User blog:Fegaxeyl/The Hundred States of Europe: An idea

Seeing as this will be my first blog ever, I might as well put an interesting idea into it. Basically, Stalin's main reason for establishing the Warsaw Pact was to create a buffer zone between Germany and the USSR. But what if this had been taken a step further? What if Germany had been completely sliced down into its constituent territories?

At this point I roamed the internet to find a map of Europe on a county level. The one I found was amazing, particularly for the Balkans. There must be hundreds of counties down there. So then I started to think: what if the Big Three had decided to take apart the rest of Eastern Europe to create a safety zone? Starting with former Axis nations and later spreading across pretty much the entire Balkans, we would see all of Central and Eastern Europe cut down its constituent territories. At this point we have a very interesting scenario.

The one that springs to mind is: how would the Cold War develop? With hundreds of microstates between the East and West, would tensions be as strained? There wouldn't be any Berlin Airlift, as that would have to get airspace clearances from three post-German states. Likewise, the border would be much quieter, with a mass of independent states to cushion the political impacts of movements in France and the USSR. But what other differences might occur? The Balkans would be far quieter, with no ethnic issues now that the areas are divided into very small places with populations rarely more than a few hundred thousand, often ethnically similar and with no particular need for conflict. Would we have an EU? Would there be a chain reaction in the Eastern swamp of mostly-communist states to trigger the fall of the USSR? (Would we even see new forms of socialism develop in nations that would have a much bigger interest in mutually supportive farming and less in the production of war machines for the Cold War?)

I throw this idea to the community to see what ideas bubble up and whether I'd have support in the project. Mostly, though, for ideas. And I'm sure a community like ours can create a good few.