For good or for ill, conquering and reconquering is what Europeans do ---- to each other and anywhere else they can. For Europeans, borders are a temporary nuisance and changing them is their favorite parlor game.
It
was. But this is no longer the last millenium.
That ship sailed in the aftermath of WW2 and the creation of NATO. The major European powers - Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, etc. proved over the course of the last three quarters of a century - multiple generations - that they no longer had any interest in warring among themselves over territory and borders. They had advanced sufficiently economically to where war was no longer in their national interest, and their people had no interest in fighting.
That's precisely the reason we had such a hard time getting them to meet their NATO military spending obligations. Those countries simply no longer had an interest in war in Europe for profit.
And that is the exact reason Europe has had this kind of reaction to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They really thought they had banished major wars of conquest from Europe forever, and then Russia chose to return that scourge to the continent.
Pretending that this is just more of the same is pretending the last 75 years don't exist.
