International Herald Tribune
August 15, 2011
How could a group of nations that came together with such promise and commitment more than half a century ago, prepared to surrender their currencies and much of their political sovereignty to strengthen integration, now find that their union has been brought to the brink by the small state of Greece, economically and geographically one-fiftieth of Europe? And how can we now prevent a European crisis from writing a new chapter in what will be called “the decline of the West”?
For months we have been told that Europe’s salvation lies in austerity, in the whole Continent applying Germany’s prescription of fiscal discipline to its deficits. We have been told that if austerity does not work it is just because there is not enough of it.
But when Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and President Nicholas Sarkozy of France meet in Paris on Tuesday they will find all around them evidence of what they did not expect — failing banks, waning growth and capital flight.
This confirms what many of us have argued from the outset: that Europe’s difficulties have arisen not merely from the one-dimensional issue of deficits, but from a disastrous, three-dimensional configuration that is financial and economic as well as fiscal.
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