Postwar Prevention

Reconstructing Europe after World War Two had many different aspects. Aside from the obvious need to physically rebuild Europe, the economies – and thus, ideologies– also needed to be rebuilt. One of the key themes that emerged after WW2 was how to prevent another world war from occurring again.  After seeing how the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations failed to prevent WW2, leaders instead turned to basic structures of politics and the economy.  Perhaps restructuring the basics of their societies would help avoid another conflict of this scope. The world had been organized into nation states, and this basic structure began to be questioned.  Many nationalistic tendencies had lead to WW1 and WW2—so what if this structure changed? Alexandre Kojève’s advice in “Outline of a Doctrine of French Policy,” is for geopolitical structure to be reorganized into empires.  Rather than being based on ethnicity, he suggests these empires would be based around similar tendencies. For example, his idea for the Latin Empire would have been Catholic European countries. In Victoria de Grazia’s article “Irresistible Europe: America’s Advance through 20^th Century Europe,” she explores the economic changes that occurred in postwar Europe.  Similar to Kojève’s idea of more unity, she unwraps the steps towards globalization that occurred throughout Western Europe and the United States.  The turn towards a more consumeristic focused economy happened throughout the US and then moved to Western Europe, showing the global network that was beginning to develop in terms of economics. Many people postwar had lived through two major world conflicts that had devastated Europe, along with other Eastern fronts.  Efforts to prevent another war failed post WW1, and I think these articles show how people during this time were willing to question everything in order to prevent another mass conflict of this kind.  We continue to see the affects of these decisions today—many believe that the precursors to the European Union began from Kojève’s ideas of empires, and we see a much more globalized economy today.  Although some efforts, such as the Marshall Plan, were not as effective as they may have hoped in reconstruction, they were enough to stop a third world war similar to WW1 and WW2.   I think that despite the controversies presented in these articles, they do provide some hope—that lasting changes were made, and we have not experienced a war like WW1 or WW2 since.