Mixed emotions for Europeans on the 80th anniversary of VE Day: “The West as we knew it, no longer exists”

On Tuesday, 8 May 1945 the Allies of World War II officially accepted Germany’s unconditional surrender, marking the end of all German military involvement. Although the battles would stutter on elsewhere, VE Day brought the end of the war in Europe and ended six years of unimaginable horror.

This week, 80 years on from that momentous date, European nations are celebrating the anniversary of the end of WW2. However the mood is notably less jubilant, with many leaders pointing to the fracturing of Western alliances in the modern world.

In the decades after the war a boom in economic prosperity helped United States and Europe closer together, building a long-standing alliance through the Cold War. Now, President Donald Trump’s combative approach to Europe and willingness to side with Russia on major foreign policy issues has cast doubt on the once-strong transatlantic relationship.

“Shared history served as the foundation for the (transatlantic) relationship for eight decades, but it’s not enough to propel the relationship forward anymore,” Washington’s former Nato ambassador Julie Smith told the BBC.

She is not the only one to doubt the strength of the Western alliance. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission in Brussels, said: “The West as we knew it, no longer exists.”

With the conflict continuing in Ukraine, renewed violence in Gaza and new fighting breaking out in the Kashmir region, there is real concern that we are headed towards a new era of globalised conflict. Without the necessary relationships and the inclination to find resolution to these disputes, some experts have warned of greater conflicts to come. Others, however, are hopeful that this greater instability will help to bring about change.

“A need can often bring forward the right people,” historian and biographer Sir Anthony Seldon explained. “Something has certainly broken. The future is uncertain. Do we have to go to war periodically to realise how terrible it is, and to force us to work together?”

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