LONDON --- There’s an American cottage industry specialized in Europe’s woes: a feckless Continent whose defense spending is never adequate; a monetary union that is irretrievably flawed; a land of welfare that breeds unemployment; a place of resurgent hatreds that led Ronald Lauder, the president of the World Jewish Congress, to observe this year that Europe “looks more like 1933 than 2015.”

Nope, Europe looks more like 2015, a borderless market of more than half a billion people between whom war has become impossible, so attractive to much of humankind that thousands die trying to get into it, a Continent where entitlements including universal health care are seen not as socialist indulgence but basic humanity, and a magnet to states outside the European Union that long to be part of this security-conferring entity.

Entities are unsexy. They do not send a shiver down the spine or cause a telltale tremor. But the entity without precedent that is the 28-member Union has delivered. It has delivered peace above all, prosperity however frayed, and freedom to former inmates of the Soviet imperium. It has also created an awareness of European identity that falls short of European patriotism but is nonetheless a counterweight to the primal nationalism that stained the Continent with so much blood.

As Dominique Moisi, a French political scientist, observed to me recently: “Europe is alive. It is not well, but it is alive.” A falling euro and cheap oil have even prompted economic stirrings. European automakers had their best performance in a year last month. Growth estimates for the eurozone economy this year are being revised upward.

It is dangerous to succumb to undiluted Europe-bashing. It’s a form of amnesia. It’s also an invitation to those who seek to break Europe’s integration, chief among them Russia’s Vladimir Putin. The Russian president sees the weak link in Europe’s chain in Greece, now governed by the left-wing Syriza party of Alexis Tsipras, whose dalliance with Moscow is worrying. Brussels is synonymous in Athens with German-imposed austerity. Gazprom is synonymous with blandishments, including up-front cash. The temptation to offset anti-European anger with Russia-coddling exists, even if it’s a dangerous blind alley. Greece does not belong with Belorussia or with Putin’s “anti-fascist” fascism-lite.

Of course, Putin was not the cause of Greece’s woes; he merely seeks to exploit them. Those woes, traceable to the misguided decision to include Greece in the euro at its outset for reasons of civilizational mawkishness, are not about to abate --- and here we get to the reasons why 2015 is a critical year for Europe. Despite a brutal fiscal adjustment, the fact remains that Greece’s debt is not repayable. In fact it is probably even less repayable now than at the outset of the crisis. Syriza’s electoral victory was a reflection of the sentiment that something has to give.

At some point there must be debt forgiveness; the cost of stupid loans has to be recognized. Or there may be a Greek default. The worst outcome for Europe would be a Greek exit from the euro. Joining the shared currency, for all the nations in it, was an “irrevocable” decision. Once one country goes, the whole edifice wobbles. Markets are not sentimental about probing weakness. The constant question will be, “Who’s next?”

At the other end of Europe lies another danger, within another tenuous union, Great Britain. An election will be held May 7. It will be held as Britain shows signs of turning into Israel --- that is a state where elections are merely the prelude to the real political business of trying to form a coalition government. A hung Parliament looks plausible. The big parties are weaker. Splintering is the name of the game.

Whether David Cameron’s Conservatives or Ed Miliband’s Labour will be the biggest party is unclear. But neither seems likely to be able to govern alone. Even short of formal alliances, Cameron may have to lean on the anti-immigrant, anti-European rant merchants of the U.K. Independence Party (UKIP), and Miliband may need support from the Scottish Nationalist Party, which wants to break up Britain.

Cameron, prodded by nationalist tides, has promised, if re-elected, a referendum on Britain’s membership in the European Union in 2017. His victory would therefore lock in a two-year period of deep uncertainty over the future direction of a major European state. Miliband has rejected a referendum --- an eminent piece of good sense --- but even if the attempts by his opponents to paint him as some Syriza clone in Britain are nonsense, he will have to reassure the City and (presumably) assuage Scottish nationalists, a tough balancing act.

Europe is alive. It is not the corpse of certain American doom-merchants. It needs Greece and Britain. It does not need a Putin putsch. Above all it needs the capacity to see its crisis in historical context, because unity to Europe must be as sacred as liberty to the United States.