April 9,
2025
Wars Between Europeans
Certainly, the two World Wars caused a number of casualties never seen before,
at least in absolute terms. In relative terms — compared to the population — I
don’t think so; they may have been surpassed, for example, by the Thirty Years’
War, and certainly by the Mongol invasions.
However, I would note that in the last 200 years, that is, since 1815, they are
a terrible exception: wars between Western countries have been few and not very
bloody, and they have completely ceased in the last 80 years — which is quite a
long time.
The wars in Yugoslavia and, unfortunately, in Ukraine are at the edge of Western
civilization: no one seriously thinks anymore that major nations like Germany
and France might go to war with each other, as happened for so many centuries.