From Mars to Venus Via the Atlantic

The US-led war against Iraq has yet to be launched but the casualty list is mounting. The NATO alliance. Europe's common foreign and security policy. In some eyes, the entire system of collective security built after the second world war.

The wounds have been largely self-inflicted. Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor, cynically courted the pacifist vote and clung on to power in last year's election. But he marginalised Germany and put 50 years of friendship with the US at risk. This year's French ambush of Colin Powell, US secretary of state, humiliated Europe's most important ally and forced him into the war camp.

President George W. Bush must share the blame. His world view - at least as relayed to the public and to visitors to the White House - divides too easily into "good" and "bad" countries. Too often his tone has been toxic.

It is tempting to assume that the breakdown in transatlantic relations was an accident waiting to happen. US commentators such as Robert Kagan have popularised the notion that a near-unbridgeable gap in ideology and power exists between the muscle-bound Americans on Mars and the wimpy Europeans on Venus*.

In the neo-conservative view, there is little room for Atlanticists who believe in a benign US superpower and a strong Europe with its own political and economic institutions. Yet this latter view was at the centre of President George Bush Sr's foreign policy when he and James Baker, US secretary of state, successfully managed the end of the cold war and German unification within NATO and the European Union.

So how should we move forward? Is the crisis over Iraq simply one of those periodic bouts of transatlantic turbulence or does it signal a genuine parting of the ways? First, it is essential to move beyond the personal clashes and examine the root causes of the present discontent. The most important is the transformation of the geopolitical environment, first by the end of the cold war and more recently by the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001. Europeans have been far slower to appreciate these changes than Americans.

Germany, formerly at the heart of a world contest between western democracy and Soviet communism, has been marginalised. German armed forces, once on the front line against the Red Army, are now virtually irrelevant. In some respects a democratic, pacifist Germany matches the goal of western policy after the second world war. But some of us had hoped that the Berliner Republik would assume more responsibility, rather than turn into a greater Switzerland.

A second underlying cause stems from the launch of the single European market and the euro. Inevitably, building Europe has encouraged talk about a European model or a European identity. The increasing temptation is to measure this model against the US or to encourage talk about a counterweight to US power. Jacques Chirac, France's president, is not the only leader to talk in these terms. It is everyday language among the Eurocrats in Brussels.

What is striking about the present crisis is that the divisions in Europe are more between governments than between peoples. Britain, Spain and Italy are indeed uniting with the central and eastern Europeans against the French and Germans. But the polls suggest the European public, including the British, is more sceptical about the merits of war than some of its leaders. There is plenty of evidence, too, that the US public is far more ambivalent about war than the administration. The polls show a clear majority would prefer going to war alongside allies.

But the most fundamental reason for the crisis in relations is the fact that the US is a hegemon and therefore a target for criticism and attack around the world. Again, this not a new phenomenon. It has been true for the past 12 years. The difference today is that Mr Bush not only possesses awesome military power but is also willing to use it in response.

The president and his national security team are intent on reshaping the post-second world war order - primarily in response to new threats resulting from the combination of radical Islam and weapons of mass destruction. This is why they pressed for the scrapping of the anti-ballistic missile treaty and have elevated the right to pre-emptive attack to strategic doctrine.

Barring a humiliation in Iraq, Europe and the rest of the world will have to reconcile itself to the fact of American power. In the short term, those who care about US-European relations will have to hope for both a short war and an absence of reprisals between allies (though Mr Schröder should take seriously talk in Washington about the US pulling troops out of Germany and redeploying the garrisons in central and eastern Europe).

In the medium term, the test of American genius will be to avoid provoking coalitions that seek to challenge or constrain this power. On this count, despite the merits of this case against Saddam Hussein, the Bush administration has so far signally failed. We are all losers as a result.

* Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, Alfred A. Knopf