This is CBS. I'm the World. I'm John Batchel. I welcome Judy Dempsey, the Carnegie Endowment for

International Peace in Berlin to comment on the news around and inside the EU these last days

to do with existential threat to Europe, existential threat to Ukraine, existential

threat to the whole of the NATO frontier. We begin, however, in the 14th century. There is new

research blessed by Professor Francapan at Oxford as most intriguing and helpful,

that a series of volcanic eruptions in and around and before and after 1347,

the critical year of the beginning of the plague that wiped out up to a third of Europe

and changed the direction of geostrategic

thinking that includes today.

Those volcanoes cooled the warming period, the medieval warming period, that is a puzzle on your

climate chart, and plunged Europe and the Americas into a cooling off all the way to the 18th century.

All of that is because the volcanoes triggered a poor harvest in Europe, leading to famine.

The famine led the Europeans and especially those trading on the Silk Road to reach farther into China and bring forth the

black plague that had been cooking in Asia but had not reached Europe at that point.

I begin there because all things are connected on this planet.

Anything that happens in the EU immediately affects everything that happens in Pennsylvania

and other states of the Union.

So, Judy, a very good morning to you.

In addition to this wonderful piece of research that requires much debate going forward,

we have the musical chairs of the European Union and of the European Central Bank,

Lagarde at Central Bank, to be replaced by question mark. Van der Leyen at the European Commission

to be replaced by question mark. And Germany and France are contesting that they each have

...