{"id":61585,"date":"2026-10-17T01:00:16","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T05:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=61585"},"modified":"2026-10-16T10:35:38","modified_gmt":"2026-10-16T14:35:38","slug":"qotd-the-original-purpose-of-the-european-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/qotd-the-original-purpose-of-the-european-project\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The original purpose of the European project"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Professor Bogdanor tells us that the European project was one of peace, and no doubt, after the second catastrophic war within the space of half a century, this is in part so, at least originally. No one could possibly have wanted yet another Franco-German conflict. But it does not in the least mean that the subsequent peace in Europe was caused by the European project. Other factors were surely far more important, indeed decisive.<\/p>\n

First, of course, was the fact that Europe was in no condition to wage another war. The continent was in ruins, the Germans were disarmed, the Americans would not have stood for it, and in any case the Germans had genuinely changed. There was no revanchisme<\/em> to speak of in Germany, as there had been after the first war. Moreover, to the east was the looming presence of what in the 19th century was called the Russian steamroller, only infinitely worse than that of the time of Alexander I and Nicholas I, with a barbaric ideology that at the time attracted the allegiance of a considerable proportion of the population, especially of that part of it \u2014 the intelligentsia \u2014 that ought to have known better. Only American power prevented the steamroller from rolling west, and thereby kept the peace in Europe.<\/p>\n

Even if the maintenance of peace was one of the original aims of the European project, this is a very weaselly way of putting it. Even without the European Union, Estonia would not attack Portugal, nor would Belgium attack Slovakia. What is meant by keeping the peace is ensuring that Germany does not again attack France (no one thinks that France would attack Germany): in other words, and to put it crudely, without the European Union people thought \u2014 even Germans themselves \u2014 that Germany would be up to its old tricks again. I do not believe this.<\/p>\n

Theodore Dalrymple, “European Empire, Fractured”, Law & Liberty<\/em><\/a>, 2020-11-10.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Bogdanor tells us that the European project was one of peace, and no doubt, after the second catastrophic war within the space of half a century, this is in part so, at least originally. No one could possibly have wanted yet another Franco-German conflict. But it does not in the least mean that the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[62,1117,1118,7,41],"tags":[108,337,433,1289],"class_list":["post-61585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-france","category-germany","category-history","category-quotations","tag-coldwar","tag-eu","tag-sovietunion","tag-theodoredalrymple"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-g1j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61585"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61585\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105364,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61585\/revisions\/105364"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}