THE BEGINNING
The Green political movement began in the first half of the 70's, with the founding of the Popular Movement for the Environment in Swiss. Soon it spread over Western Europe, Oceania and even in the USA, albeit with much less success. First seen as a viable alternative to the traditional left party, and concerned only with environmental issues, by the beginning of the 80's this movement was firmly in the far left camp with a growing streak of anti-American and anti-military rhetoric. The majority of the political analyses dismissed the Greens as an inconclusive hodge-podge movement, too radicalized and internally divided to pose a serious political threat to anyone except some corporations. Unfortunately, this analysis proved to be as accurate as the one proclaiming the impossibility of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
THE GREEN TIDE
1984 was an election year in Europe; Parliament was to be renewed in Germany, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands . The campaign was hard fought with all the dirty tricks of the handbook used, and some new ones invented. And the main question in the eyes of many voters, the raison d'etre of this election, was the deployment of the Pershing II MRBM in response of the introduction of the SS-20 by the USSR. A great movement for disarmament and peace, dominated by left party but composed even by right and nationalistic members, opposed this tit for tat tactics, saying that this new kind of weapon will only make many place in Europe nuclear target and bring the possibility of a final war closer. Leading this protest everywhere in the old continent, were the local green parties, seen as an honest alternative to the old left party and new blood in an old game, they attracted the hope of the youngest generation and many people dissatisfied by the regular Communist and socialist parties.
Hundreds of marches and protests, spontaneous and not, slogan, TV, sport, everything was used to sway the public opinion against nuclear weapons, a task not so difficult as many in Europe were troubled at the possibility to become a wasteland in a war between the two superpowers. The wounds caused by Vietnam war in the relations between the two side of the Atlantic were not completely healed and some outbursts by the then current American administration who said, among other things, how the Germans and the other nations must not be so upset if their nations were engulfed in nuclear fire because that was the price of freedom...what the Europeans understand was that to preserve the freedom of the USA, they will gladly transform Europe in a radioactive wasteland and they must be grateful for that.
The '84 election as said at the beginning was a dirty affair, but for all the fighting the only winners were the Greens, obtaining approximately 10% of the vote. They became essential to create a functional government coalition, so for accede to power the old left parties of the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, and especially Germany had to meet the request of the newcomer.
Apart from the usual minister and seat of power ( disproportionate at their effective apport of votes,) in every nation the green made the same request: LEAVE NATO, BE FINALLY INDEPENDENT.
Remember at that moment there were little love lost with the United States, so it was frightenly easy to gain enough support for this proposal.
The sudden death of Enrico Berlinguer, leader of the PCI, one of the founder of the Eurocommunism and great believer in NATO, democracy and independence from Moscow and the election at secretary of the PCI of Armando Cossutta one of the most hardliner supporter of the USSR helped to gain support even where there was no green in the government. So, December of 1984 NATO was dissolved and the American, British, and Canadian forces was given four months to leave.
As a compromise for the destruction of an alliance another was made, the old Western Europe Union was reactivated with the task to defend the continent from every enemy from east or west (obviously the Warsaw Pact was the main concern, very few people even if anti-NATO harboured the desire to be Soviet occupied or dominated) and absorbed in the European Economic Community so with the scope of the latter expansion the first seed of a unified continent was born; formed by all the former NATO nations except the United Kingdom who left even the EEC in protest and Turkey, it quickly took charge of the majority of NATO assets left in the continent, and tried to pose as a credible deterrent to any invasion, for that they used the philosophy of the French nuclear Force de Frappe...the conquest of Europe even if assured, will be Pyrrhic.
The hard left and many of the green were angry at this development as one military alliance was simply traded for another, but the overwhelming majority of the people, as the poll demonstrated, were behind the move, as very few believed in the sincerity of the proclamation of peace of the secretary of PCUS after the invasion of Poland and the crushing of Solidarność.
The first months of work for the various newcomers were the classic honeymoon, after all little mistakes can be forgiven and they were not the professional politician of old, but as more time passed, the less things the government did as the green blocked every new project or even the continuation of a lot of big public work for environmental damage real or perceived causing millions of euros in economic damage and leaving many out of work. Only the proposal to shut down all the nuclear reactors blocked all the work in the German Bundestag for months only resulting to humiliate the Green-SPD coalition in the following referendum when the majority of Germans choose to keep the nuclear energy. But this was the trend, they simple say no to anything, in every nation with green in power the bureaucracy learned how to keep things working without government orders or input because of the various contradictory message given.
When WWIII came, after the initial shock passed, and the world didn't cease to exist, or was engulfed in a nuclear Armageddon things settled as usual but many see too much subtle change in the politics. For example the demand to give less funds to the armed forces become more and more loud, and many green MP give statements considered very supportive or friendly to the USSR and its war aims, some proposal were made to stop even humanitarian help to the UK and USA or recognize the Soviet supported American Democratic Socialist Republic but nothing came from this because popular support was nonexistent. At the same time the various European armed forces and intelligence networks begin autonomous foreign policies, giving assistance to the allies with information, supply and turning a blind eye to volunteers...real or simple units who were basically loaned to the Americans for the duration of the conflict, this opposite view of the war soon collided on November of 1988 when Der Spiegel and Le Monde reveled that at least 10 deputies of the green parties and the vice-chancellor of West-Germany received payments from shell companies who were KGB and GRU fronts and that a lot of the electoral funds of the green parties in all of Europe had Soviet origins.
This revelation united at the almost paralysis of legislative work caused by coalition infighting caused a series of street protest in all of continental Europe, and with the current string of governments not even capable of see the writing on the wall, or simply too astonished to realize the situation, the military stepped in...with one the greatest political bluff of history, menacing a coup if there weren't new elections immediately.
This time the result were very different with the green and many hard-left parties virtually gone and all the mainstream left parties taking a big beating [1]
The political aftermath of WWIII and the so called November Revolution basically destroyed the green movement in all Europe, and the German, Italian, and French Green Party in their 1991 congress decided to disband among a series of political and financial scandals and after their obstructive way of handling the reins of the government. This decision was soon followed by the other minor green parties worldwide, by the end of the decade, except for some very minor fringe political groups, usually related with ecoterrorism, the green movement can be assumed nonexistent.
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