Europe as a world power

In the whole modern history Europe was the real center of the world. It represented the continent which was permanently on the helm of the development process, which launched the main trends, which unveiled the democratic model of leadership, which invented parliamentarism, which was the source of all important achievements of the last centuries.

Politically speaking, the twenty century witnessed Europe's decline process from the world wide leader position, of continent in which there were the main powers of the world, of real center of some colonial empires, which exceeded by far its stretch and borders. In the 20 th century the background was changed: Europe was no longer the center of the world policy. Concerning this matter, Zbigniew Brzezinski was entitle to notice that "the World War I, in fact the last European war led by world wide European powers" mitigated very much the strength of the continent, while the World War II "perfected Europe's historical suicide" becoming the real place where a global competition between two powerful extra European states developed.

From this point of view, the Cold War represented a face to face competition between these two superpowers in order to dominate Europe. In the new context, the Mackinder thesis would have been expressed otherwise: the one which dominates Europe, dominates Eurasia and the one which dominates Eurasia, dominates the whole world.

The division of one of the most powerful states of the continent was the symbol of Europe's division: Germany. In the west side of the country there were American troops while in the west side Soviet troops did the same thing. "From Stettin on the Baltic Sea shore to the Adriatic Sea shore, an iron courtin was dropped over our continent" said Winston Churcil in 1946. That was to be the metaphor which was going to remain for half a century a boundary line which divided Europe into two parts: Western and Eastern Europe.

The end of the Cold War is a much more important event for the European continent than for any other region of the world. For Europe we speak about the end of a division period, about initiating a new geopolitical era, about self-defining and self-assertion, about ardent searching of a new identity, of a new way of development. This moment is relevant because it may show us whether Europe was able to learn something from the period which has just ended and whether she is ready to welcome the new modern society.