Transatlantic Relationship Can Still Be Rescued

In the new world order the US will play the warrior god Mars, the Europeans voluptuous Venus, suggests an American political analyst.

Chris Patten (pictured), the European Union's external affairs commissioner, rejects any such idea.

Europe, with Britain and France at the core, can rebuild a relationship without leaving all the power concentrated in the US, and Europe left as a weak acquiescent.

The celestial analysis came from Robert Kagan, one of America's most trenchant commentators on the transatlantic relationship. He believes it is up to the US to do the fighting and projection of power. Europe can deal with soft power instruments such as law, negotiations and crisis management.

Mr Patten is not convinced. "Much of Kagan's analysis is factually incorrect," he told the FT. "It is almost impossible to think of a country that is more obsessed with law than the United States," he argues.

"To define America as a sort of benign cowboy society and Europe as being committed to the rulebook is the sort of vulgar extravagance you might expect from a pretty ill-informed European. It is very curious when it comes from an American."

As for soft power, look at Britain and France, says Mr Patten. "These are two European countries who use force" - the Falklands, the Balkans, Africa.

The Kagan thesis aside, Mr Patten believes the transatlantic relationship can be rescued if Britain and France pull together.

This is despite the deep philosophical and political differences between both countries over their relationship with the US.

It is also despite the fundamental changes that have occurred in that relationship since the end of the cold war in 1990: the US is no longer constrained. The Europeans are still reluctant to take full responsibility for their own security and defence.

"One of the things that drive me into a rage is that there is so much less difference between Britain and France than the present dispute suggests," says Mr Patten, referring to the differences over a second UN resolution that would have authorised a US attack against Iraq.

Both countries support military pressure to back diplomacy, are prepared to accept casualties, have nuclear weapons and are permanent members of the United Nations Security Council. "How many crises invariably have Britain and France reasserting the centrality of the nation state in the construction that we are trying to put together?" Mr Patten asks.

Hence Mr Patten's central thesis for Europe's future - and by implication the transatlantic relationship. "Europe will only matter internationally if Britain and France work together."

"I am 110 per cent sure that if we are to pull things together again quickly after this terrible wounding period, Britain and France will have to do it," he argues.

Mr Patten is dogmatic, however, in refusing to admit that the current transatlantic relationship is over.

He is reluctant to entertain the argument put by some critics that the relationship was built on the back of the cold war with a weakened, divided Europe needing the US financial and security umbrella.

Fifty years later, Europe is stronger while the US has none of the cold war constraints to condition its strategy.

"We are at a cross roads. There is a very clear choice," he admits. "Either we decide that the only way we can deal with the problems of the 21st century is to go back to the 19th century in which you rely on national sovereignty, national interests and balance of power relationships."

The other alternative is to "put back together again the institutional shards left from this bruising encounter in the United Nations".

He refuses to say how. "My own view is that if we are going to deal with problems ranging from international terrorism to weapons of mass destruction, we can only do it by reinvigorating and strengthening multilateral institutions," he argues.

He shies away from spelling out how to rescue a transatlantic relationship that has outlived its raison d'être. In the coming weeks and months, he may be forced to do so.