Peter Zeihan

Just keep in mind that “normal” is far from synonymous with “comfortable,” much less “favorable.

France will lead the new Europe, not Germany

The implications for Soviet continuity were intense. Politically, the Soviet Union was an often unwieldy multiethnic empire in which all the non-Russians were fully aware that they were occupied peoples. Had the Order not existed, the Soviets would have
undoubtedly found foreign agents swarming over and exacerbating the rebellions in Hungary, the Czech Republic, and Poland in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1980s