Europe's role in world affairs over the next five years will be determined more by how it has handled the euro crisis and challenges to European integration than by its external environment or bureaucratic efforts to forge a common foreign and security policy. During the past five years, analysts have concluded that Europe faces three possible futures. The euro could collapse, Europe could take a great leap towards fiscal and political integration or the continent could 'muddle through'. In 2012 and 2013, the verdict came in. It is very unlikely that the eurozone will collapse in the next few years and a major leap forward in integration is off the table. We are left with muddling through. But this third scenario has served as a catch-all to describe everything except collapse and unity.
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