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Comment by rbanffy | Hacker News Reader

The EU itself is a thing to behold. Just managing to prevent wars between their members for so many decades is a remarkable accomplishment, unheard of in the continent's troubled history.

Not perfect, and certainly not invulnerable to bad actors, but still a beautiful accomplishment of will and politics.

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Almost all of us in Europe have never known anything but this peace so it almost feels a given. (I doubt a lot of readers are above eighty years old.) Yet a lot of kvetching about regulations happen and so it's good to remind people they have their own use.

Surely you mean this peace that ended when Russia started a full-scale invasion in Ukraine.

I've come to think that the so-called "most peaceful era in human history" as the post-Cold War era has been often called is more aptly "most peaceful era in western history".

Plenty of strife and conflict can be and are found where most western eyes generally don't look.

This peace, by and large, is about the lack of entries with other Western European countries on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Germany

By that measure, you'd consider the peace ended in 1956 when Russia -- then called the Soviet Union -- re-invaded Hungary after very briefly withdrawing. (As an aside, when the National Bank of Ukraine last year opened two donation accounts, I sent 1956 EUR to both. I am not subtle with my messaging.)

I don't know what 1956 felt like in western Europe but the current situation definitely doesn't feel like peace even though the war is not fought in western Europe. The war is at the EU border with stray missiles and overreaching Russian attacks already having hit EU territory.

> Russian attacks already having hit EU territory.

On 15 November 2022, a missile struck the territory of Poland at the village of Przewodów near the border with Ukraine, killing two people.[1][2][3] ... It was the first incident of a missile (vis-a-vis prior UAV incursions) fired from Ukrainian army[6] landing and exploding within NATO territory ... Initially Ukraine accused Russia of striking Poland,[9] while United States claimed that the missile was likely to have been an air defence missile fired by Ukrainian forces at an incoming Russian missile.[10][11][12] This was later confirmed in September 2023 by the Polish Prosecutor's Office, which stated that the explosion was caused by an out of control air-defence missile S-300.[6][13]

Right, that falls under the "stray missiles" category.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the EU.

>> Almost all of us in Europe have never known anything but this peace

> Neither Russia nor Ukraine are members of the EU.

Europe != EU

Also, explosives from the Russian invasion in Ukraine have hit the territories of two EU countries: Poland and Romania.

Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

It kind of feels similar to how monarchs tried to form lasting peace further back: inter-marry so that everyone is someone’s cousin they grew up with. Of course that didn’t exactly work perfectly.

>Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

Did not work terribly well for the former Soviet republics :(

> Seems like the trick really is to deeply intertwine economies.

On one hand, I read experts say that. On the other, I read experts point out that it failed to prevent WWI.

I wonder what the consensus is, if there is one, and what the evidence is.

Yeah my thoughts too. My feeling is that there won’t be some perfect solution that stops all wars. But that it was a very rational idea that may have stopped some.

Indeed it would be interesting to see experts attempt to enumerate situations that were avoided through this approach. Though I’m not sure if that’s even possible given it requires a form of alternate reality synthesis which is all but pure bias.

A statistical approach may find there’s still too little data?

> My feeling is that there won’t be some perfect solution that stops all wars. But that it was a very rational idea that may have stopped some.

Yes, absolutely. Also, it generally makes us wealthier.

To say nothing about living longer and not being blown up. It's definitely a plus.

But the economies were not so intertwined. The British, French, etc. were massively profiting from exploiting their colonial holdings while the Germans and Austro-Hungarians were being left in the dust, slave labour abolished some decades or centuries ago.

no mention of the gold hoards of Spain ? it rocked the continent at the time

That was the thesis of "The Great Illusion", published in 1911. Basically, nation states would rationally avoid war, as it is pure downside, economically. Obviously it's at least insufficient.

I think it's a totally naive view. Even if we limit ourselves to only thinking about rational actors, we must always ask about economic costs for whom. Nation states do not operate as a unit as a rational economic actor -- we must look at the competing actors within. One group could somewhat win, and another substantially lose, and that may net out to a negative -- it happens regularly. Many are clamoring for it right now -- a new Cold War against China.

Intertwined economies are part of it but I think people underestimate the importance of norms. EU leaders and ministers are regularly in meetings together. When there is a crisis now the reaction of all EU leaders is to hold a conference for them to hash out how to deal with the situation. This establishment of the norm of talking whenever there's an issue is very powerful.

This. A billion times this!

The principle that member nations have alignment and act (mostly) in unison.

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