Saturday 8 October 2011

Peace in Europe is a myth

According to the Daily Mail, our masters over the channel were under the mistaken apprehension that they were in for the Nobel Peace Prize for bring peace to Europe for the last 50 years.

Mary Ellen Synon goes to great lengths to explain how peace in Europe was achieved not through the creation of a federal superstate but through the partition of Germany and the iron curtain and she's right to a certain extent.

Bosnian Genocide: "peace in Europe"
The partition of Germany effectively wiped out their ability to start a war, the siting of Allied and Soviet military bases in West and East Germany respectively and their demilitarisation naturally stopped Germany starting another world war but the Germans have no need to start another war now because they already run most of Europe through their domination of the EU.

But has the EU prevented war in Europe for the last 50 years, either through its actions or as an unintended consequence of its mere existence?  Well no, because Europe hasn't been free of war for the last 50 years has it?

Fifty years ago was 1961, two years after the Basque separatists started a civil war in Spain and France.  In 1968, the USSR invaded Czechoslovakia and the IRA started a civil war in Northern Ireland.  In 1970 various far left groups started a civil war in Italy and in 1974 Turkey invaded northern Cyprus.  In 1984 the PKK started a civil war in Turkey and in 1988 Armenia and Azerbaijan went to war over Nagorno-Karabakh.  In 1989 Romania underwent a revolution and in 1991 Slovenia went to war with Yugoslavia for its independence.    In 1991, rebels in South Osssetia and Abkhazia started a civil war in Georgia and Croatia went to war with Yugoslavia for its independence.  In 1992, ethnic Moldovans started a civil war in Transnistria, there was ethnic cleansing in North Ossetia, civil war in Abkhazia and the start of the war in Bosnia.  In 1994, civil war started in Chechnya for the first time.  In 1998 there was civil war in Kosovo, the Real IRA started terrorism again in Northern Ireland and civil war broke out in Abkhazia again.  In 1999, Chechnyan separatists invaded Dagestan, the second civil war started in Chechnya and there was another uprising in Yugoslavia.  In 2001 there was civil war in Macedonia.  In 2004 there was more fighting in Kosovo.  In 2007 there was civil war in Ingushetia and in 2008 there was a second war in South Ossetia with a Russian invasion.

So people can come up with whatever explanations they want for 50 years of peace in Europe, be it the EU, the partition of Germany or the Cold War but 50 years of peace in Europe is a myth.  The only genocide in Europe since the second world war (Bosnia) was not only during this supposed era of EU-imposed peace but under the watch of EU "peacekeepers".