Nowadays, confrontations between powers are not fought on battlefields, but in the field of Economics. Today in Europe the struggle for power continues, but along economic lines. We are witnessing what some analysts call the euro war.

Mitterrand's France imposed on Kohl's Germany, as a sine qua non condition for its reunification, the Withdrawal on its currency, the framework, and its central bank, the Bundesbank, the jewels of the German post-war miracle. France wanted to prevent a greater Germany from upsetting the balance after World War II. With the Maastricht Treaty, France diluted German sovereignty and preserved its own, but with the advent of the first major "asymmetric crisis" in the euro zone, the invention threatens to collapse.

Two groups of countries are emerging in the euro zone: the winners, located in and around Germany (central and northern Europe), and the losers, in the periphery. France shares territory and intends to act as a bridge but cannot conceal its structural weaknesses. The traditional Franco-German axis, the great driving force of the EU, has become German-French, Germany is the economic leader and France knows it.

But the euro war is not only a European affair. The world's two great powers, the USA and China, are watching closely. While Europe is trying to get out of the crisis by drastically reducing its debt, the US intends to continue living off its creditors, relying on the role of the dollar as the universal currency reservation . The US macroeconomic figures are much more worrying than those of Europe, its debt, budget and trade deficits are astronomical, but the dollar is holding up. Its fall would bring ruin not only to China, but also to Japan and other countries, and it would sink international trade. If the euro were to disappear, the dollar's main competitor would have disappeared, and dollar holders would be able to buy Europe at a bargain price.

This is a real conflict, but an economic one. Let us hope that the EU ends up winning, that the euro endures and that overcoming the crisis means more Europe through a full economic union, with its dual monetary and fiscal component, premonitory of a true political union.