The election of Francois Hollande as president has not created the panic depicted in the foreign media, but rather an emphasis on keeping to the status quo, at least in the short term.

The older generation, traumatised by war, have bequeathed to young Europeans a landscape of joblessness and economic chaos, within which extreme political ideologies are flourishing.

I find it hard to believe that NATO's second-largest army and such a significant member of Western security since the Cold War has been run by terrorists all along. But politicians should not take the seat of the judge.

The United States of Europe is in the midst of its own culture war. Will the European Union implode under the weight of its own mess? Or will it hold out long enough to rewrite the rules of cooperation to realign its major powers?

The fault accrues much more to Eurozone authorities than to Greece because, politically, the Europeans have long dodged the critical fact that their limited currency union is unworkable.

The light of democracy is being extinguished across the continent in which it was born. An unaccountable European elite is ignoring the basic principles of democracy and betraying the founding vision of the EU.

"While the last several centuries did involve a struggle for global domination, and the last 20 years saw a brief moment in which America was globally supreme, we are now entering a phase in which no power is likely to be truly supreme."

If the EU repeats the mistake of 2010 and lets its mistrust overtake its judgement and imposes an oil embargo prior to the next meeting, then diplomacy will likely be dead on arrival.

Starting Jan. 1, the EU will require all international air carriers flying in and out of the airports of member states to participate in its carbon trading regime governing greenhouse gas emissions.