Is there a possibility of war breaking out in Europe?

Or at least an insurgency, similar to that seen in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last decade or so.

The European machine is becoming all powerful and causing real pain to ordinary people.

The European commission, an unelected body, have decided that the elected leadership of Greece is not up to the job of driving the Greek people into the ground, so their democratically elected prime minister is forced to stand down and is replaced by someone who has the approval of Brussels.

The commission also knew that Berlusconi was never going to impose the austerity measures demanded by Europe on his own people. So he too is forced to stand down and replaced by an ex European commissioner, again unelected.

These displaced leaders may be considered idiots by some, but they were elected by their own people, better your own idiot than someone else's lapdog.

The British are being ruled by a coalition who are imposing policies that were never proffered at the election, but the condem coalition are taking the opportunity to break their own pre election promises as neither had a majority. this is their logic for doing as they please.

So after years of losing troops trying to help Iraq and Afghanistan build democracies, some of our own are being destroyed by the Commissars that rule Europe.

Are these in danger of going to far? Could this end in some form of armed conflict?

It's been pointed out before, but the Commission are unelected in the same way the Cabinets of many countries are unelected. They are appointed with the consent of the (directly elected) European Parliament and can be removed by them. They are hardly faceless unaccountable overlords. As for your main question of war, it just seems laughable.

So what gives them the power to insist upon the removal of the elected leaders of sovereign nations?

Most conflict is laughable until it happens.

I think that the British coalition gov is made up of mostly self made or inherited millionaires, do you really think there is a divide between the Tories and the libdems?

I have a friend who works for the environment dept who is so labour he makes red ken look like a Tory, and he told me on election night that most of these policies would not be seen through.

As for war, Europe is already at war with each other, but to think it would get physical, which I presume you are is as quoted above laughable

Exactly, they didn't order them to do anything.

Actually Omar, the most interesting thing here is what does a pink name signify? I have looked as I thought I knew them all

This is standard in the UK, coalition or no. Probably in the US also imo.

I don't think an actual hot war will break out any time soon. This isn't because I think Europeans have shed their bloodlust, but rather because the victorious Allies wisely decided to disarm the Huns. With the exception of the UK and possibly France, Europe is essentially a vassal state of the U.S., and does not possess the military to start shooting right away.

The more likely near term scenario is massive riots throughout European cities, and the rise of nationalism. It will soon become evident that the European State is not going to be able to live up to its part of the social contract. People who have silently accepted heavy taxation, government intrusion in most aspects of their lives, and the import of millions of foreigners from completely alien cultures are going to be extremely pissed off when it sets in that they've been had. Politicians/Elites will look for scapegoats to deflect blame; those aforementioned foreigners may find life increasingly uncomfortable.

There is zero chance.

Also the EU commission replacing the leaders in Greece and Italy was:

1, awesome
2, part of a deal to give them ****loads of money

Well, there was WW2. A little bit of prescedent there. I could easily see something similar happening again. What if Lithuania gets its own Hitler?

Chance of war in Europe is about the same as chance of civil war in the US.

The irony given we draw close to the anniversary of the start of the Great War is apparent, but WW2 was the war to end all wars between western nations under the current paradigm (wait and see if Jiggs is right about that Max Max stuff i guess).

The technology, institutions and mechanisms created out of WW2 make it impossible to happen.

The more likely war that could happen would be a cold war isolation of a country from the rest of Europe and even then its really difficult to imagine a chain of events for that to happen.

They they will get stopped and that 'Hitler' will be removed.

US and France has hundreds of nukes that they can launch super efficiently so the chance of major military war is zero.

In a lot of European countries, the governing bodies are not elected. The parliament is elected, and they form a government. Consequently, no government is able to govern, without the explicit consent, or contractual confidence as most countries call it, of the parliament. Also, in a lot of countries, it is perfectly normal to appoint ministers that have not been on any ballot as part of the cabinet.

So, while the formation of the new governments in Italy and Greece is exceptional due to the circumstances under which they were formed, it is not out of the ordinary from a constitutional perspective. Additionally, both new governments currently have massive support in their respective parliaments, what legitimizes them.

While there is a lot to discuss about the measures they have to take, and the pressure on them by Brussels, OP's premises are quite absurd.

If u saw wat I've seen in 4L regarding conscripts in places such as
Belgium, Germany, Austria, etc. u would ROFL.

this leans towards outrageous... even if anything remotely close 2 this comes about, Estonia would pwn them or Russia would nuke them.
Mebbe a Greek Mussolini tho. Stranger things haz happened...

He's a pink mod.

Meant to say UK and France.

US has them too.

You guys are underestimating the tail-risks involved in full fledged Depressions, which is what you get if Italy defaults. I'd say it's somewhat unlikely that Italy defaults, but it's certainly possible, and when huge numbers of people are faced with unemployment, destitution, and a breakdown of the social order you tend to see a rise in more muscular forms of government.

And what Phil here claims as "awesome" actually works against the claim of a zero percent chance of war. It's an added reason for nationalistic animosity, as the newly appointed technocrats are likely to impose policies that the populace of those countries does not approve of and can be seen as a loss of national sovereignty. Under the right circumstances moves like that are just kindling in the tinderbox.

BTW, Nukes don't prevent wars. If a non-nuclear country declares war on a nuclear country, you get traditional warfare. Probably the same result if two nuclear countries declare war on each other as well, but the data set for that situation isn't nearly as big.

Not true. If the nuclear power starts to lose, there is a high probability of nuclear warfare.

This. Note that I'm also one of the many black mods.

AFAIK the technocrats who took over did so with the full blessing of their political leaders, at least i know that was the case in Italy. It was awesome because it installed leaders who were guaranteed to do the politically unthinkable when required and wasnt just another bunch of money lent with no strings attached and a zero chance of it making a difference. Again, as i understand the situation, i havent done any deep reading on it, i just saw a few news pieces on it.

This was pretty much what I was getting at, but this version is put much better.

You can't say that. You really don't know what happens in such a situation, since it's never happened (at least in a non-nuclear country overruns nuclear country scenario) and is quite unlikely to happen for self-evident reasons.

For wars at a distance, the US is generally considered to have lost the Vietnam war, but no nuclear weapons were used. Similarly, the Soviets weren't able to defeat the Afghan resistance.

If the nuclear power is losing then the probability of nuclear war might well increase, but it'd increase from a miniscule level to small a level that is nowhere near what I'd call "high probability."

Sure, the new appointees will be able to make policy choices that their predecessors couldn't or wouldn't, but I don't see how that does anything but worsen the potential for conflict in the event the economic situation deteriorates to the point of an Italian default. They'll be seen as the ones appointed from afar who imposed policies that ultimately led to a depression, decreased standards of living, etc. (as is standard for whoever is in office during economic crises) It'll breed nationalism and social unrest, IMO.

Again, under a smooth glide-path scenario none of this matters; debt is written down, bank are recapitalized, we see a recession (maybe even a severe one), living standards decrease a bit and stay stagnant for a while after that, and that's about the extent of it. In the event of a non-smooth scenario, however, the risks to peace definitely rise to, what are to me, uncomfortable levels.

Personally, I kind of hope the ECB decide to become the lender of last resort, and eases rates all over the Eurozone, but there seems to be a lot of German/Belgian opposition to that, from what I've read. Austerity tied to set-amount bailout packages will not suffice, as it just lowers GDP resulting in near-term worsening of the Debt/GDP ratios. That pushes the cost of funding even higher, and the lending nations won't have the stomach to continue bailing out the "profligate" nations until the medium-term rolls around and the balance sheets are repaired.

Vietnam and Soviet era Afghanistan are poor examples given they are nuclear capable countries that fought offensive wars. Having Lithuania have some next gen Hitler come to power and somehow start a campaign marching across Europe after amassing an army (ignoring that it wouldnt be allowed to happen) would have a very different outcome once they crossed into the first NATO country first of all and if they did attack a nuclear capable country like France they would just be nuked back to the stone age if the escalation of warfare warranted it.