For Europe to not even want to have any war among themselves, for Europe to find the idea of war among themselves to be completely ridiculous and idiotic, it is necessary for Europe to be meaningfully interconnected and interdependent. Treaties have again and again shown to be not up to that task. Bilateral or multilateral treaties of the olden times are mostly political in nature, and anything that is just that can also be reversed through a mere political process.
That interconnection and interdependence has to be created on a deeper and actually meaningful level. The economy is really the obvious choice here, since no political process can even attempt to reverse interdependence of that kind easily.
Plus, it’s sort of obvious. Just as the industrial revolution was hindered by the many tiny kingdoms in what is now Germany (and the huge amount of borders you had to cross and tolls you had to pay if you wanted to ship a product from anywhere in what is now Germany to anywhere else in what is now Germany) – that is, until Germany was unified in 1871 – the many borders in Europe could have hindered Europe globally more had that process towards a common market not existed. It’s the same thing, really, only that I don’t think political integration (beyond creating a common market) has much of a future.
For Europe to not even want to have any war among themselves, for Europe to find the idea of war among themselves to be completely ridiculous and idiotic, it is necessary for Europe to be meaningfully interconnected and interdependent. Treaties have again and again shown to be not up to that task. Bilateral or multilateral treaties of the olden times are mostly political in nature, and anything that is just that can also be reversed through a mere political process.
That interconnection and interdependence has to be created on a deeper and actually meaningful level. The economy is really the obvious choice here, since no political process can even attempt to reverse interdependence of that kind easily.
Plus, it’s sort of obvious. Just as the industrial revolution was hindered by the many tiny kingdoms in what is now Germany (and the huge amount of borders you had to cross and tolls you had to pay if you wanted to ship a product from anywhere in what is now Germany to anywhere else in what is now Germany) – that is, until Germany was unified in 1871 – the many borders in Europe could have hindered Europe globally more had that process towards a common market not existed. It’s the same thing, really, only that I don’t think political integration (beyond creating a common market) has much of a future.