Give the Transatlantic Alliance a Fresh Start

Agreement earlier this month on a new constitution for the European Union has cleared the European agenda to focus on the issues that currently divide the two sides of the Atlantic. Europeans must now show they have the will to do so.

It is not a one-way street. We also need to see clear evidence that the US is ready for a fresh start in the wake of the recent UN Security Council resolution on Iraq and its own pressing need for willing allies rather than resentful subordinates.

The first step is to recognise quite how bad transatlantic relations are. Europeans view the US as a unilateralist loudmouth ready to ride roughshod over international law and ignore the UN while imposing its will by force. For most Americans, Europeans are weedy and pusillanimous, soft on terrorism and rogue states and hopelessly inadequate in defence. I have heard a US cabinet member assert unblinkingly that "the French want to bring us down". A very senior US general judges that only 5 per cent of Europe's armed forces are "usefully deployable". Lunacies such as the award of the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 confirm the impression of European hostility to everything American. Diplomatic sophisticates may draw a distinction between anti-Bushism and anti-Americanism, but in my experience that is not how it is perceived in the US. If this continues, all the advantages we have reaped from building the concept of "the west", providing the US and Europe with moral leadership and global influence, risk being drained away.

Some far-reaching changes in transatlantic relations were inevitable as the facts of international affairs changed. But the biggest change is that, while in the past both sides of the Atlantic were ready to sink their differences over individual problems in order to preserve a strong bulwark of transatlantic unity against external enemies, that is no longer the case.

This week's EU-US and Nato summits have provided a chance to stop the rot and reverse it. Iraq remains the single most pressing issue. The impact of failure there on America's credibility would be as damaging for Europe as for the US itself, probably plunging America into something akin to its post-Vietnam trauma. The recent UN resolution was a half-step towards restoring transatlantic solidarity. But now is the time for European leaders to put aside past differences over the rights and wrongs of invading Iraq and say to the US: what more can we do to help build a legitimate government and sound economy there? The impact of a generous and open-hearted approach of this sort, backed by substantial reconstruction assistance and the offer of Nato units to protect the UN in Iraq and contribute to peacekeeping, would be tremendous. The time when allies need your support most of all is when they are in difficulty.

European countries need to step up to the plate on a host of other issues - putting real pressure on Iran, fulfilling their commitment to strengthen Nato's military capabilities, confirming their willingness to scrap agricultural export subsidies and setting the pace on aid and debt relief for developing countries. Such policies will demonstrate Europe's willingness to share the burdens of world leadership.

We also need some far-reaching policy shifts from the US. President George W. Bush has said many of the right things about working with US allies and with multilateral institutions as his first choice. But that is not so evident in practice. The appointment of someone of the calibre of Colin Powell as a presidential envoy to restore transatlantic relations in a second Bush administration would be the most persuasive evidence of America's intention to make a fresh start.

The US also has to dispel the impression that its real aim is to divide the EU and undermine it. The better course for the US is to encourage those European policies that reflect acceptance of Europe's wider responsibilities: its common security strategy and its new-found willingness to see Nato act "out of area", as in Afghanistan. It also needs to make a much more serious effort to align US and EU policies in the Middle East rather than proceed by unilateral and seemingly off-the-cuff presidential statements. There is plenty of material there for skilful US diplomacy to build on, which would be more constructive than torrents of scorn and disparagement for Europe.

The crisis in transatlantic relations need not be terminal, though for the first time in my experience there is a genuine risk that it could become so. Simple nostalgia for the great days of the transatlantic alliance at the height of the cold war is not an adequate policy: the world has moved on. But the lesson that the world is a better place when the US and Europe work in harmony is an enduring one. We need to restore the processes of consultation, the spirit of mutual tolerance and the sense of solidarity which served us well in the past. Now is the time to start.