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Comment by dtech | Hacker News Reader

War within the EU is really really unlikely. A successful part of the EEC/EU is integrating the economies of its countries to such an extend that war becomes economically un-viable.

Nowadays war between France and Germany is close to as absurd a thought as a war between Calafornia and Texas is. It's not remotely comparable to 1900-1950.

Russia is the largest threat for European countries, but currently an attack on a NATO member seems unlikely.

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That's what experts were saying before 1914, too: war is really unlikely because the economies are more integrated than they have ever been.

This is patently false. Theme in pre-1914 continental European press was monarchies struggling with independence movements, question of next Franc-Prussian conflict (because everybody was certain that peace between those two can't hold), and stability of Russian empire (that was at time engaged in bloody war with Japanese while being shaken by internal tensions).

Inter-war period was hardly one of economical integration, considered that most of European countries were engaged in economic war with other - eg. Poland had no economic exchange with its neighbours.

[Citation needed]

Tensions were very high in early 20th century Europe. If you're honestly saying this you either have not read history books on the era, or you know something very scary about Merkel that I don't.

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