One of the principal ideological foundation stones of the European Union is the nostrum that it preserves peace between previously warring neighbours. At first glance that would appear so utterly true as to be beyond argument or doubt.

But it is so easy to let hubris blind us to an elementary logical lacuna. For it does not necessarily follow that because there was intermittent war in Europe before 1939, whereas there has been peace since 1945, that this sublime state has been caused by the existence of the European Union. It may be due to other factors entirely.

As from a distance a fog seems at first to be a solid entity only to be demonstrated on closer inspection as so much highly diffused water, so such an argument creates a self-serving hagiographic fog of its own.

The first striking aspect of this fog is that it is largely devoid of historical landmarks.

Even on those occasions when the facts of history have been properly acknowledged, its lessons are ignored. So the hagiography is often prefixed by references to the 're-unification' of Europe.

Whilst certain parts of the continent had unity under the Romans, briefly under the Carolingians, and a sort of diffuse unity under the Holy Roman Empire and the Papacy, there has never seen a stable and enduring continent-wide unity of any sort.

Moreover, the history of European conflict has always followed a pattern. Since the Dark Ages, several states have grown powerful enough to stake imperial claims on continental Europe, on occasions amounting to territorial hegemony, only to suffer defeat at the hands of a combination of other states.

The central truth here is that once the finality of that defeat had been established that state never returned to revive such claims. European history is that of a succession of defeated claims.

All this in spite of strongly unifying influences which were present through much of pre-Napoleonic Europe. Advocates of the Euro might not like to be reminded that for centuries Europe had a common -- indeed almost a single -- currency in the form of gold and silver bullion. Those possessed of an unswerving faith in vertical institution building might equally not like to be reminded that Europe even had a common language. The people who mattered -- the merchants, the prelates, the lawyers, the ambassadors, the princes -- did their business in Latin. Latin, too, was the language of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papacy provided a unifying influence of a sort.

Yet the existence of these commonalities did not prevent centuries of strife.

Pre-reformation wars in Europe were usually small, local and comparatively brief in an age when territorial boundaries were as fluid as the family alliances and quarrels of the kings, barons and magnates.

The reformation and the decline of papal power coincided with the evolution of stronger, more centralised states.

These states then took turns at empire building.

Firstly came Spain, with its possessions in Italy and the Low Countries and its eyes on other thrones including that of England. Yet with the burden of South America and the enfeeblement of its domestic economy, Spain's position steadily weakened throughout the 17th century. Its European claims were dismantled at Utrecht in 1713 and finally extinguished at the baffle of Cape Passaro five years later. Thereafter Spain was never a serious contender for a European empire.

Leaving aside Holland's brief sojourn in the sun, and Sweden's little Baltic empire, it was then the turn of France.

France had previously been a sporadic bidder in the European power game. Historically it had always preferred to win influence through diplomacy and alliances rather than conquest. Under the Bourbons it reinforced its system of alliances through the increasing use of subsidies. Indeed, this naturally wealthy country almost beggared itself in so doing. Napoleon's adventure was as brief and spectacular as it was untypical of the French approach of history.

But Waterloo finally ended any thought of French territorial hegemony in Europe. A chastened France returned to a policy of alliances.

Lastly came Germany. We are familiar with the fate of Germany's attempt at European hegemony in the 20th century. From the rubble of 1945 a new dispensation arose, dismembering and then democratising the western segment of what had become a pariah state, and dominated by the cold war and the emergence of the USA as the major Western power.

When the European Union was no more than a gleam in the eye of a small coterie of bureaucrats, an entirely new situation had already sterilised any possibility of German military revival.

In the European Union of today, it remains true that there are only two states, Germany and France, possessed of the geographic location, size and economic masse to launch a pre-emptive war of conquest.

But even at the height of the cold war the defence spending of these two former enemies rarely exceeded 5% of GDP -- today it is nearer 2%.

By contrast, in 1938 Hitler's spending on armaments was almost 20%.

Therefore the notion that democratic states, spending such slender amounts on defence, would be either able or likely to start marching their armies across the continent is simply preposterous. To do so would require massive increases in military spending spread over many years accompanied by eye-watering increases in taxation and/or cuts in public services -- a situation all but impossible in a modern democracy.

The truth is that the only state to threaten European peace in any way whatever since 1945 has been Russia. Russia has never been, or is ever likely to be, a part of the European project.

THE PEACE THAT ALWAYS WAS
The European Union has been a virtual irrelevance to the advent of this new dispensation. A new war would never have happened anyway because the world has changed.

Europe has matured and learned the lessons of previous attempts at continental hegemony. Its military spending is almost at an irreducible minimum. It operates within a system of alliances, NATO especially, and international law. These factors have been locked in by a sufficient level of democratic commitment. All that in a shrinking world of rapid communication and deepening mutual dependence globally.

There is no doubt that this group of around forty small to medium sized states which exist between the Shannon and the Russian frontier needs a close level of mutual friendship and co-operation.

The question is not that we should closely co-operate, but how.

Should that process rest on the free consent and friendship of free peoples?

Or should it rest on the imperial ambitions of an undemocratic power oligarchy, imposing rule by fiat, and justifying their Orwellian creation by an appeal to a tendentious, bastardised version of history.

It is all too seductive to take on the mantel of peace-maker when that peace always would-have-been.