(I put "forcing" in quotes because quite often it's more of an excuse than a reason.)
[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/07/archipelago-and-atomic-...
I guess we'll never[0] know. Human societies are a very complex system, so it's hard to pinpoint the real, exact cause of a particular geopolitical event - a cause that if it was hypothetically removed from the timestream, would change the outcome of that event or prevent it from happening.
[0] - for a practical, pre-singularity definition of "never"
Even ignoring psychopaths, I have my pet theory too. It goes like this: "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to be separated from it by enough layers of abstraction". So for instance, the moment some military decides to automate away people in the silos I'll start being very scared.
EDIT: I guess you mean the phrase "Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades"?
Obviously having massive troop presence prevented war with the soviets, but it can't be overestimated what stuff like the European Coal and Steel Community, the EEC and other following integration steps did after WWII in terms of getting France and Germany to "need" each other, instead of wanting "revenge" and repayment.
The EEC and the EU haven't kept Europe from having another two or three major wars since the fall of Nazi Germany. (Whether they could have started more world wars after the end of their empires is less clear). Outside powers imposing alliances that prevented the usual suspects from going to war with each other kept this from happening. Today, NATO keeps this from happening.
Some of their implicit goals were harmonising French and German interests so they wouldn't want to go to war again.
The closest I know of is the Cyprus conflict in 1974, but Greece wasn't an EU member then.
What are the two of three major wars which they have had? (Quite puzzled, as I have studied this a little).
He isn't saying those wars happened. He is saying the preventive cause is other then the EEC and the EU.
There's the League of Nations / United Nations model, which tends to be fairly constructive.
There's the "citizen of the world" / cosmopolitan model, which has tended to have egalitarian and idealistic overtones.
There's the Mont Pelerin Society / Atlas Network "Free Trade / Invisible Hand" globalisation model, which seeks benefits for transnational corporations and the plutocracy, without any safety nets or provisions for the mass of the world's population. This viewpoint is strongly adopted among many who align as "right", contrasted with left. Generally, neoliberalism. See Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, George Monbiot, Naomi Oreskes, or Bill McKibben as among its critics.
The populist conservative mode of xenophobic / nonalignment / isolationist tendencies is another element, and among the few which are specifically opposed to international engagement. It's hardly specific to any one nation -- you'll find it expressed among the populist conservative factions of the UK, France, Germany, much of the Islam world, Japan, Russia, and the United States, just off the top of my head.
And it's okay to call it "globalism" like everyone else does.
a land war hasn't occurred in Europe simply because the US and the USSR stalemated each other. Once the USSR ceased to be trade had a tendency to convince people having stuff was fun.
1) barring the US' selective rebuilding of the West German economy after the war.