European balance of power
During much of the Modern Age, the balance was achieved by having a small number of ever-changing alliances contending for power,[1] which culminated in the World Wars of the early 20th century.
The two most important Greek cities, the Ionian-democratic Athens and the Dorian-aristocratic Sparta, led the successful defense of Greece against the invading Persians from the east, but then clashed against each other for supremacy in the Peloponnesian War.
Desire to form a universal monarchy brought Alexander the Great to annex the entire Persian Empire and begin a hellenization of the Macedonian possessions.
[2] Rome expanded into the whole of Italy around the same period and then rose to prominence in the western and Eastern Mediterranean through the Punic and Macedonian wars, but was then shaken by a century-long political crisis.
Meanwhile, the popularity and wealth of Roman generals increased: notably Julius Caesar acquired fame for projecting military power north of the Alps into Gaul, east of the Rhine into Germania and across the English Channel into Britain.
[3] The Roman Empire peaked during the Pax Romana, stagnated during the crisis of the third century AD and ultimately split between the Latin West and the Greek East.
[citation needed] Among the successor kingdoms in the West, that of the Franks was the largest, and under Charlemagne managed to unite most of present-day France, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Low Countries and Italy under one rule: he was subsequently crowned Holy Roman Emperor the day of Christmas in 800 by Pope Leo III.
Their rivalry made possible the birth of autonomous city-states in northern Italy and the rise of an independent feudal monarchy in France under the House of Capet.
With the Holy Land lost to Islam and the Byzantine Empire seeking help from Turks, the Pope initiated the crusades against Muslims in an attempt to restore Christian unity following the Eastern Schism of the Orthodox from the Catholics.
In response, European rival states sanctioned privateers to raid Spanish or Portuguese ships full of gold and silver, most especially in the Caribbean.
Ultimately, the papacy lost its status and influence with the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) where the catholic French empire allied with the Protestant nations to defeat the Habsburg alliance.
Fought primarily in Central Europe, an estimated 4.5 to 8 million soldiers and civilians died as a result of battle, famine, and disease, while some areas of what is now modern Germany experienced population declines of over 50%.
[12][13] In the 16th and 17th centuries, English and Dutch foreign policy strove to prevent a creation of a single universal monarchy in Europe, which many[14] believed France or Spain might attempt to create.
[26][27] Newly created alliances were proven to be fragile, something that triggered the First World War in 1914 with Germany and Austria-Hungary on one-side against Great Britain, France, Italy and Russia (until 1917) on the other.
The first NATO Secretary General, the British Lord Ismay, famously stated the organization's initial goal was "to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.
In addition, the term EU three (or G-3) was used to describe the grouping of foreign ministers from France, the United Kingdom, (at the time is still a European Union member state) and Germany (now re-unified) during the Iran nuclear talks.
Germany (which has the largest economy in Europe) is often regarded as the EU's economic leader, such as with the ongoing European sovereign debt crisis, whilst France and the United Kingdom (both permanent members of the UNSC) often lead in defence and foreign policy matters, such as the intervention in Libya in 2011.
[30] [needs update] However, there continues to be a wider, strategic balance of Western and (now) Russian power, albeit with the boundary between the two pushed further east since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with many former Communist countries in Central Europe having since joined the EU and NATO.
