Europe: the continent of never ending wars

Europe is the only continent that is not a continent, because its territory, which extends for 10,531,000 square kilometers, has no limits to the east. Just a couple of mountain ranges, which are easily traversable.

It is rather a large choppy peninsula with a high population density that in turn has several smaller peninsulas also with many people inhabiting them.

Well, those people for a long time developed different histories and cultures and later, when they had enough power, they dedicated themselves to expanding in all directions they could and, as much as possible, seizing many territories, towns, and cities in various parts of the world.

Culturally and politically, Europe fragmented, reconstituted itself and fragmented again over and over again, until now forming a multitude of culturally identifiable states that managed to obtain and preserve their independence and their language, after many efforts and struggles.

During the last centuries and even much earlier, but especially since the beginning of the 20th century and that is what we are going to talk about, this fragmentation and realignment caused numerous wars, some of them very bloody.

Let's say that since the beginning of the 20th century in Europe there have been 20 wars ranging from civil wars in a single country where there was usually also the involvement of external forces to wars that included several countries in destructive military alliances that ended with millions of deaths and a lot of destruction.

The first European wars of the century took place in the Balkans, when various provinces of the Ottoman Empire united in the Balkan League, Bulgaria, Montenegro, Greece and Serbia faced the army of the sultanate in 1912 and later, after having defeated it, they faced each other. yes to distribute the territories abandoned by the Ottomans (1913).

A year later a continental war broke out, a generalized war throughout Europe, which also covered colonial territories that had been conquered by some European states in other parts of the world, this war was what was called the First World War or the Great War.

Almost all governments were in this war. On one side was the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, the Ottoman Empire and the Kingdom of Bulgaria and on the other an alliance of France, the United Kingdom, the Tsarist Russian Empire and Italy. The United States, Canada, Japan, Australia, Belgium and several other countries later joined the latter group. As can be seen, practically all of Europe was immersed in this great conflict with profound consequences including the death of 20 million and many others injured and a great deal of destruction.

As a result of this war, the European political geography underwent several modifications with the dissolution of the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian empires and the advent of the Bolshevik regime in Russia. In the course of the war, other local wars took place such as the persecution of Greeks and Armenians in Turkey and the Irish rebellion against the United Kingdom in 1916.

Shortly after the war ended, the Greco-Turkish War broke out in 1919-1922, the Polish-Soviet War in 1920, and Italy's colonial war with Ethiopia in 1935-36.

From 1936 to 1939 there was also a civil war in Spain with the intervention of foreign powers (Germany and Italy) and a war between Finland and the Soviet Union (1939).

In 1939 a general war broke out again in almost all of Europe due to the invasion of neighboring countries by Germany with Italy as an ally and in the Far East the support and imperial initiative of Japan.

The allies made up of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, the United States, France and China confronted this German-Italo-Japanese axis. The axis of Germany and its partners was supported by the kingdoms of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, as well as Albania, Slovakia, Croatia, Bohemia and Moravia, etc. The allies for their part involved Poland, Czechoslovakia, Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Canada, and a few other countries.

 As a result of this war in 1945 the axis powers were defeated, some 70 to 80 million people died, there was a lot of destruction and the political borders of the continent changed. Old countries disappeared and borders substantially changed, for example, Germany lost Pomerania and Konigsberg, which were transferred to Poland and the USSR, respectively, the Yugoslav Federation and East Germany appeared, the so-called people's and socialist republics of Eastern Europe were constituted, such as Romania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, the Baltic republics, etc.

In the following years, some European countries continued with their colonial wars, the United Kingdom in India and Kenya, France in Vietnam and Algeria, and Portugal in Angola and Mozambique.

From 1991 to 1999 new wars were unleashed in Yugoslavia, first in Croatia, then in Bosnia and finally in Kosovo. The federation was dissolved, fragmented into several pieces. Where there was one state there are now seven states: Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo.

In those same years, several local wars broke out in Georgia with Abkhazia and South Ossetia, with the support of Russia, and in the Caucasus between Armenia and Azerbaijan (1988-1994 and 2021).

Finally, in 2022, the war that currently occupies the headlines of the press was triggered, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine due to the declaration of independence of Luhansk and Donetsk and the change of regime in kyiv in 2014.

Several states, in particular the entire European Union, NATO, the US and several allies, such as Canada, Australia, Japan, Republic of Korea, were indirectly incorporated into this conflict through sanctions and military aid.

The conclusion that in the European continent, extremely fragmented from the political and cultural point of view, there is a tendency to resolve conflicts by armed means.

Time passes and this trend seems to continue.

It is increasingly difficult for European societies to interpret the deep meaning of the word peace, every time conflicting economic or political interests or ambitious personal leaderships appear, Europeans tend to seek solutions through war.

And that sad behavior continues.