[coldtea]

No, it's just the US still that has that privilege, with military bases all over Europe and direct involvement in European politics ever since WWII (and even before).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gladio for some of the most shameless cases...

[tome]

> for some of the most shameless cases

And serving as a buffer against the territorial ambitions of the USSR for 45 years, for one of the least shameful cases ...

[lev99]

Most of the bases were well welcomed during the cold war. NATO has probably done just as much to insure peace inside it's countries as the EU has.

[cronz]

No offence but that's just laughable. You just have to look at the Balkans right now. Ham-fisted is an understatement.

[laingc]

Yeah, I don’t think it’s historically accurate to compare the contributions of the EU and NATO to peace and security in Europe. These are entirely the work of NATO. The EU is made possible by the Pax Americana.

[Shorel]

Pax Atomica.

I am sure there would not be any peace if the USA was the only country with nukes.

[tome]

Sorry, what? One war in Europe in 70 years and somehow that's ham-fisted?

[throwaway8689]

I think the parent was referring to the Balkan wars in the 90s, which still affect people's lives now.

[adventured]

It's not the Balkan wars of the 90s that are affecting people's lives today, it's a very old perpetual conflict of culture. That was the cause of the Balkan war in the first place. That conflict will never cease, it's a perma friction between very different cultures that largely don't like each other.

[cronz]

First, what makes you think there could have been other wars?

Second, do you really think that the solution that was given in the Balkans is good? Even today, many people are deeply unhappy about it.

[sgift]

> Second, do you really think that the solution that was given in the Balkans is good? Even today, many people are deeply unhappy about it.

If all sides are a bit unhappy it probably was a very good compromise.

[lev99]

Europe has a long history of warfare that seemed to have halted around the NATO. I think the presence of a strong military alliance and the presence of peace have a high probability of being connected.

[coldtea]

A strong external military force, along with the devastation of European countries with global ambitions in WWII (UK, French, Germany, and co), means there were neither resources nor reason for war in Europe for most of the 20th century. Heck, for most of that time Germany was still split in two.

USSRs occupation of the other half also kept "peace" there (and in conflict between the two sides would have escalated to a full global war, which was in nobody's interest).

Yugoslavia for example was only a state because the different nations were kept under the same rule. When that rule was gone, 60 years of "living together" didn't do anything to prevent ethnic tensions.

How things shape in 10 or 20 years is anybody's guess.

[tome]

> what makes you think there could have been other wars?

Military buildup in Europe during 1945-1991, the vast scale of which dwarfs anything ever seen on planet earth.

[adventured]

That's an intense exaggeration. The military deployment in Europe during WW2 was drastically beyond anything that existed during the Cold War. The US had 16 million people that served in the armed forces during WW2. Roughly more Americans died fighting that war, than were stationed in Europe during the Cold War at a given time (average was about 330k from 1950 to 1990).

The military deployments in Asia from 1930-1945 were larger than anything Europe saw from 1945-1991, by several fold. China alone had roughly four million soldiers active at the end of WW2. Japan had millions of soldiers and civilians stationed in China at the time they surrendered.

About ten million military personnel died in WW1. That one point alone puts to shame the scale of the Cold War. The US, Russia, British Empire, France, Italy mobilized nearly 40 million military forces during WW1. The Cold War was tiny by comparison. France by itself had 1.3 million soldiers killed. Russia had five million wounded soldiers. Including the two sides, over 60 million military personnel were involved in WW1.

[rospaya]

Which one? The one in Bosnia that NATO stopped or the one in Kosovo that NATO stopped?

[coldtea]

>Most of the bases were well welcomed during the cold war

Only if you never bothered to ask the center- and left-inclined population of each country (which was quite substantial) -- and ignored the protests against them.

And with the help of a few interventions (e.g. in Italy) and dictatorships (e.g. in Greece) imposed when needed to keep some pro-US goons in government.

[xyzal]

As a Czech citizen I only regret the bases were not built a few hundered kilometers more to the east. Forty years under Russian influence were devastating to my country.

[CamperBob2]

Of course, we are now beginning to understand just how good the Russians are at agitprop, misdirection, false-flag rabble-rousing, and general social subversion.

Just how much of the European "protest culture" of the 1970s and 1980s actually grew organically, without covert Soviet backing?

[saiya-jin]

Soviets did back leftist movements across western Europe, and CIA backed dissent in eastern Europe. And each were trying to eliminate other's pawns in the game. So what? This never starts in vacuum, no protest movement gains momentum in a happy population.

[v_lisivka]

Zero.

[CamperBob2]

OK, that's one vote for 'zero', from a place that didn't allow the people to vote at all during the time period in question. Anyone else?

[pvaldes]

Ad-hominem fallacy. The fact that some people didn't were allowed to choose politics in some time somewhere (like for example all women in Europe and USA until the last generations), does not imply that their opinion about a political theme is automatically tainted, wrong or insignificant.

[coldtea]

>Just how much of the European "protest culture" of the 1970s and 1980s actually grew organically, without covert Soviet backing?

A, yes, it was the Russians all along, which, retroactively also proves that they control the world now from some building in St. Petersburg. And when they get some friendly lackey in power like Yeltsin again and be buddies and everything, there will be another enemy du jour, arabs (just not the Saudis) are good for that.

It's not like there ever was a very strong European left movement (or an American one for that matter), or that people in different countries in Europe have devoted their lives, risked careers, gone to prison, even tortured or executed for being pro-communist (or perhaps they did all that because they were paid)...

[def_true_false]

> ... people in different countries in Europe have devoted their lives, risked careers, gone to prison, even tortured or executed for being pro-communist

Or, if they happened to be in Eastern Europe, for being anti-communist... funny how that works.

[coldtea]

Well, the grass is always greener. Funny also how many ex-eastern blocers say they preferred those times though...