Bajrektarevic A. 25 years after 9/11 — How many Germanies should Europe have?

Abstract: Ever since the Peace of Westphalia, Europe maintained the inner balance of powers by keeping its core section soft. Peripheral powers like England, France, Denmark, (Sweden and Poland being later replaced by) Prussia, the Ottomans, Habsburgs and Russia have pressed and preserved the center of continental Europe as their own playground. At the same time, they kept extending their possessions overseas or, like Russia and the Ottomans, over the land corridors deeper into Asian and MENA proper. Once Royal Italy and Imperial Germany had appeared, the geographic core «hardened» and for the first time started to politico-militarily press onto peripheries, including the two European mega destructions, known as the two World Wars. Therefore, this new geopolitical reality caused a big security dilemma lasting from the 1814 Vienna congress up to Potsdam conference of 1945, being re-actualized again with the Berlin Wall destruction: How many Germanies and Italies should Europe have to preserve its inner balance and peace? At the time of Vienna Congress, there were nearly a dozen of Italophone states and over three dozens of Germanophone entities — 34 western German states + 4 free cities (Kleinstaaterei), Austria and Prussia. The post-WWII Potsdam conference concludes with only three Germanophone (+ Lichtenstein + Switzerland) and two Italophone states (+ Vatican). Than, 25 years ago, we concluded that one of Germanies was far too much to care to the future. Thus, it disappeared from the map overnight, and joined the NATO and EU — without any accession talks — instantly. West of Berlin, the usual line of narrative claims that the European 9/11 was an event of the bad socio-economic model being taken over by the superior one — just an epilogue of pure ideological reckoning. Consequently — the narrative goes on — the west (German) taxpayers have taken the burden. East of Berlin, people will remind you clearly that the German reunification was actually a unilateral takeover, an Anschluss, which has been paid by the bloody dissolutions affecting in several waves two of the three demolished multinational Slavic state communities. A process of brutal erosions that still goes on, as we see it in Ukraine today.

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