Until about a decade ago, I attended an annual conference at which we discussed the future of Europe. We always split into two groups: one focused on foreign policy, one on economics. Each group nominated a rapporteur whose job it was to relay the conclusions of the group to the final plenary. Everyone listened politely.
The separation of politics and economics is in Europe’s DNA. The monetary union is, more or less, a collection of small, open economies, and behaves accordingly. Members are more interested in raising their competitiveness against the rest of the world than in using economic instruments to exert influence. To this day, the worlds of foreign and economic policy communicate largely through rapporteurs. In the US, it is perfectly normal for foreign policy think-tanks to have big economics departments. European think-tanks mainly do one or the other.
This separation leads us to downplay the political consequences of long-term economic weakness. Would Russian President Vladimir Putin have acted so ruthlessly in eastern Ukraine if the eurozone had quickly overcome the crisis and begun to lay the foundations for a fiscal and political union? Would we have the strong separatist movements we see today in various member states? Would opinion polls be telling us that Marine Le Pen, leader of the far-right Front National, stands a real chance of becoming the next French president? Would an anti-euro party have dislodged the venerable Free Democrats as the party of choice for Germany’s liberal bourgeoisie?