By Matthew Turk

The G20 Sum­mit

At the recent G20 Sum­mit, Euro­pean lead­ers butted heads with the Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion by oppos­ing fur­ther stim­u­lus spend­ing and call­ing for greater fis­cal “aus­ter­i­ty.”  The move to fis­cal tight­en­ing, even dur­ing unsteady eco­nom­ic times, reveals the pro­found affect that the Greek debt cri­sis has had on pol­i­cy­mak­ers in oth­er Euro­pean coun­tries.  In par­tic­u­lar, it indi­cates a com­mon con­cern that grow­ing pub­lic debt pos­es near-term chal­lenges to the con­tin­ued via­bil­i­ty of an eco­nom­i­cal­ly inte­grat­ed Euro­pean Union.  The poten­tial unrav­el­ing of the legal-insti­tu­tion­al struc­tures of Euro­pean inte­gra­tion uproots assump­tions about inter­na­tion­al law held by com­men­ta­tors across the ide­o­log­i­cal spec­trum.