West Europe's Recidivistic Hubris
2,555 words
Since January 1919, it cannot be denied that the West or Atlantic Europe, with minor exceptions such as Ireland, has repeatedly overplayed its hand.(1) It started with the historic exclusion of Germany and the challenge of forging a sustainable post-war order. Obviously, good times passed after the predominantly Soviet liquidation of the the Austro-German dictator's revanchist regime. However, the genie was left out of the bottle during the post-Soviet order. Entente and British-led League-of-Nations-style exclusion and triumphalist ignorance toward a weakened adversary could be observed again. This time, the increasingly isolated Russian Federation's clearly declared red lines were structurally ignored. The hypothesis is that western collectivity's post-war approaches of the continental other revealed a war-provoking pattern.(2)
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Section titles
Unprecedented Until the Mid-1990s
Red Lines
Europa Solo
Concluding paragraph
If the theatre of war and peace were to be left to European parties, it cannot be said that history offers any model for proper results. Again, the old world's exclusive interplay may well end up in full-scale escalation. Without the United States' active participation, the worst seems yet to come.
Peter de Bourgraaf
Footnotes
1. Apart from a few meaningful exceptions such as Ireland.
2. Glenn Diesen, Jeffrey Sachs: NATO and Russia on the Brink of Nuclear War, G. Diesen's Substack / Youtube interview, June 3, 2025, final couple of minutes.
3. In Peter de Bourgraaf's German-language centenary book, this British-British derailment of the Armistice Agreement was analysed from a transnational perspective. Peter de Bourgraaf, Hundert Jahre Urkatastrophe. Der Kolonialvertrag 1919, Göttingen 2018.
4. Thomas Gidney, An International Anomaly. Colonial Accession to the League of Nations, Cambridge 2025, https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009584432, p. 13–14, 20, 70, 81, 84, 107–108 and 114.
5. A few months into US President Warren Harding's term, a German-American peace treaty was signed on mutually agreeable conditions. In contrast to the Versailles diktat, it may be regarded as the one and only sustainable, because it mirrored the ceasefire provisions. The victorious power negotiated on an equal footing with the underdog (Weimar). Imperialism and sub-imperialism were left to the consequently dictating parties of respectively David Lloyd George, Britain's Prime Minister, and his colonial upstart Jan Christian Smuts.
6. De Bourgraaf, Hundert Jahre Urkatastrophe, S. 92, 98 und 144; Scott L. Malcomson, The Disappearance of Self-Determination from the League of Nations Covenant, January–February 1919, in: The Historical Journal 68 (2025), pp. 813–836, here p. 820.
7. In alignment with this interpretation, Britain's colonial proxies, with South African Jan Christiaan Smuts as their figurehead, are regarded as European proxies. In contrast to the United States, the collective of Central and West Europeans, including Smuts' sub-imperialists, bore exclusive responsibility for the outbreak, if not the causes of another world war (1939–1945).
8. Sabine Mangold-Will, Vorbild Türkei – dunkles Licht aus dem "Orient". Zu einer transnationalen Geschichte der Weimarer Republik auf dem Weg in den Abgrund, in: Christoph Cornelißen and Dirk van Laak, Einleitung: Die (Ent-)Provinzialisierung Weimars, in: Cornelißen and van Laak (eds.), Weimar und die Welt. Globale Verflechtungen der ersten deutschen Republik, Göttingen 2020, p. 189.
9. When Estonia, her country of origin, was occupied by the USSR, Kallas' mother was deported to Siberia.
11. Thomas Fasbender, Washington-Gipfel zur Ukraine: Europäer sind nur Statisten am Spielfeldrand, Berliner Zeitung, August 19, 2025 (particularly fifth paragraph).