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alamar
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What is the answer of Coal and Steel / EU based security framework regarding Russia

It is postulated many times that the EU was created to prevent a war between large countries of Europe and was successful in doing so:

The European Coal and Steel Community which is designed specifically to link their economies in a way to prevent war

The European Union (EU) won the Nobel Peace Prize... has thus “helped to transform most of Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace”

However, the obvious issue of the security framework based on the fact that EU members are reluctant to fight a war on the opposing sides is that Russia is not a EU member and did not have any significant political integration with it even before 2014. Russia is obviously being participant of most large European wars such as Napoleonic wars, Crimean war, World War I and II. I wonder if there is an official explanation on why the EU deterrence was supposed to work in this fashion? Alternatively, is there an official assertion that this risk is not covered by the EU security model and is left unaddressed?

Some details:

Coal and Steel Community was signed into existence in 1950, when there also was Comecon, so its point was that the Western pact has to balance Comecon and ensure no war on the western side of Iron Curtain. However, the EU was created in 1992 when the Soviet Union was already dismantled so it was in position to treat this Russia issue from the day one.

A war in Europe does not have to start as a frontal assault of two large countries on each other - it is sufficient that they enter the same conflict when being on different sides (as it is already a case in Ukraine) and then the situation may slide into larger war uncontrollably.

I know that some prominent people acknowledged this issue (often from the somewhat different, NATO/US-centric angle), such as George Kennan and George Friedman from Stratform. However, since it wasn't their job to define EU and postulate its deterrence capabilities, they could not answer this question.

The issue of Turkey is similar since it participated in European wars as well. However, the issue is milder since Turkey is more focused on Middle East and not Eastern Europe for some time, is/was an EU candidate, and it does not have nuclear weapons.

alamar
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