From William Pfaff's latest column:

The great economic crisis has given birth to a smaller and tighter monetary union in Europe, under the influence of a Germany that is undergoing a certain estrangement from its European partners. This amounts to a possibly dangerous wager on what the European Union will ultimately become, which not everyone may like.In Vienna last weekend, the World Policy Conference, founded by the French Institute of Foreign Relations (IFRI) as a vehicle of European communication and cooperation with the so-called BRIC nations and other states in the developing world, found its attention riveted on Brussels and the euro-zone states of the EU. A French official who was part of the nearly all-night discussion in Brussels flew to Vienna to brief the gathering there, where decidedly mixed feelings were expressed about this successful German imposition of its own economic norms on an EU in distress.

Read the rest right here.