Worst-Case Scenarios Knocking on Europe's Door

The fissures exposed between, and within, the warring groups of eurozone debtors and creditors are the widest and deepest in the past 5 1/2 years of turbulence over the single currency. The gloomy predictions of the late German-British sociologist Ralf Dahrendorf, who said before it started in 1999 that economic and monetary union would split rather than unite Europe, have become reality.