The eurozone will not break up. The price of departure is simply too high for any one country. Indeed, when European Central Bank President Mario Draghi announced on Sept 6 that the ECB would buy unlimited government bonds, the continent crossed the bridge to its future.

Europe's leaders must see that the drawbridge has been lifted behind them. Since they cannot back out, they thus must steel themselves for the journey ahead. They must also realize that for the European project to succeed, which it must, monetary union must be accompanied by four other kinds of union: a banking union, a fiscal union, a "competitiveness" union or convergence, and, to all intents and purposes, a political union. And to be sustainable over the long term, the continent's political economy must be capable of reintegrating its youth and present an ideal worth fighting for.

This is a long and ambitious list, but the deeper one thinks about the European situation, the more inevitable these conclusions become.