JULLIEN wrote:From the point of view of Generational Dynamics, Europe is due for another major war. People who find this statement surprising should recall that Europe has had wars regularly for millennia, the latest one having ended only a short 66 years ago. When the Treaty of Rome was signed in 1957, it was with the intention of creating a "European project" that would guarantee that there would never be another European war.
Well things are more complicated.
War is NOT the only solution in case of a crisis (Revolution, Isolation are ALSO alternatives, for example).
John could you please stop jumping on "war" each time there is a crisis. War is a PROCESS, and by now this process is not in the mood. I suggest you use “strong crisis” instead, you see war systematically too early.
Even the term of alliance has a different meaning than the ones it had in 1914.
Europe has 3 mains (a lot more, but this is restricted to my point of view) problems to solve
1- Coordination (the last example with Italia and France): These countries are fully unable to coordinate on anything, this is the "chaos continent". But chaos is not always a bad solution. For example as Jullien says, forget about an INTERNAL European war, too much chaos, no clear direction on anything, and the young people will oppose the war, today they enjoy the Europe, they are NOT going to drop the advantages of it.
2- Radicalisation : More and more "anti-arab" political parties, but still they don't win anything, so Europe is NOT ready for a war with the Arab world (not yet). France is almost ready for it (the last crisis was the Algerian war which ended in 1962) but even so, the rest of Europe is NOT. The radicalization process could mean a war but I do not expect it within the next 10 years (the old generation has to die)
3- Euro: this "big mess currency" has its value in the fact that it is not managed. Now, can a currency survive not being politicaly managed, this is the question.
History says “no” and the actual definition of the "money" say "no", but Euro is not going to disappear in 24hours from now.
What we see today is that the Euro AND the dollar fell together, and I think that we could be close of a "currency war" and if it happens we all go into an imprédictible world (forget about ANY model)
No INTERNAL war is necessary, a crisis or several crisis, yes, but not war.
Now in the time of crisis, this often happen to designate a "scapegoat" outside (Arabs, Chinese, …. but chinese are too far away and a "rule of thumb" is to have the scapegoat close enough to be your brother, so that makes it easier to kill him)