&gt; In that respect it&#x27;s been a wild success, I&#x27;m not sure we&#x27;ve ever had such a lasting amount of peace.<p>It&#x27;s weird, but we basically had decades of peace in Europe with only minor conflicts before WWI. Interestingly enough, most of this minor conflicts happened in the balkans, much like recent history.<p>EDIT: not trying to deny your observation, or your conclusion that EU was a success in this, just mentioning an interesting fact.