Exactly one week ago we wrote about an excellent tour d'horizon of the world by George Friedman for RealClearWorld. In it he focused on the destabilization of the Eurasian landmass.
Today we give you Friedman's second article in the RealClearWorld series, a focus on the situation in what he calls "peninsular Europe," This he defines as everything between Russia and the Atlantic, north of the Mediterranean Sea.
For the European peninsula, Friedman describes two crises: instability within the EU, and conflict with Russia. He sees Europe fragmenting into four parts: Germanic Europe, Mediterranean Europe, the eastern frontier of the EU, and the rest of northern Europe. Particularly the first three of these have diverging interests, pitting them against each other.
As Friedman notes, Europe has tried to pull together via the EU, and largely failed. During the same period Russia has gotten past its malaise of the 1990s and has become more united (but substantially poorer) than peninsular Europe.
