The role of Italy and of Austria has diminished as has that of France and Britain; Germany and Japan have suffered catastrophically.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The Italians, who used to be a great motor-manufacturing power, have been absolutely destroyed by the euro - as was intended by the Germans.
In 1917 - as we have seen, - Italy suffered a great reverse, losing 200,000 soldiers and immense supplies.
But Italy can only have any real influence on world affairs if it carries weight in Europe.
If war should break out between England and Japan, the latter would suffer much more than the former.
The consequences of a collapse would not be pretty. Whichever country precipitated it - Germany by threatening to abandon the euro, or Greece or Spain by actually doing so - would trigger economic chaos and incur its neighbours' wrath.
The French suffered such catastrophic losses in the First World War. It really was the end of them as a great world power, although they, quote, 'won.'
In America, there's a failure to appreciate Europe's leading role in the world.
Italy remained attached to conservatism. It had a political class that lived in the past and didn't build the future. The past is our strength, but it risks becoming our ruin if we walk with our heads turned backwards.
The main cause of Europe's deep fall - the losses of inclusion, job satisfaction and wage growth - is the devastating slowdown of productivity that began in the late 1990s and struck large swaths of the continent. It holds down the growth of wages rates, and it depresses employment.
That Germany was so immensely strong and Austria so dependent upon German strength that the word and will of Germany would at the critical moment be decisive with Austria.
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