FRIEDMAN: Almost All Countries In Europe Have Border Issues

Mauldin Economics ^ | OCTOBER 30, 2017 | GEORGE FRIEDMAN

[TigerLikesRooster]

FRIEDMAN: Almost All Countries In Europe Have Border Issues

OCTOBER 30, 2017
BY GEORGE FRIEDMAN

For centuries, Europe has fought wars over borders. In the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century, Europe’s borders shifted wildly. As empires fragmented, new nations arose and wars were waged.

After 1945 and the beginning of the Cold War, a new principle emerged on the Continent. The borders that existed at the end of World War II were deemed sacrosanct—not to be changed.

Europeans knew that border disputes had been one of the reasons of the two world wars and that even raising the legitimacy of post-war borders risked igniting passions that led to violence.

Similarly, untouchable were the existing spheres of influence on the Continent. There was the East and the West, and neither would mess with the other.

Thus, when the Soviets crushed independence movements in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, the United States refrained from any military action (not that there were many options). When Yugoslavia chose a pro-Western neutrality over membership in the Warsaw Pact, the Soviets didn’t intervene.

But in the early 1990s, everything changed.

[ClearCase_guy]

Nations matter because Europe is merely a continent, and the EU is merely a treaty.

I see a parallel with the "unexpected" outcome of the 2016 election in the US.

I think the Democrats in the US engaged in huge levels of corruption, illegality and treason. But they were confident that it just wouldn't matter, because surely Hillary would win and no one would ever pursue their criminal acts.

Oops.

Similarly, I think the Globalists have been confident that we are all rushing toward a One World Government in which national borders do not matter and money sloshes around as needed to pacify people as needed.

Oops.

Brexit, Trump, Catalonia, and internal EU trouble (largely centered around unassimilated immigrants) are all showing that One World Government isn't going to happen. Ergo, national borders matter quite a lot.

Which circles back to the US and makes the election of Trump more correct than ever. Build the wall!

[oldplayer]

Interesting and well thought-out article. However, Europeans have understood for a lot longer than WWII that “strong borders make good neighbors.”

he Thirty Years War was devastating to Europeans in the 1600’s. The Peace of Westphalia set out most of the modern borders in 1648. It has been the violation of those borders that have led to wars, not the establishment and honoring of those borders, no matter that some problems arose because of how they were drawn.