Re:Day One at Yalta, the Conference That Shaped the World
by WalterBright on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @04:25PM
(#22251140)
The complete collapse of government in continental Europe immediately after WW2 along with the breakdown of social order likely had a lot to do with that.
Re:Day One at Yalta, the Conference That Shaped the World
by baybal2 on Wednesday February 05, 2020 @04:38PM
(#22251240)
Sure that's the case too, but most of Western Europe was spared a complete devastation, unlike Central and Eastern Europe.
A lot of them resumed their colonial ambitions, and small time squabbles within few years after the war, but they never resumed them in a way they did before WWII, and never tried to challenge US primacy.
They were very conscious of American reservations. Back in the early cold war, NATO was coming with a lot more of strings attached from US, with former great powers toning down their ambitions being one of them.
Both NATO and the gradual decline of European major powers post-war was a result of that.
NATO coming to existence, and its initial strength was in many reasons due to Western European power fears that US may turn back on them too eventually.
The timidity of Western Europe on the global stage in that time period was also a result of them ceding primacy on the world stage to US.