Quote Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube View Post
They didn't succeed at all! Many of your former colonial conquests are stronger than the nations they came from. In attempting to exploit the world to gain that upper hand, they sowed the seeds of their own destruction, and now Europe's only hope on the world stage is peaceful unification. Why the USA's legacy is more successful than yours is discernable on a map, for the same reason Russia's is: A whole lot of space where people used to live, but they all died or assimilated. Most of America is still just empty space waiting to be populated by the next generations. That is an unequivocal success, even if it was gotten in a horrible way (and it was--the US Government's treatment of the Natives should go down in history as something every bit as bad as the holocaust). Europe, due to a complete lack of success in gaining the upper hand over eachother, now finds itself faced with having to do something that's never been done: Peaceful Unification of an entire Continent. In the end, after all, Europeans share more in common with eachother than they do with anybody else--including Americans.
I dont think I said they did succeed, I said you succeeded. The USA's success is a result of it's own attempts to gain the upper hand over it's neighbours, China's success was due to the same, Russia too, there is no precident of spontanious peaceful unification.