It is not without historical irony that the only other country to stand with Britain over the Fiscal Compact at yesterday's EU Summit was the Czech Republic which Chamberlain sold out to Hitler at Munich in 1938. Last night Martin Callanan, the leader of British Conservatives in the European Parliament accused the Prime Minister of “appeasement”.

From Ana Palacio, the New Atlanticist:  [T]heir overwhelming focus on the economics of the euro crisis is itself part of the problem because the crisis is, above all, a reflection of deep-seated weaknesses in European institutions and the fabric of European society.

While the world anxiously awaits the climax of the eurozone drama, its leaders’ behavior resembles the political equivalent of what physicists call “Brownian motion,” with officials bouncing randomly from one crucial bilateral consultation and vital European summit to the next.

On January 12, the Atlantic Council hosted H.E. Hans Hillen, the Minister of Defense of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, for remarks on NATO defense spending in the context of the Eurozone crisis and the transatlantic economic downturn. 

The broadening cracks in the European economic framework now appear to be undermining the whole European structure, as if a ‘contagion’ is spreading from the Southern European economies outwards.

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. My 2012 started here in my beautiful little Dutch village chatting with my nice Dutch neighbours amid the clatter of many thousands of burning Euros being shot into the sky or exploding in brief, bright and brilliant suns.

In 1964 former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson said, “A week is a long time in politics”. This has been a very long week for both high and low politics.

A senior French official privately likened Cameron's negotiating position at last week's European Summit to that of someone invited to a wife-swapping party who failed to bring the wife.