazis, the Soviets), and three times, we fought. Two hot wars, one cold.

If you think those two items are mere coincidence, that's your business.

Just because we weren't prepared to fight any of the three at the time they broke out doesn't mean very much. Historically, this nation hasn't been ready for any of its wars - including the one we're in now.

And, by the way, thanks for nitpicking on a minor point - and getting it wrong. Really makes my evening, ya know?

Number of world wars Germany and Italy started before they were formed in the 19th century: 0. The arrogance of the leaders of a united Europe would surely lead to war in the 21st century. Keep 'em small and disunited until the Muslims take over. We know how to deal with them.

I thought the EU was about turning Europe into an economic powerhouse that could compete with the states? Wasn't that where it was going with the Euro rising against the $, before this French poo-pooing against it?

... I get the feeling European leaders knew full well the EU would never be more than an economic shell-organization, more like a revenue-sharing or joint-operating-agreement that would juice up their economic position in this new "global" economy.

I mean hell, 99.9% of London STILL doesn't accept the Euro as an actual currency ... but lots of stores accept the US$. It's more for show and for trade and stuff like that.

And all this talk about wars and Hitler ...

Aren't we getting a little ahead of ourselves here?

Ever want to edit a comment you just made, but can't?

Yeeeeeeeeah.

My favorite cold war joke was the definition of a tactical nuclear weapon. That'd be one that landed in Germany...

Excellent post. It's nice to see someone put my thoughts into words so much better than I ever could.

PacRim Jim:
Sure, the German and Italian states by definition didn't start wars before they existed.
But either on the account of precursor states or becuase they attracted outside interest, you get such nasty events as the Franco-Prussian War, Austro-Prussian War, Germano-Danish War, Franco-Austrian Wars, Piedmontese-Austrian Wars, various Revolutionary and Napoleonic campaigns, the German campaigns of Louis XIV, the Thirty Years War etc etc etc.
Though being a Brit, I'm biased of course: having a party-wall, we get nervous when the neighbours start throwing the crockery at each other. But a peaceful and peaceable Europe is in almost everyone's interest. And so is a dynamic European economy.
Stephen is dead right. A doomed attempt at a market-unfriendly superstate is no way to get either, but some framework for market integration, related political agreements, and regularised inter-state cooperation probably is. (And no more than that.)
I'm hopeful that that sort of positive outcome is on the cards:
Schroder is on the way out in Germany.
Chirac has been deflated.
The French non and Dutch nee will kill off the current draft constitution.
A more statist revised or new constitution, much as the French might like it, would never make it past referendum in the UK, and likely in several other countries. The political alignments look favourable for the sort of deal I'd like.
Though it will likely have to be over M. Chirac's political dead body. Shame, that.

A federation of mostly-equal states, much like our own, would nicely fit our needs – and Europe's, too.
Which dovetails nicely with something overheard on the ABC WNT report of the French vote. It went something like: "When we want help, what number do we call for Europe?"

I say jack up the green cards to our friends and bi-lateral agreements.

You know they're only going to start trouble otherwise, it's what they do and have done for 1000 years.

Re: Chaika

The joke refers to the old NATO doctrine of relying on tactical air power to (theoretically) offset the massive numerical advantage the USSR had in armor and ground troops in case of a Soviet invasion of West Germany. The prevailing conventional wisdom at the time was that NATO would be able to control the airspace because of technological superiority, and thus be able to keep the Red Army from rolling over the NATO divisions.

However, as the saying goes, "quantity has a quality of its own."

Am I the only one who wants to know what his favorite and second-favorite Cold War jokes are?

Bah. Found them. Yes, I feel retarded now.

Stephen is completely right that keeping Europe from being controlled by a single power has been American policy, and British policy before us. However, Stephen is even more correct than he seems to realize. This did not start with Napoleon. The British opposed the armies and navies of Revolutionary France, before Napoleon, and opposed Bourbon France for a century before that -- recall Churchill's ancestor the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim. And, going further back, England (not yet Britain) opposed Habsburg hegemony over the Continent. So, this basic policy has been in place form more like four hundred rather than 200 years. Churchill called it "defending the liberties of the smaller states of Europe". This is still a good cause both morally and practically. Ludwig Dehio's old book The Precarioius Balance: Four Centuries of the European Power Struggle, covers this very well, from the perspective of the frustrated German "landsman" who cannot grasp the power of the seafaring peoples who oppose him.

Stephen is totally wrong.

First, we don't need to worry about war in Europe. It's the democratic peace, baby. Never in history has there been a war between democracies. Never. Write it on the blackboard a hundred times.

Second, rising nationalism in Europe is a good thing. Americans are (relatively) welcoming to immigrants because we're patriotic. A strong national identity feels less vulnerable than a weak one.

Third, why should Continental nations need or want to "matter on the world stage?" Why not just secure their own peace and prosperity, quietly or conspicuously as the situation calls for?

And if for some reason they do want to "matter on the world stage," it's totally wrong to say that they can't because they're too small, provided they're willing to pay the price. If Austria, for example, suddenly jumped up and said, "we have 10,000 troops we would like to contribute to the operation in Iraq," (just over 0.1% of their population!) they would become, overnight, a VERY important country.

Fourth, even the more socialistic economic policies that French and Dutch voters seem to prefer would be better than the Hooverism that is strangling the continent now.

There's no downside to the French and Dutch No votes. None whatsoever.

European brains + mulsim demographics + their oil= a powerful temptation for some big thinker, maybe living in Paris. What better way to recover lost grandeur? What better way to afford paying for grand pa's false teeth? Put that way, would non always be non? BTW: I'm new here. I like the perspective.

First, we don't need to worry about war in Europe. It's the democratic peace, baby. Never in history has there been a war between democracies. Never.

The War of 1812 and the American Civil war arguably qualify as wars between democracies.

But that's a moot point. Even if it were true that democracies never war on each other, your claim that there is no need to worry about war in Europe would be false, just as it was false when people made the same claim about the democratic nations of Germany and France in the years following World War I.

The reason for worry is that there is no guarantee that every nation in Europe will *remain* democratic. The major European powers (with the exception of the UK) have a really lousy track record when it comes to democracy.

The War of 1812 was not a war between democracies. Britain was in no way a democracy at that point: the (unelected) king and the (unelected) House of Lords had a lot of power, and even the House of Commons was extremely unrepresentative, due to medieval electoral rules that allowed empty "rotten boroughs" to be represented by corrupt gentry while large cities like Manchester had no representation at all. The earliest reasonable start-date for British democracy is the Reform Act of 1832. And I'm not sure the United States can be called truly democratic at that time, either, since a substantial proportion of the population were slaves. So this falls far short of constituting a counter-example.

The American Civil War was a war WITHIN ONE DEMOCRACY, which is different. There are several examples of democracy being torn apart by civil war. To the extent that the European Union emulates the early United States, it could be on the path to civil war-- and in that case, it's European UNIFICATION, and not European fragmentation, which gives rise to a threat of war. Which only strengthens the case that there's no downside to the setback to the unification that the French and Dutch have just provided.

At this point, let me add another "never"-- democracy has never been overturned in a country with a GDP over $8,000 per capita. (I can't remember the exact lower threshold, but it was certainly less than that.)

this isnt 1806, 1914, or 1941. A united Europe isnt as threatening now as it was then, simply because Europe represents a much smaller percentage of world population and productive capacity then it did then. And likely to decline further, relatively, in the next few decades. A united Europe might help the US with some policy goals. Or it might interfere with US policy goals. But one thing its NOT going to do is achieve global hegemony.

Steve,
Just back from England and back to work. Good job! You might want to stay on this track a little longer and head down the welfare state "cradle to grave" road. While in Europe from 2001-2004 I witnessed a virtual horde of easterners arriving in Germany to suck up the welfare and live out the good life. They were from all over Europe. You don't have to be a math major to know you can't finance that kind of gravy train for long before it all dries up. Then the masses want to burn down everything and start a revolution. Sound a little historic?...time will tell. Good to have you back at work though....

Whatever maintains some form of democracy and peace in Europe is in America's interest. The institution best suited for this is not the EU, but NATO. Others around the blogosphere have pointed out that NATO in its post-Cold War incarnation is basically a peace treaty wherein its members have the confidence of knowing that they will not be attacked by other members or by external states like Russia, with American power as the guarantor of this peace treaty. Now as we all know, with the exception of the UK, the other members of NATO contribute little more than token forces. And while that has been the subject of complaints by many Americans (including myself) I've come to believe that in the long run, a militarily weak Continent is a good thing. Europe has two main tasks ahead: liberalizing their economies and assimilating their Muslims. If Europe does not undertake these tasks then they will have serious problems. At this point the best thing the US can do is maintain its position as the guarantor of peace through NATO.

sorry steve, from Truman on to Johnson, the US was very much interested in in a united Europe

So long as it got to mandate who got the bomb, got to have some imput in how exclusive the trade unions could be, and held ultimate leadership in NATO.

and thats my crappy summation of a semester course on European Integration. I didnt bother to read all the posts before this one but i suppose someone else has already made these points.

Ever read Guns Germs & Steel? Europe's (& it's colonies') domination of the world was rooted not in being one big super state, but a lot of bickering ones constantly trying to outdo the rest. What happens to super-states? They make one bad decision and bam, they're gone, to use the book's example, China. A free trade agreement (EU) is helpful to Europe, same with a military one (NATO), but anything beyond that would/has probably dull/ed their point.

So far as warring democracies go, at the outbreak of WWI Germany & France were democracies in name, but all the power actually lay with super-executives, like Wilhem. During the war France basically became a dictatorship just to keep their people at it. Lance, you disproved your own point. The south still had slaves at that point, & though unification was a big issue, so to was holding onto those slaves. Not to mention none of the "democratic" wars had women voting.

Europe has got to integrate? Do does Japan have to integrate? Does Singapore?

Why do they have to integrate in the current configuration? For instance, in the age of the jumbo jet and the Internet, is the Atlantic really that much wider than the English Channel? If the UK feels it needs to be part of something bigger than itself, why not NAFTA+ ?

A united Europe is bad for Europe because there will be (as we are already seeing), no internal stimulus to change and progress. We are already seeing this in the continent's creeping economic stagnation and the dwindling number of Europeans who even bother to vote for their MEP's.

A united Europe is bad for the US, Asia and the rest of the world because, simply, any business with just one customer is in trouble. If Europe was not locked into a descending economic spiral, it might be tolerable, but as things stand, the rest of the world will find itself with one big customer with less and less money, trying to lever their prices down and generally sharing the economic misery.

Why is it that Americans fail to understand that the only reason for European integration is to stand up to the USA.

The Eurofanatics want to create a political competitor to the USA. That competitor will be protectionist, obstructionist and will sell arms to whoever the USA doesn't want them to.

In the meantime the nations of Europe are all to be crushed under the Eurocrats Jackboot.

Far from being warmongers, the nations of Europe are all cowards. The EU is nothing more than total surrender before war has even been declared.

Re: William.

"Lance, you disproved your own point. The south still had slaves at that point, & though unification was a big issue, so to was holding onto those slaves. Not to mention none of the 'democratic' wars had women voting."

Thanks, I didn't think of that... but does that disprove my point? Doesn't that strengthen the "democratic peace" argument? If the South is not considered a democracy because of slavery, then that's another reason that the American Civil War is not a counter-example to democratic peace.

I prefer not to have women voting be considered a criterion for democracy. Enfranchising women is certainly the right thing to do, but it doesn't make a big enough difference to the operation of politics to justify considering it to inaugurate a new form of government. Of course, it's hard to know where to draw the line, whether (in the British case) the Reform Act of 1832, universal manhood suffrage in 1881, or the vote for women (sometime in the 1920s, I think). Democratic peace is robust to these changes of definition. If we define democracy as a polity with a free citizenry in which the leadership is regularly answerable to and replaceable by a mass electorate, England was not a democracy before 1832.

As I understand it, the EU is an ecomonic union of the member European nations. The EU's constitution was written by a French leader, I believe, and not by a committee of member states. If this is true, then it is easy to see that some member states will not agree with the constitution's provisions. The constitution could likely favor some nations over others, which is a recipe for trouble.

You misunderstood, I'm arguing for democratic peace. I would even challenge that there have been any democratic civil wars (We're in agreement then).

But more important is Europe's unity, where they should maintain variety but enough unity to maximize prosperity & stability.

As for the immigrants... If worst gets to worst, the Europeans would defend their own turf successfully. Their decline in military spending is on advanced fronts, and does not entail a decline in military expertise. They have plenty of advanced weapons makers from which to tap (France makes the best tanks in the world), and their military can easily coerce a bunch of civilians.

The current EU effort should be called The French Project. I think TFP is doomed, but there may well evolve something saner out of the current shambles. As to the demographic/ideological challenge from Muslim enclaves and ghettos in Europe, that will certainly cause explosive crises, and even something that closely resembles war.