War In Europe By Hank Silverberg War in Europe. I have heard many people express total surprise about Russia's invasion of Ukraine (This sign says it all) this week. Europe has mostly been a peaceful place for decades. After all, the majority of people alive on the planet do not remember the barbarity of World War Two and its 70 million dead. Yes, there was the civil war in Bosnia and the ethnic cleansing in Serbia that killed hundreds of thousands after the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1992-1995. There were small uprisings like the Prague Spring in 1956 that produced some violence. But Europe has had 80 years of relative peace, and for Europe that, frankly, is historically unusual. If you look at the list below you will see that in the last 500 years, the continent seems to have been at war every 30 years or so. The wars were mostly about defining borders, ethnic or religious tensions, or one man's quest for empire. All of those are prompting this current war. Vladimir P