Where Have All the Soldiers Gone? The Transformation of Modern Europe (review)

Despite Milton’s pledge to “justify the ways of God to man,” one comes away from Paradise Lost especially captivated by the depiction of Satan. I had a similarly inverted reaction to Sheehan’s new book. The reassuring effect that his treatise on European peace was apparently supposed to have was lost on me after I completed reading the first half. I was so winded by Sheehan’s brilliant account of the World Wars and their “coldly” menacing aftermath that his equally insightful analysis of the peace, democracy, and economic development that have spread throughout the EEC and the EU left me somewhat underwhelmed. The anticlimax is prepared from the get-go, as Sheehan informs his readers that European peace is a specifically European phenomenon and that the unique political developments that make peace possible in Europe cannot be duplicated elsewhere—on soil less saturated with the blood of men, as it were. Add to this claim Sheehan’s insistence that the EU as it is can never become a superpower, and one cannot but feel skeptical about his assurances—limited and confined, as these may be—that in Europe war is a thing of the past.

On second thought, though, that precisely may be the point. War is so impressive while peace is so meek. War takes your breath away, and peace leaves you feeling underwhelmed, unimpressed, unsure. It is hard to believe Sheehan that Europe—with its bloody history of destruction and hate—has finally got all that out of its system and is content to endure the boredom that so tested its patience in 1914. Then again, most things that need our faith—like the justice of God’s ways—are hard to believe.