Is a “new” new Europe now emerging? Michael Moran makes the case it is. Here’s the beginning of his piece:
As leaders of European Union states erected a wall of euros to defend the common currency from the Greek debt crisis on Sunday, the head of the EU’s most important economy decided she would go to Moscow instead.
While investors continued to punish Greece for its profilacy, Angela Merkel, the conservative German chancellor, accepted Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s invitation to the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II.
French President Nicholas Sarkozy and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi stayed home given the gravity of the crisis facing the EU. Merkel appeared far less concerned with the euro’s fall. And the following day, when Merkel’s cabinet dutifully approved the nearly $1 trillion emergency bailout package, they did so entirely without enthusiasm.
That Merkel choose to spend the weekend in Moscow playing Putin’s foil at the anniversary parade speaks to the changes afoot not only in Germany, but also more broadly across Europe.
It can’t have been entirely comfortable for Merkel, representing Germany, to review the legions of Red Army veterans millions of whom died at the hands of the German invasion decades ago. But Germany, heavily dependent on Russian natural gas and increasingly unwilling to follow Washington’s lead in the wider world, has been putting its own national interests ahead of European unity of late. That is a major milestone in the country’s post-war history.
It’s not just Germany, either. Across the Atlantic, the nations that represented America’s most reliable allies since the end of World War II are changing.
Go to the above link to read it in its entirety and find out why he reaches this conclusion.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.