Dresden on the 15 February of 1945
A POSTWAR EUROPE IN RUINS
In 1945 Europe was a continent in ruins. Especially Germany. The Bombing of Dresden at the end of the War in a joint British and American operation, was a symbol of this. In four raids, between the 13 and 15 February 1945, 772 heavy bombers of the British Royal Air Force (RAF) and 527 of the United States Army Air Forces (USAAF) dropped more than 3,900 tons of high explosive bombs and incendiary devices on the city. The bombing and the resulting fire destroyed more than 1,600 acres (6.5 km2) of the city centre and killed around 25,000 people. This action has been considered by some historians a mass murder, as Dresden was a cultural landmark with little strategic significance and the attacks were not proportionate to military gains.
The city of Berlin also paid a heavy toll as it was almost completely destroyed after the Battle of Berlin (16 April-2 May 1945) that costed half a million persons their lives, their well-being or their sanity. For realizing how it was you must see the 2004 Oliver Hirschbiegel's movie "Downfall" (Der Untergang) that narrates the last days of Hitler in the Bunker. Impressive!!!
A WORLD DIVIDED BETWEEN THE US AND THE USSR: THE COLD WAR (1948-1991)
In 1945 Europe had almost disappeared from the World scene. The European Nation-States that in 1914 were controlling the world, three decades later had become destroyed countries with no influence at all over the Planet. The European Nation-States, after their suicide in the two World Wars of the first half of the 20th century, were in 1945 at the mercy of both World Powers: the US and the USSR. But the relationship bewteen these two World Powers were not easy. After being allies in the War, both started to fight in 1948 a long conflict of 40 years: The Cold War.
After 1945, the situation of Europe was desperate. Europeans were starving and needed everything. And the only possible solution was the American Aid as the United States were by then the only intact economy in the World. The US aid started first in an disorderly way, in a period called the Dollar Gap as the stock of US dollars was insufficient to satisfy the demand of European customers. But everything changed thanks to the Marshall Plan, technically known as the European Recovery Program. A program implemented by George C. Marshall who, after being the Chief of staff of the US Army during World War II (the boss of Eisenhower), from September 1930 to November 1945, became the 50th US Secretary of State, under the Presidency of Harry Truman, from 1947 to 1949.
Photo of George Catlett Marshall (1880-1959)
The Marshall Plan proposed an orderly aid as it obliged the European Nation States to act co-ordinately in order to receive the US aid. And it was definitely a huge success as it opened up for Europe a brilliant period of economic reconstruction of three decades known as the Thirty Glorious Years (1945-1975). The problem was that it was never accepted by Stalin, to the point that he decided to break up with its Western allies because he did not want to transform the Soviet Union, the State of the Five years plans, in a capitalist country.
As your remember Stalin, after the death of Lenin became the big boss of the Soviet Union, and did not hesitate in consolidating his position getting rid of all the revolutionaries of 1917 in the Moscow Trials (1936-1939). The unexpecteldy Stalin became an ally of Hitler from August 23 1939 (Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact), something that was surprising as so far Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany had been frontal enemies (fighting for instance in opposite camps in the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War). But suddenly their foreign policy changed completely and the two great powers became allies.
1939's Cartoon of Hitler and Stalin
In a way this Stalins-Hitler's weird pact looks like somehow to what has recently happened with the US and Russia, as Donald Trump has decided that Putin is a great ally, and considering the Europeans the ennemies of the United States (he has publically said that the EU was created to damage the US).
2025's cartoon of Trump and Putin
But coming back to the Nazi-Soviet Agreement, Hitler and Stalin had one aim: the distribution of Poland, which had been an independent country for the first time in its History since 1919. Twenty years later the Soviet-Nazi Alliance enabled the Wehrmacht to invade Poland in Dantzig the 1 september 1939, and 16 days later it was the turn of the Red Army. By the way, Soviet occupation was far more bloody as Stalin coldly ordered the execution of 22.000 Polish citizens, essentially military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilians that on Stalin’s view could organize a solid opposition to the Soviet occupation and rule. It was the Katyn Massacre.
Human remains of Katyn Massacre
Unexpectedly the “entente” between Hitler and Stalin did not last long, as it ended because Hitler ordered the invasion of Russia in what was called the Operation Barbarrossa, that started on Sunday 22 June 1941. This decision was however a fatal mistake for Hitler as it led to the disastrous battle of Stalingrad (17 July 1942 to 2 February 1943). Without the Russian Campaign the Third reich would have won the war.
After six months of fierce combats, the German General Von Paulus surrendered the 90.000 men left from the 6th German Army. The number of casualties was of more than a million soldiers on each side. 40.000 civilians were killed. The most important part was that the defeat of the so far invincible Wehrmacht showed clearly to the world that Hitler will lose the War.
Stalingrad's ruins in February 1943
The Russians however paid the heaviest price for winning World War II, as they suffered 27 million casualties, both civilian and military, as a result of all war-related causes. (The US had only 1 million casualties). As you can imagine the Russians were not especially brutal during the Berlin’s final battle.
The Brandenburger Tor in May 1945
The United States and the Soviet Union ended the war in the same side. As proved the participation of Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill in the Conferences of Teheran (1943), Yalta (February 1945) and Postdam (July-August 1945).
Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta conference
But Stalin's alliance with the US did not last long, only 6 years (4 more than Hitler-Stalin’s Alliance, however), as it ended with the launching of the Marshall Plan (1947), because Stalin did not accept an American aid that would have transformed the Soviet Union in a free market economy. Stalin’s refusal led to the Berlin Blockade (24 June 1948 to 12 May 1949), that was the first act of the Cold War.
Plane landing during the Berlin Blockade
The result was the Iron curtain (Churchill) and it's symbol: the Berlin Wall (1961-1989).
Image from the Berlin Wall
The most significant part in all this was that the Cold War did not only affect Europe. Between 1948 and 1989 the whole World would be divided between the countries that followed Capitalist Democracy and Communist Model. There was not an open war, but the USSR and the US kept on struggling in all continents, until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991.
The World during the Cold War
The creation of NATO and of the Two Germanies
Watching Stalin as an enemy instead of as an ally was pretty scary for Europeans in 1948. Because the Soviet Union had a very powerful army that occupied all Eastern Europe. The Western European governments believed that there was a clear possibility that the Red Army could occupy them as well. In fact it was very easy as the ruined Europeans were unable to oppose militarly to a Soviet attack. This why they decided to act jointly with their American Ally to protect themselves from Stalin.
They took two measures. The first one was the creation of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, Treaty of Washington) on April 4, 1949.
NATO consisted in a mutual assistance military alliance including originally France, the UK and the Benelux Countries (Western Union) plus the United States, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Today it includes 32 member states. The base of NATO is that any military attack of any of its members was to be answered by the organisation which would ensure retaliation.
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The second measure the Western allies adopted to prevent a Red Army attack was the creation of an independent German State. Germany in 1945 was occupied by soldiers belonging to the US, USSR, France and UK. But after Stalin decided to step out from the alliance, the three remaining western powers decided that it was a good idea to create a Western German State as barrier against Soviet menace. So was founded the German Federal Republic (with its own constitution: the Bonn’s Fundamental Law: Grundgesetz für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland, approved on 8 May 1949). It would join NATO in 1955, at the end of the Korean War.
Five months later Stalin pushed for the creation of the German Democratic Republic, which became a country on 7 October of the same year.
Western and Eastern Germany would be separated until the 3 October of 1990 with the dissolution of the GDR and the integration of its Länder in the GFR. Previously was signed on 12 September 1990 the Two plus Four Agreement (Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany) in which the US, the USSR, the UK and France accepted giving back to the Germans full sovereignty to merge both Germanies.
Signing the Two plus Four Agreement
How Communists countries ended up losing the Cold War
Stalin died the 5 March 1953, being 74 years old. After his disappearance the Soviet regime became milder, especially after February 1956, when Khrushchev, by now established as the USSR leader, delivered a speech titled “On the Cult of Personality and its consequences” to the Communist Party Congress. In this address, dubbed the ‘Secret Speech’, Khrushchev condemned Stalin’s use of oppression and brutality, attacked the Stalin personality cult, questioned Stalin’s leadership during World War II and accused his predecessor of economic mismanagement. Stalin's mummy would be retired from the Lenin's Mausoleum in the Moscow Red square in October 1961.
But the Cold War went on all over the World.
Propaganda cartoon from the Cuban revolution
Because, as a matter of fact, tensions between the East and the West did not disappear overnight. In 1950-1953 the US were involved in the bloody Korean War. And from 1955 to 1975 in the Vietnam War. In 1955 was established the Warsaw Pact, to counteract NATO. In 1956 Russian tanks invaded Hungary to crush the Hungarian Revolution. In 1959 a Fidel Castro took power in Cuba and in October 1962 the World shook as a result of the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the 13 of August of 1961 the Berlin appeared (it would last until the 9 of November 1989). Russian tanks went back to Czechoslovakia during the Dubcek’s Prague’s Spring (January-August 1968).
An image from Prague's Spring
At the end, however, countries under communist’s regimes ended up disappearing. States practising what was called the “Real Socialism” (an euphemism for Communist regimes) lost the Cold War. There were a number of reasons. The first one was because “capitalism” and “freedom” did better to insure reconstruction and economic growth. But it was not the only reason. Even more important was that Western democracies were able to solve the “Social Question” in a more effective way, through the development of the Welfare State Model. A model that required State interventionism on the economic field to avoid that market economy caused excessive economic and social inequality. This model of State intervention paradoxically started in the US in the 1930’s with the New Deal policy of FDR. But Europe soon follwed with France’s “Front Populaire” (Léon Blum) measures, in 1937. Though it would be after 1945 that Europeans would consolidate the model in an effective way following the Beveridge System in which Social Security, and Public Welfare aids were supported all over Western Europe by tax payers. Something that was initially possible thanks to the extraordinary Economic growth of European Nation States during the Thirty Glorious years (1945-1975).
Paris, May 68. A crisis in the middle of the Thirty Glorious Years
The Communist model began to crumble. It is very significant that in the West, European Communists parties started rebelling against Moscow, with the advent of Euro communism, with leaders as Italian Enrico Berlinguer that was General Secretary of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) from 1972 to 1984, or the Spaniard Santiago Carrillo, General Secretary of the Spanish Communist Party (PCE) from 1960 to 1982. For the first we had Communist parties that did not obbey Moscow's orders.
Enrico Berlinguer
The arrival to power of Margaret Thatcher (1979-1990) and Ronald Reagan (1981-1989) was another decisive step in the crisis of Communism. The caus was that their policiy of economic deregulation enabled the West to take a huge economic leap forward. The consequence was that the USSR could not follow the rythm of the increase of American Military spending, and ended up collapsing.
Thatcher and Reagan: the leaders of the Neoliberal Revolution
The collaps of the USSR started with the Chernobyl Crisis (26 April 1986), continued with the changes of Perestroika and Glasnost introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev (March 1985 to August 1991), and was completed by the Fall of the Berlin Wall on the 9 of November of 1989. The USSR was dissolved by the Belovezha Accords (8 December 1991) that denounced the Treaty of 1922 creating the USSR.
Mikhail Gorbachev
After the collapsing of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the only two real communist countries are Cuba and North Korea.
THE POST COLD WAR WORLD (1991-2025)
As apparently the American capitalist model had won the Cold War, some arrogant Western intellectuals dared to speak of “The End of History.” But soon the World realized that History was not over. The September 11. 2001 attacks showed that the US were pretty vulnerable after all. Islamic Terrorism since then is part of the daily life of Westerners.
On the other hand Capitalism since 1991 has led to an increasingly unequal World. The anti-regulation movement of the 1980’s spearheaded by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who tried to bring back the Laissez faire in a neo-liberal wave, has since then definitely backfired. Capitalism after the 1980’s neoliberal way has produced a substantial rising of economic and social inequalities that is leading to a new oligarchic model of the State controlled by the Establishment. To the point that in the 21st century 1% of the World population controls 50% of the total wealth of the planet (80 million out of 8000 millions). A dangerous situation that has provoked the worrying consequence that the Middle class is melting and a growing mass of new poor are becoming so desperate that they vote massively for scary populist leaders, as Donald Trump. Democracy and the Rule of Law are clearly in danger.
On the other hand it is important to stress that after 1989, the transition from Communism to Capitalism in the ex-communist regimes has been pretty badly handled. Especially in Russia, where Boris Yeltsin (1991-2000) started a too fast and radical transition to Capitalism following the advice of Russian economist Yegor Gaidar.
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Boris Yeltsin and Yegor Gaidar
The consequence was that the largest country in the world was soon dominated by powerful multimillionaire oligarchs like Roman Abramovich, Mijail Jodorkovski.
Boris Berezovski (1946-2013)
But these oligarchs committed a big mistake. When Yeltsin was found unable to rule, the new masters or Russia decided to replace him with an obscure ex Colonel of the KGB that had worked in Eastern Germany and after 1991 was obliged to drive a Cab in Saint Petersburg to survive. His name was Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. They thought they could control him as they did with Yeltsin. They could not be more wrong. It was for them a fatal mistake. Boris Berezovski was found dead in his London home in March 2013. The oligarchs period was over as the New Tsarist regime was on.
Putin's card of member of the Stasi
What the oligarchs did not know was that Putin was before all a patriot, that couldn't stand how Russia had been humiliated by the Western countries in the 1991-2000 period. So he was decided not only to stop the dismantlement of the USSR, but had only one idea in mind: to restore the might of the old USSR, as it was under Stalin's rule. And so far,as he has been in power for a quarter of a century, the Russian Federation has certainly become one of the countries that matter in the international scene. Essentially because Putin spend 40% of Russian budget in weapons and the reinforcement of the Army. To realise what it means, think that Europe is having a big trouble to bring up the average military spending over 2%, because most of the tax money is spent on financing the Welfare State. Of course the `problem for Russians is that in term of per capita income they are far behind the developped countries. Bur Russians are used to suffer and they are proud of being back as main actors in the World scene.
For understanding what happened in Russia between 1991 and 2000, and why Putin has become the Lord and Master of the Russian Federation you should see the David Cronenberg’s movie Eastern Promises (2007) and read the book by Emmanuel Carrère Limonov (2011). Do not miss them.
Another interesting book to understand how bad liberalism did in the former Communist countries is Lea Ypi’s “Free. Coming of Age at the End of History” (2021), where the author tells us how she lived the fall of communism in Albania, and how people suffered more under the new capitalist regime, than in the tough regime of Enver Hoxha (1945-1985). To the point that she has ended up dedicating her life to teach Marxism in the London Scholl of Economics.
Lea Ypi
And then there is the case of Communist China, as Maoism disappeared during the rule of Den Xiaoping (1978-1992) who opened up the Era of Market Socialism that has transformed China in a leading World Power in the 21st century. A thogh dictatorship that surprisingly is playing full by the Market rules. An amazing contradiction that is without huge disadvantages.
Den Xiao Ping: the hero of Modern China
A Multilateral World
The “socialization” of Western capitalism and the “capitalization” of Eastern Communism has led in very efficient way to the globalization of the World. We have no more two big powers, the US and the USSR, as during the Cold War, but also matter the BRIC's: China, India, Brazil, and the extremely wealthy Petro Monarchies (Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, etc) that are still ruled by absolutists monarchies. The consequences are that now the tensions have to be dealt globally.
This global approach to World tensions is not new. It started with the creation of the League of Nations (1920-1946), that was substituted by the United Nations (since 1945). Since then International Organizations (WTO, GATT, IMF, World Bank) created by Treaties, seek to rule the world through negotiation and governance instead of through authority and military intervention. The consequence of globalization from the International Relations perspective is may be the beginning of a global constitutional history. But this do not apply of course to the political or military scene where dictatorships are far more powerful tah democracies. In fact Russia and China are trying to impose their authoritarian model to the globalized world, as an alternative to the Western Democratic System. And so far with better results.
EUROPE IN THE ERA OF POSDEMOCRATIC US (SINCE JANUARY 20, 2025)
It is clear that Democracy is in crisis, with the rise of populisms and word power authoritarian regimes. Even in the US, a country that used to lead the Free World. Remember how at the end of the first Term of the Trump Administration the whole world went through the shameful episode of the storming of the United States Capitol by the mob of Trump supporters on January 6, 2021. In the Second Term the first thing Trump has done is to release 1600 people who were in Jail for attempting to break the US constitutional system. Scary. But what would you expect from a country that has elected a President convicted by a popular Jury of 24 felonies? A frightening symptom of the weakness of the democratic model. No wonder that Yuval Noah Harari has come up with the expression "Posdemocratic US".
The storming of US Congress by the mob on January 6, 2021
The Rule of Law and the Democratic systems still prevail in Europe. But one may ask for how long, as the countries who lead the world in 2025 are Russia and China which are clearly not democratic. And the US is entering as Harari says in a “Posdemocratic Era” with Donald Trump. The question is: could Europe maintain its independence and the respect of the Rule of Law? Because looking at what is happening to the US, a country that after 1945 was supposed to be the champion of the Free world, we have to admit that the European Union is from this perspective doing much better. Simply because the Rule of Law is one of the pillars of European integration, along with a respect of the Welfare State principle.
And economomically we Europeans are not doing so bad. The European Union is in the 21st century a colossal market with a huge GDP, the third at the global level after China and the US. In the beginning of 2025, according to the International Monetary Fund the biggest GPD was the US, followed by China’s and then the EU. In contrast Russian GPD in 2024 was a little less than 7 billion (per capita income nr 66 of 192, behind Kazakhstan, while the EU as an average is nr. 25, US number 7, China number 71). My point is that the EU can afford more military expenses.
The problem is that we Europeans lack of a political system that will ensure strong leadership. The EU has not a strong Executive. Compare the strength of Ursula von der Leyen to Xi Jiping, Vladimir Putin of Donald Trump. We certainly are democratic Nation States that respect the rule of law, but we are doing very poorly at the global level because we are politically and militarily irrelevant compared to China, Russia, India or even the Petro Monarchies as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, or the United Arab Emirates. And most of this countries –with may be with the exception of India- are not real democracies.
Is the Democratic system and the Rule of Law unfit for our contemporary world? Would we Europeans end up submitting to the autocratic powerful countries? The answer is yes, if we are not able to defend ourselves.
Could Europeans afford to defend themselves?
Europeans have weak armies since the German defeat in 1945. And so far we have been able to survive thanks to the Military Aid of the United States of America. Since 1945 Europe has not been a World power in military terms. Essentially because since 1947 the Western European Nation States decided to spend money in reconstruction aided by the Marshall Plan, and because the military protection was provided essentially by the US through NATO.
Cartoon about the failure of the European Community of Defence (1952)
After Stalin decided to break its alliance with the West and started Cold War Started, Europeans, in proposed the creation of a European Community of Defense (ECD). But it failed as the French National Assembly refused to ratify the treaty. Mainly because France was involved in the Indochina War, a conflict they lost at the Dien Bien Phu Battle (13 March to 7 May 1954). And then, from 1954 to 1962, they were involved in the “dirty” Algerian War. A conflict that brought back Charles de Gaulle to power in 1958, who signed the Evian Accords on 18 March 1962, granting Algeria its independence. A solution that almost costed him his life as the O.A.S.tried to kill him of several occasions. Do not the miss the Fred Zinneman’s Film The Day of the Jackal (1973). Impressive and based in a true story.
The traditionally almighty British and French Armies were also unable to keep the control of the Suez Canal, when Egyptian President Nasser nationalized it. They sent troops but the fighting was short, from 29 October to 7 November 1956. British and French were humiliated as Egypt was backed not only by the USSR (Nasser’s Ally) but by the US, which wanted to make clear that the European colonial times were over. It was the Suez Crisis
.Drawing of the Suez Crisis (1956)
Since 1956 Europe has been protected by the US, essentially after the creation of NATO, an organisation that interestingly survived after the disappearance of the Warsaw Pact (may 1955 to June 1991) In fact it is its existence is seen as a threat by Vladimir Putin. Ukraine who ordered the invasion of Ukraine on 24 of February 1922 with the pretext that Ukrainian Government pretended to join NATO.
Since then Zelenski has been able to resist total occupation because the US and the EU established economic sanctions on Putin’s Russia and provided with money and military aid Ukraine.
Zelenski and Von der Leyen (former German Minister of Defence)
But the equilibrium has just been broken by Donald Trump when he started its second Mandate on January 20, 2025, as he apparently has decided to ally with Putin and leave Europe alone to defend the Westernization of Ukraine. On the 28 of February of 2025, Ukrainian President Volodímir Zelenski was literally expelled from the White House after a resounding quarrel with President Donald Trump Trump and his VP James David Vance.
The consequence was that US withdraw their military aid to Ukraine, and Elons Musk its satellites. After three years of War it seemsVladimir Putin might win it thanks to the US aid. Europe is left alone against Putin (we knew he has been attacking us from the beginning) and now against Trump, who has declared that the European Union was created to weaken the US. For the EU the consequence of all that is that for the first time in 8 decades Europeans we are left alone to fight in the international field, as we are no longer protected by the American Military shield. The question is: could we now defend ourselves?
The problem is that Europeans so far have not developed strong armies because they were protected by the US military force. Today Americans still have bases in Europe. In June 2024 there were still 65.754 active duty US troops in Europe, in the 38 US Military bases spread across the Old continent. Including Zaragoza or Rota in Spain since the Bilateral Treaty Spain- US of 23 September 1953. (Not anymore Torrejón where USAF forces retreated between 21 May 1992 and the 12 February 2004).
Map of US military bases in Europe
In any case Europe seems to have understood that from now on we have to defend ourselves. It is significant that on 4 March the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen has presented for approval a program of 800.000 million Euros as aids for rearmament. And even more important that on 14 March 2025 the French President Emmanuel Macron and the British Prime Minister Keir Starmer have agreed to send unilaterally peace keeping troops to Ukraine.
Remember that British and French however still have the two main Europeans armies, including nuclear devices. The UK was the third country in the world, after the US and the USSR to develop nuclear weapons (since 1952). In France it was General de Gaulle (1958-1969) a strong supporter of French independence towards the US, who insisted in developing since 1963 nuclear weapons (Force de frappe), leading military industry with the Mirage of Dassault, and Nuclear Submarines.
“Europeans: We can work it out” (The Beatles, Rubber Soul 1965)
Now that Europeans we are left without the US military umbrella we are obliged to get back into the arm race if we want to preserve our independence from Putin, Trump or Xi Jiping. The difficult part is that so far we have been spending most of our tax money in Welfare programs to ensure that economic inequalities do not become unbearable. So we would have to tighten our belts and reduce our lifestyle. But even increasing our military spending we will be much better of than the average Russian or Chinese. And certainly that most of American people, as the number of poors in the US has dramatically increased in the last decades.
It is in fact more of a psychological matter, as for 80 years we left our defence in the hands of our American allies. But now that we have lost them we have to roll up our sleeves. And I am convinced that when we pusillanimous Europeans start doing something seriously we can do really well. Let’s remember how Europe has done much better than the US in civil aviation with Airbus industries. Created in 1970 as a joint European project, today it is are doing much better than Boeing. See the documentary Downfall: The Case against Boeing. (2022) directed by Rory Kennedy. A documentary that goes through the crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX planes which claimed the lives of 346 people on board. Accidents provoked because Boeing has been more concerned with financial gain than with the safety of their passengers.
And militarily we Europeans have developed since 1994 a great fighting plane: the Eurofighter that is currently the plane of the German Army since 2003.
The Eurofighter, the symbol of European Defence
These successes can be extended to other fields. US are leading in communications technology and AI, but for how long. The Chinese have developed Zoom, We chat and Tik Tok, and Deepseek, the equivalent of Open AI ChatGpt. And if China has done it why not we Europeans that are wealthier and are in principle better educated. Think for instance that the French have already developed performing AI: “YIAHO”. If we need to survive, we can do a great job, though we are slow taking decisions as a result of the structure of the EU.
Provisional Conclusion
In the actual circumstances economical union is not enough and if we Europeans want to maintain our democracies we will have to fight for them. Unfortunately it is not sure at all that Member States of the EU have understood the lesson of the Ukraine War, as today it seems that Putin's Russia is doing much better and actually could win the War. Which would be disastrous for Europe and for the Free World.
The main problem that Europe is facing to get back as a protagonist in World history is that we have not found an effective way of getting together to defend our interests and our political, legal, social and economical model. Why? This is what we are going to find out in the next Teaching Guides.
Only when they realized their critical situation European States governments understood that the only way of being relevant again was getting together. First they tried the federal way (how we will see in Teaching guide 9) and the failure of this attempt led to the Communitarian Integration (Teaching guides 10, 11 and 12). But before getting there we should remember what has been the position of Europe from 1945 to the present in the World Order, especially after the end of the Cold War in 1989 and the disappearance of the USSR in 1991. Until the beginning of the Ukrainian War started by Putin in February 2022.
The most important idea you have to retain of Teaching Guide 7 is how after 1945 Europe was left far behind World leadership, despite our considerable economic expansion. Nevertheless prosperity has not helped European nation states to join the league of the leading protagonists of the World contemporary history. Ukraine’s War and the new US foreign policy started by Donald Trump has changed this situation after almost 8 decades.
Let's hope that European States are willing or capable of resisting Putin and Xi Jiping. Mainly because money still makes the world go round after all. My conviction is that "We can work it out".
INSTRUCTIONS: First read the text included in your Materials (pages 163 to 181), before proceeding to answer the Concrete Questions, the Concepts and the General Questions.
Concerning the Basic Chronology (pages 182-186) the crucial dates are the following:
1946 (Appearance of the Italian Republic),
1947 (Marshall Plan)
1948, June (beginning of the Berlin Blockade),
1949 (Creation of NATO, Appearance of German Federal Republic and Mao’s triumph in China),
1953 (Death of Stalin),
1958 (DE Gaulle’s in power),
1959 (Castro’s victory in Cuba),
1961 (beginning of the Berlin Wall),
1963 (JFK’s assassination),
1964 (beginning of the Vietnam War),
1966 (beginning of China’s Cultural Revolution),
1968 January-August (Prague Spring),
1973 (military coup in Chile against Allende),
1974 (Nixon’s resignation Watergate scandal),
1975 (end of Vietnam War and death of Franco),
1976 (Death of Mao),
1978 (Den Xiao Ping in Power and beginning of Market Socialism in China),
1979 (Founding of the Islamic Republic of Iran),
1985 (Gorbatchev in power in the USSR),
1989, November 9 (Fall of the Berlin Wall),
1990 (German reunification),
1991 (Extinction of the USSR),
2001, September 11 (Islamic Terrorism hits the US),
2004, March 11 (Terrorist attack in Madrid),
2005 (Angela Merkel becomes German chancellor),
2008 (Obama becomes US President),
2014 (Juan Carlos I resigns on his son Philip VI as king of Spain, and Scottish referendum of independence),
2015 (Bataclan terrorist attack in Paris),
2016 (Brexit referendum and Donald Trump election),
2017 October 1st (Catalan independence illegal referendum),
2020, January 31 (The UK leaves the EU).
2020, March (Expansion of COVID 19’s Pandemic all over the world),
2021 (January 6: assault on US Capitol by Trump supporters;
January 20: Joe Biden takes office as the 46 US President
8 December: Olaf Scholz German Chancelor.
And of course you have to add:
1999, the 31st December when Putin gets to Power after Boris Yeltsin resignation,
2022, the 24th of January, date of the beginning of the Ukraine’s invasion.
2025, 28 February Zelenski is expelled from the White House after a quarrel with Trump and VP Vance. The US withdraw their military aid to Ukraine.
14 March: French President Macron and British Prime Minister Starmer agree to send unilaterally peace keeping troops to Ukraine.
TOPIC FOR DISCUSSION IN CLASS: Why Europeans despite being developed economies we do not have a decisive influence in today’s world?
Please consider the following aspects:
1. Remember the History of Europe in 1919-1939, and from 1945. Especially during the Cold War period. Try to think of the most influential European leaders during this period.
2. Think why a country like the Russian Federation where the average population is facing serious economic problems is far more influential than European nation-States today.
3. Do the US, China, Russia, India have a powerful national narrative? If so explain why and which one. And compare with the European reality.
4. Is the Welfare State a problem in terms of Economic growth? Read the pages about John Rawls theory (176) before answering. Is social justice (reducing inequalities) a problem for becoming a powerful country worldwide? Think about Boris Johnson following statement: "The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends." (24 March 2021)
5. Is democracy a problem for having a powerful State? Think of how Russia has been trying to destabilize Western democracies, taking advantage of local domestic conflicts (as US Presidential Elections, Catalan Conflict, Brexit). And also how a dictatorial regime as China is becoming a leading power. Also consider the case of Petro Monarchies.
6. Does the money really makes the world go round? Is it material comfort all that matters.
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