How do conflicts begin?

I was off skiing at Glenshee on Saturday with my best friend.  Great snow, blue sun filled skies.  Yes, it was just like France.  And reflecting on that on the chairlift the topic turned to Europe.  In or out?  And among the myriad of other things we considered about the European Coal and Steel Community which became the European Economic Community which became the European Union, we asked "has it kept Europe war free"?

Good question.  Because if it has, it’s a good reason to stay in.  So, has the ECSC / EEC / EU been a cause of peace in Europe, or a consequence of a peace built on the defeat of fascism, the spread of democracy and the security of NATO?

Let’s look back to when it was created in the agreement signed on 25 March 1957 by founding members Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and West Germany.  All countries the UK helped liberate in the 2nd World War.

If the ECSC had been set up to prevent war, why were some of these founding members so keen to keep out of their new club the nations like the UK who had been at the forefront of bringing to an end the dark days of the Nazi empire.  The ones trying to bring peace to Europe.  That not strike you as a trifle odd?

Yes, I know, it’s all hypothetical now.  But let’s try to look at it in a different way.

Does jamming different nations together in a single political union typically make them get on better or worse?  That is the real question.  Well, if you look at the conflict zones around the planet, from Chechnya to South Sudan, from Kashmir to Ukraine, you do question whether it does.

By far the most common cause of unrest is people’s sense that they have been excluded from decision making and included, as it were, in the wrong state.

Or closer to home, ponder the effect that the euro has had on relations among its participant states.  Listen to the way Greeks now talk about Germans and vice versa.  

Is economic and political integration quelling or stoking animosities among Europe’s peoples?  History tells us that it is from animosities, a feeling of powerlessness or a groundswell of feeling marginalised, that conflicts begin.