Elder statesmen in a barren landscape..

With Italy the latest nation to suffer under the burden of being linked to a single currency, very real questions are being asked about the future of the Euro.

TheEconomist says that Europe has not addressed the fundamental changes around her – namely the rise of a younger slimmer  Asia at the cost of this grand once great old man.

Today’s Financial Times outlines a three-trierEurope with France-Germany as the engine, the driver of a system that relegates eastern Europe to the periphery.

Of course, Gordon Brown did warn everyone that France – like Germany – was exposed because of her banks.

So what will become a unit that once touted as a serious economic challenger to the United States of America?

And will things ever be the same again?

The international system created by Europe was never perfect, and frankly the world outside this club of nations was roped into joining it.

Some powers suffered like China, some simply vanished – like the Ottoman Empire, whose loss the Islamic World has been suffering the consequences of to this day, especially in a world order based on power.

The history of the end of the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ can be traced back to the creation of the tiny kingdom of Greece, a cause championed by Shelley and Byron.

The behaviour of the main players at that time towards this once great and now grand old man was racist.

(Ever wonder where Adolf Hitler some of his ideas from?)

Now a century or so on, with the Eurozone crisis sparked by a bankrupt Greece, how will the main players on the international scene deal with their once great and now grand friend.

With America already signalling that she will be looking East, how will China view this potentially barren economic wasteland, which still fights wars against weaker nations, whilst lecturing others about human rights?