Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast of ESh Sharp Magazine. Go to Esharp.

.u for free access to all our podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation

with Bill Drozdiak. Bill Drozdiak is a senior advisor for Europe at Blacklati Associates,

a former foreign editor of the Washington Post,

and a fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, D.C.

Bill, you have a new book.

It's called Fractured Continent, Europe's Crisis and the Fate of the West.

It's also available, I see, in German, that's at Faisal, Europe's Chrism and the Sch of the West. It's also available in I see in German, that's

far, Europe's crisis, and that's chiexel desktes. My first question is, what made you

right? The European Union was going through a existential crisis with a multitude of

challenges. The immigrants pouring in from Turkey and Syria,

the Russian belligerency in eastern Ukraine,

the Brexit decision, of course,

and also the Greek debt crisis crisis and raising the larger question of

whether the Euro can survive in the long term since one-size monetary policy doesn't seem

to be able to fit all of these countries and at the heart of all of this was on the

pivotal figure in Europe some so I'm called her the

indispensable leader.

And I had gotten to know the chancellor during my years in Germany, and I found that for her,

this was an overwhelming series of challenges because she wasn't able to share the responsibilities with other leaders.

Normally Germany looks to France as a co-lead as we saw with Col and Mitrov, Shint and Gisgar,

de Gaulle at an hour, and in this case she had two very weak leaders and she was forced to carry carry the load on her

...