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Originally Posted by freddie
God bless the EU I say. Europe got cemented in it's status quo after WW2 and rightfully so. National tendencies will always be present inside the Union though. That's one of the significant properties of our once to be proper federations. They just need to be controled. By an even tighter Union bound together by a common president and the constitution.
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Indeed, the main original goal of the EEC was to create a way to maintain continental peace, economy was a tool, but peace was the main goal. This was especially true for French and German people, the two countries had fought 3 devastating wars in half a century, and when politicians of both countries started talking of creating some kind of European community only a few years after the end of WWII, preventing a fourth war between the 2 countries was their main agenda.
And the EEC followed by the EU has totally succeeded in that goal, there hasn't been a single armed conflict between EU members since its creation. This may seem "normal" for younger generations, but this is actually the first time that Europe has known such a long period of peace since the end of the Pax Romana. For that alone, and despite its flaws, the EU has been a blessing for European people, it has managed to "neutralize" nationalistic urges which otherwise would have caused more wars on the continent.
WWI was ignited by a Pan-Slavic movement which wanted to unite all Southern Slavs in one state, and the war that broke out between Austro-Hungary and Serbia extended to the whole continent because of the alliance system that forced Germany and the Ottoman Empire to support Austro-Hungary and France, the British Empire and Russia to support Serbia.
70 years later, when Yougoslav people decided to put an end to that unifed Southern Slavic state that the Pan-Slavic movement wanted so much 70 years earlier, that old "alliance system" woke up from its grave immediately.
Germany and Austria immediately supported and recognized the independance of Slovenia and Croatia. (The Pan-Germanic ideology has always been in favor of devided Slavic people, it is much safer to be surrounded by 20 small weakened Slavic states then by one big powerful Pan-Slavic state, and there's always been this dream of reaching the Mediterranean coast in Northern Adriatic, something much easier to do if you only have a couple of small countries in your way.)
On the other hand, France, the UK, and Russia did not welcome the break-up of Yugoslavia and supported Serbia and its idea of maintaining a unified Southern Slavic state. (The Entente had aways supported the idea of a Pan-Slavic state which was seen as a stabilizing element in the Balkans and a counter force to the Germanic central powers, the break-up of Yugoslavia was also seen as "delayed victory" for the central powers and the military of the three Entente countries have taken it as a personal blow 70 years later. After all, the creation of a Southern Slavic state was one of the goals of WWI and considered a victory for the Entente, the break-up of Yugoslavia anihilated that victory 70 years later, something the military never take lightly.)
The bottom line is that when Yugoslavia broke up, all the actors of WWI immediatlely fell back to their old alliance system and military logic, and if the EU had not existed, i am convinced that the Yugoslav conflict would have expanded beyond its borders. The EU neutralized all that and prevented any direct (and conflicting) involvement of EU members in the Yugoslav civil war, containing and preventing the war from spreading.
Gavrilo Princip, the man who 'started' WWI.