General
As a result of the Second World War, Northern Europe lost virtually all its power and influence. Militarily it is weak to the point of being defenseless, without the German industrial machine at its center, its economic influence is also inconsequential. Europe can basically be defined as a real-world version of Disneyland, it is a holiday resort for American, Russian and Triple Alliance tourists.
Postwar European history can be divided into three phases. The first was the broken-backed stage, resulting from the German occupation. The North European countries were shattered, socially, economically and militarily. This was exacerbated by the Great Famine, an almost complete collapse of agricultural output between 1948 and 1950. Throughout this period into the mid-1950s, Northern Europe was simply trying to survive. The second phase was recovery which took from the mid-1950s through to the late 1970s. This saw Northern Europe rebuilding and developing its own industries and economic structure. In this, they were aided by the lack of any signoficant hostilities in Europe. Without that strain, the European countries had greater resources to devote to recovery and, as a result, they eventually ended up in a somewhat better economic position than would otherwise have been the case.
International
Most of Europe has accepted the fact that is declining into relative insignificance so its position on the world stage is barely noticeable. This is an inevitable outcome of the fact that the center of the political world in the 1950-2000 era was in the Pacific, not the Atlantic. France has not accepted that and still tries to assert a position as one of the leading nations. This leads to ridicule and bad jokes that are not justified since France actually did an amaziingly effective job of rebuilding its military forces and industrial infrastructure. French military power proved entirely adequate to defeat the Caliphate assault on Algeria and Algeria was only overrun after its population had been decimated by biological attack. Europe, as a whole, is a great supporter of international organizations and agreements, seeing these as the only way its much-diminished power can be made effective.
Domestic
North Europe is essentially unified and socialist. Although the individual countries are democratic, the European supra-national entity is not.
