I suspect Western Europe wouldn't be the economic powerhouse it is today.
I mean, the Thames is full of shipping and the airports are full of planes.
Philosophically and historically, 1969 is treated like 1918 and 1945 as the third of the great "years" of the 20th Century. 1918 saw the end of dynastic autarchy, 1945 saw the defeat of Naziism and Fascist authoritarianism and 1969 saw the fall of Communism and State Imperialism.
I recall the triumphalist notions of the "Victory of Democracy" in the 1970s perpetrated by leaders like Reagan and Thatcher who swept to power as centre-left Governments withered in the aftermath of the Communist suicide.
I feel ashamed now to be honest - it was no "victory" with tens of millions dead and millions even now, fifty years or more on, dealing with the after-effects, both humanitarian and environmental, of the stupidity of Brezhnev, Mao and others.
With Communism gone and socialism discredited, the "New Conservatives" swept to power in the mid to late 1970s. In Britain, the Labour Party fell apart after the Sino-Soviet War leading to the long years of Conservative rule but as we now nature abhors a vacuum and the coming of Blair's revivalist "Social Democracy" and Gary Hart's "Third Way" swept the Conservatives aside and we've had a generation of centrist rule which has spread across western Europe.
As we know, the fall of the USSR led to turmoil across Eastern Europe and the eventual fall of its neo-Stalinist regimes and the reunification of Germany in 1975. Brandt is seen by many as the Father of Reunification but the economic cost of re-vitalising the DDR was only a pause. The European Economic Union expanded where the former NATO could not. The Pax Americana no longer required a NATO which ended in the mid 70s and evolved into a Europe-wide humanitarian operation to support the refugees from the post-Soviet civil war and, perhaps more important, to work with UNFISMATRECO to ensure any nuclear material in the former USSR was found and accounted for.
The various nuclear incidents in Asia and the Middle East in the 1980s showed the initial failure of UNFISMATRECO to find all the uranium let alone the actual warheads but it got better under George HW Bush after 1984.
America doesn't of course have a nuclear monopoly though it has overwhelming superiority - we know the UK, France, Israel and South Africa have the Bomb and it's suspected other countries do too.
Western Europe has prospered - with the "threat" gone, military expenditure was cut right back and the arrival of new sources of cheap labour and raw materials has provided western Europe with a huge economic advantage. Trade barriers came down progressively and the politically-aligned nations are again talking about a European Federation by the mid-2030s.
I mean, the Thames is full of shipping and the airports are full of planes.
Philosophically and historically, 1969 is treated like 1918 and 1945 as the third of the great "years" of the 20th Century. 1918 saw the end of dynastic autarchy, 1945 saw the defeat of Naziism and Fascist authoritarianism and 1969 saw the fall of Communism and State Imperialism.
I recall the triumphalist notions of the "Victory of Democracy" in the 1970s perpetrated by leaders like Reagan and Thatcher who swept to power as centre-left Governments withered in the aftermath of the Communist suicide.
I feel ashamed now to be honest - it was no "victory" with tens of millions dead and millions even now, fifty years or more on, dealing with the after-effects, both humanitarian and environmental, of the stupidity of Brezhnev, Mao and others.
With Communism gone and socialism discredited, the "New Conservatives" swept to power in the mid to late 1970s. In Britain, the Labour Party fell apart after the Sino-Soviet War leading to the long years of Conservative rule but as we now nature abhors a vacuum and the coming of Blair's revivalist "Social Democracy" and Gary Hart's "Third Way" swept the Conservatives aside and we've had a generation of centrist rule which has spread across western Europe.
As we know, the fall of the USSR led to turmoil across Eastern Europe and the eventual fall of its neo-Stalinist regimes and the reunification of Germany in 1975. Brandt is seen by many as the Father of Reunification but the economic cost of re-vitalising the DDR was only a pause. The European Economic Union expanded where the former NATO could not. The Pax Americana no longer required a NATO which ended in the mid 70s and evolved into a Europe-wide humanitarian operation to support the refugees from the post-Soviet civil war and, perhaps more important, to work with UNFISMATRECO to ensure any nuclear material in the former USSR was found and accounted for.
The various nuclear incidents in Asia and the Middle East in the 1980s showed the initial failure of UNFISMATRECO to find all the uranium let alone the actual warheads but it got better under George HW Bush after 1984.
America doesn't of course have a nuclear monopoly though it has overwhelming superiority - we know the UK, France, Israel and South Africa have the Bomb and it's suspected other countries do too.
Western Europe has prospered - with the "threat" gone, military expenditure was cut right back and the arrival of new sources of cheap labour and raw materials has provided western Europe with a huge economic advantage. Trade barriers came down progressively and the politically-aligned nations are again talking about a European Federation by the mid-2030s.
