European Civil War - The Opposing Case

The Opposing Case

Civil wars typically occur between groups within a state. It is rare for them to occur across national boundaries, though this can happen when ethnic groups are split across national borders in irredentias or when nations split into separate components who then enter into a war with one another, which is arguably what happened in the American Civil War.

In either case, opponents argue that Europe of the 1890s to 1940s was a geographic grouping of individual sovereign nations, and cannot be regarded as a nation or a single state in formation. Each nation had its individual government, separate bodies of law and individual empires. Each was a clearly defined nation in its own right and had every intention of remaining that way. Therefore prima facie all wars were international rather than internal.

Under this scheme, the emergence of a quasi single European state (in the form of the EU) is born from a desire to prevent future wars rather than as a consequence of the victorious side in any European Civil War exerting its influence over the others. Viewing the European wars of the twentieth century as a intra-state civil war is an example of 'reading history backwards' by interpreting the context of past events through the resultant circumstances.

The dispute notwithstanding, the European Union is said to be planning to set up a House of European History allegedly referring to these events as "the European Civil War". The controversy about the theory's factual accuracy and the motives of the EU in pushing this view do not support the validity of the theory.