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YZFtoday at 1:07 AM2 repliesview on HN

I would bet any amount that if you go to a random European city and stop 100 random people on the street you'd be lucky if one person has even heard of Mearsheimer. I think you're also overthinking how the EU got created. I don't think pre-EU Europe was on the brink of violence either. It was more IMO simplistic (but possibly correct, who knows) thinking that it's stronger (economically) as a block. A lot of present day Europe issues that might lead to bigger problems are potentially worse because of the EU.


Replies

jpleyden98today at 1:24 AM

You're just showing your ignorance and lack of knowledge about the history of the EU.

Whilst the EU in it's current form did not exist until 1993, it's predecessor the European Coal and Steel Community was formed in 1950 with the Schuman Declaration: https://european-union.europa.eu/principles-countries-histor...

The primary goal of this was to prevent another war by joining european economies together economically. It's not 'overthinking it'. It quite literally is the main reason and you can go and read the speeches from the politicians at the time to confirm this.

Heres a direct quote from the declaration itself

> The solidarity in production thus established will make it plain that any war between France and Germany becomes not merely unthinkable, but materially impossible.

The fact that the european powers (with the exception of russia) are largely at peace with each other and haven't had a major war with each other since the second world war is very unusual given european history.

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Apocryphontoday at 2:53 AM

Isn’t Mearsheimer a crank these days anyway?