Gavin's Blog.com

What is coming from the top of European countries' establishments reflects a pervasive view all over the European street. The revulsion at America's conduct in Iraq is but a part of a deeper reaction to official U.S. behavior across a wide range of important issues, from the environment to human rights.

In Europe, though, the reaction against Bush's failed leadership has reached the dangerous point where far too many people have simply given up on the possibility of change for the better and are simplistically waiting (not just hoping) for the American election in November.

A mere glance at the calendar of upcoming events in Europe and in Iraq shows why this attitude is ill advised: There is simply too much of a pivotal nature immediately ahead to justify sitting back and waiting for a presumed change for the better next January that may end up asking much more of Europe than many of its leaders and citizens appear to realize. There is too much work still to be done or at least tried.

After two weeks roaming the four Nordic countries - Norway, Denmark, Sweden, and Finland - to exchange views with colleagues, elites in and out of government, and citizens, I find no way to overstate the rejection of Bush's leadership. It involves opposition not simply to the invasion of Iraq last year but to the American occupation as well. It involves more than opposition to the Bush position on international environmental cooperation and the enforcement of human rights standards but to the Bush style of imperious rejection even of the idea of multilateral work on issues of obviously common concern.

Symbolically, at least, this is going to cost Bush votes. On a flight here from Oslo, my wife and I chatted with a Norwegian energy industry official with dual citizenship (he was born in Massachusetts while his father was working at Harvard) who is planning to jump through all the legal hoops necessary to cast his first vote for president this year.

I also spent a few hours in Norway with an army veteran just 30 years old who has forgotten more about nation-building than Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld will ever know from his service wearing the United Nations blue beret in Beirut, Bosnia, Kosovo and Africa. In Rumsfeld's world view, this veteran is part of "old Europe," but his ground-level understanding of the mechanics of helping broken societies back on their feet has far more relevance to today's Iraq than the defense secretary's frantic scramble to save his political skin.

While I was in Europe there were two important political developments that underscored the importance of Kerry's offhand comment. One was the flat-out rejection by the French of any possibility of sending troops to Iraq this year, no matter the diplomatic events that might still unfold. The other was the publication of a poll in Britain showing nearly 2-to-1 support for the proposition that British troops should be pulled out of Iraq after the scheduled transfer of limited sovereignty to an interim Iraqi government in July.

Here in the Nordic world, the governmental situation is at best mixed. Norway's small contingent in Iraq will come home next month, while Denmark has agreed only to extend the presence of its nearly 500-person force (under British command) for another six months.

The overarching, wait-and-see mood on the Continent tied to the presidential election makes no sense, however. The summit season is almost at hand, involving not only NATO but the Group of Eight advanced industrial nations and the efforts at the United Nations to construct a new Iraq policy as the July 1 sovereignty deadline approaches. It seems to me that this calendar makes vigorous European engagement with the Bush administration (the past estrangement notwithstanding) essential. Whatever happens in the close presidential election, the substantive die may already be cast by next January, and my sense from Washington is that an increasingly election-obsessed Bush may be more likely to listen to the rest of the world over the next, crucial six weeks.

Waiting and seeing also neglects the fact that Kerry plans to ask a great deal of Europe in a more traditionally multilateral strategy if he should be elected. It is too easy to sit back now and criticize when a failed occupation of Iraq would involve important European as well as worldwide concerns. It is much more difficult to explore every avenue of possible cooperation now, with so much at stake, but it is the route Europeans should be taking.

Perhaps Europe should not take this personally. The recent expansion of NATO was scarcely a major event here. America tends to be a one-issue-at-a-time place, and right now it is coping with two: Iraq and the election. Still, the virtual silence surrounding the EU's addition of 10 members, eight of them once part of the Soviet bloc, reflects a moment of great difficulty.

"The situation has never been so bad in 50 years," Günter Burghardt, the EU ambassador to the United States, said in an interview. "It is a fact of life that America is a hegemonic power, but the question is how that power is used. We need to know that America is open to a confident relationship, not just with certain member states, but with the EU as such."

This assessment reflects the enduring wounds of the Iraq war and particularly the feeling among many European officials that an American administration has determined that its interests may lie more in EU division than in unity, more in forging improvised coalitions of the willing than in honoring a partnership of the wedded.

Of course, large areas of the European-American relationship remain vigorous and will only benefit from an enlargement that brings the fastest-growing economies in Europe into the Union.

Between them, the EU and the United States account for 40 percent of world trade. They are each other's largest trading partners. Business transactions between them run at close to $3 billion a day. When disputes arise in the economic area, over steel or intellectual property, an arbiter exists: the World Trade Organization. The web of shared economic interests is of an inextricable complexity that compels the quest for the resolution of differences and the harmonizing of regulations.

But this sense of common purpose, one that long drove America's broad support of an EU seen as delivering stability and prosperity to a continent with a debilitating penchant for war, appears to have been lost in the strategic and diplomatic areas.

It is not delight but a measure of dismay that is accompanying the arrival of the Europe "whole and free" sought by the elder George Bush and reiterated as an objective by President George W. Bush, who declared in Warsaw in June 2001: "Our goal is to erase the false lines that have divided Europe for too long."

Europe has worked hard on effacing those divisions. Burghardt noted that the EU has spent "the equivalent of two Marshall Plans" on preparing the countries of central Europe for membership.

More than $80 billion was spent between 1990 and 1999; almost as much again will go into the economies of the new members by 2006. But his sense is that recognition of this effort and its significance is scant in an America whose attention has moved elsewhere.

"The EU delivered on Nov. 9, that is the fall of the Berlin Wall," Burghardt said. "But we got hit by the geopolitical earthquake of Sept. 11."

In his Warsaw speech, almost three months before the Sept. 11 attack, Bush also said: "My nation welcomes the consolidation of European unity, and the stability it brings," adding, "When Europe and America are divided, history tends to tragedy." But division ensued soon enough.

The potential for still further division in dealing with a Europe of 25, including formerly communist central European states whose enthusiasm for America is far greater than in the western part of the continent, is clearly considerable. But Iraq has been a sobering experience and American officials have dropped the rhetoric of "old" and "new" Europe in favor of a rediscovered pragmatism.

"Whatever the differences over the past year, we know that a Europe that is open, at peace, broadly united and reaching out toward Turkey is in the American interest," said one official.

The reference to Turkey is significant. Faced by the current expansion of the EU, many Americans respond by asking why Turkey is not included. Andrew Moravcsik, a professor of government at Harvard, said that every time he goes to the Pentagon to give a talk about the EU, he is greeted by the cry of: "Why won't they let the Turks in?"

The question, of course, reflects America's paradigm shift from a focus on uniting Europe to the overriding quest to advance democracy in the Middle East. The admission of Turkey, a Muslim country, to a core institution of the West like the EU would, in the American view, provide an important example of bridge-building to the Islamic world. It is therefore vital, American officials argue, that the EU decide at the end of this year to begin negotiations on membership.

But the impatience over the EU and Turkey also betrays enduring American misunderstanding over the nature of the EU and the immense complexity and cost of offering membership to a country as big and poor as Turkey.

Moravcsik said he sometimes responded to the Pentagon protests by asking how American would feel if Mexicans occupied important positions at the Federal Reserve or the Supreme Court, a question that always prompted dismay.

The depth and extent of integration at the EU, and the surrender of sovereignty involved, remain areas only dimly grasped by most Americans. The notion that if America, Mexico and Canada were as integrated as EU states it would be possible to have a Mexican sitting in Ottawa setting interest rates for the United States remains unthinkable.

What is uncertain, after a deeply divisive year, is how America wants to relate to a larger EU whose very degree of integration will inevitably mean that the new members are obliged to seek shared European positions, despite their American sympathies.

"We know that countries have permanent interests but not permanent friends," said Anthony Gooch, a spokesman for the EU in Washington. "Over the past year, we saw an American administration trying to undermine EU unity. Faced by a new Europe of 450 million people, we will have to see how that attitude evolves."

Britain is a case in point. It was not unreasonable for Tony Blair to have assumed that this most bellicose of nations, which has for long believed that the true test of its virility lies in going to war, would support its closest ally in bringing to book a recalcitrant and despicable despot. In the event, it was a most serious miscalculation. The prime minister is now desperately trying to concentrate the mind of the nation on domestic matters. Yet Iraq will not go away. It will continue to haunt him until he leaves office; and probably for the rest of his life.

The refusal of Britain - or half of us at least - to go along with the war remains one of the most extraordinary political phenomena of the past 30 years. It points to a profound change in attitudes - concerning Britain and its place in the world - that no one yet really understands.

The left has lost virtually every major political struggle of the past three decades. Politics has been redefined on the terrain of neo-liberalism. Even that last bastion of the collectivist ideal, the NHS, is on the defensive, if not yet under siege. New Labour represented the final victory of Thatcherism, the acquiescence of Labour in neo-liberalism, the triumph of a profound pessimism, albeit dressed in an absurd New Labour hyperbole.

Yet on Iraq the left has, bizarrely, found itself in the majority. Bizarre, because for the past half-century, the right has monopolised the ground of foreign policy and military prowess, intimately associated as it is with our imperial history. Who would have guessed that the left, vanquished on more or less everything else, would find itself in a majority on the biggest international issue for decades, with British troops committed and a Labour prime minister leading the charge? The fact that public opinion could have run so much against the historical grain suggests much deeper changes are afoot. It is no longer safe to assume that the public will support American foreign policy: nor that the involvement of British troops in a military adventure will command automatic backing.

These shifts in opinion are partly bound up with a delayed reaction to the end of the cold war. The affinity between the US and western Europe was, not least, a product of the cold war. Once, after 9/11, the US decided to pursue a unilateralist policy in support of its own interests as the world's sole superpower, Europe found itself out in the cold. We are only at the beginning of this period, and many surprises lie in wait - Spain is but one example. British opinion has certainly shifted. It has moved away from the US, though not - except by default - towards Europe.

There is another twist to the Spanish story. Without the bomb outrage, perhaps the right would have won the election. Overwhelming popular sentiment against the war coupled with the terrorist attacks proved to be a lethal combination for the government. Generally, terrorist attacks tend to strengthen the hand of the incumbent government, but not in this case. Indeed, rarely has a terrorist attack proved so effective in persuading public opinion to move in the perpetrators' desired direction. That is another extraordinary feature of this episode. If it had been during the cold war, the effect would have been the opposite. Now, though, we are in a completely different magnetic field: even though no one is quite sure what forces constitute the field.

Could it be that in the days before the next Italian election - another government that supported the US even though the vast majority of the population were against - Islamist terrorists (assuming they were responsible for the Madrid bombings) might, emboldened by the Spanish experience, try the same in Rome? And what of the next British election? The arithmetic of public opinion might be different but the temptation could be even stronger, given Blair's pro-war stance. According to a Sky News poll yesterday, 20% of those who voted Labour in 2001 said, in the event of a terror attack, they would switch from Labour - the majority to the Liberal Democrats.

European politics is going somewhere very different from what we have been familiar with for so long. Western European opinion is now adrift from, and inimical towards, the US. It rightly abhors Israeli behaviour and is therefore unsympathetic towards US policy on the Middle East, though its hostility is constrained by memories of the Holocaust. The gulf that opened up between European and US popular opinion over Iraq could end up as a chasm over the Middle East too.

Europe has lost its old global moorings. Its newly discovered independence of mind is born not of self-confidence, nor an expansive sense of its own future, but a growing alienation from the US, combined with a heightened feeling of insecurity about the world we live in and what Europe's place might be in it. The question has many aspects, some of which have a dark side: it is abundantly clear, for example, that the European public feels deeply insecure about the growing multiracial character of its populations.

For over three centuries the world was hugely Euro-centric. The cold war may have granted a 50-year extension on its lease, but 9/11 finally marked closure. How does a relatively small continent, which has played such a humungous global role for so long, adapt to tumultuous and troubling changes that require it to assume a very different place in the world? That is now the European story, and will be for a long time to come.

This year the forecast is reconciliation - but not forgiveness.

Vice President Dick Cheney in Davos was sweet reason itself in explaining that America seeks neither a unilateral nor a multipolar world, only one that is free and democratic.

The butter remained unmelted in his mouth as he told his audiences how important trans-Atlantic cooperation and improved multilateral institutions are to the Bush administration.

Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns in Brussels told his fellow NATO ambassadors that the unpleasantness of the past year should be put behind us. A reunited NATO is needed in Iraq, to consolidate security there and contribute to reconstructing the Iraqi state.

This effort to relegate recent conflicts to history is also meant to blur the outlines of those clashes and dull their implications. The implied reading of past events is that the United States and the rest of NATO had really all been part of the Iraq freedom team from the start, merely playing different roles.

The Pentagon has set aside its established hostility to joint operations with NATO (which resulted from its Kosovo experience) because the United States needs the political and civic reconstruction skills of Europe's armies, and it needs European manpower.

Virtually the whole U.S. Army, plus its reserve forces and those National Guard units considered functional, is tied up by Iraq: being either there, or on the way, or being rotated back, or refitting and retraining to go (or to go again).

Bodies and boots are badly needed to bulk out the coalition's forces in Iraq, effectively under siege in a guerrilla war that has not been fading away but recently has seemed to be intensifying. That was never part of the plan.

The power transfer promised the Iraqis for the end of June is becoming steadily more complex to accomplish, and might have to be postponed - in part because of the security situation.

The edges of this unpleasant reality are being blunted by the use of a new vocabulary that puts the Iraq intervention back into the large and ambitious framework in which it was launched.

It now is being described in terms of an ongoing effort, which NATO is expected to support, to reshape the "Greater Middle East." The Middle East today usually is taken to mean the Eastern Mediterranean and Gulf states. The dictionary tells us that in the imperial past it meant all of Southwestern Asia and part of Mediterranean Africa.

The "Middle East" then extended from the Balkans and Turkey (the "Near East") to Afghanistan - and indeed beyond, to wherever the "Far East" was thought to begin, a movable frontier.

The Bush administration likes this redefinition because it identifies American action with a positive approach - a vision of unification and reform to Islamic civilization as a whole.

It also implies that the controversies that divided the allies during the past year - over the invasion of Iraq, Washington's attacks on Germany and France, the deriding of the United Nations as "irrelevant" - were misunderstandings over specific and secondary matters, among allies who have a shared mission to reform and restructure a vast sweep of human society.

The appeal to support such an effort, under American leadership, is a powerful one to NATO governments and publics already accustomed to be followers.

When the United States formally proposes that NATO move into Iraq to take over "nation-building" and security, as it already has done in the Balkans and is now undertaking in Afghanistan, there is likely to be majority agreement.

There also is likely to be minority opposition, which at NATO means a veto. The new American language is essentially a rhetorical reaffirmation of the same policy proposition that produced the Iraq intervention last year.

It ignores the discredited assumptions that produced that intervention - highlighted by the Hutton Inquiry findings, just published in London - and by the fact that Iraq has yet to be pacified or given a new government. The scheduled partial transfer of power has yet to take place, might yet become stalemated, or fail to meet Iraqi nationalist expectations. The intervention certainly cannot at this point be guaranteed a successful outcome.

Washington's new terminology represents what might be called an election-year - and virtual - version of what the French call a "fuite en avant," or a headlong rush into something new to disguise or discount current setbacks.

An average listener would be forgiven for believing that Europeans are a cowardly bunch of ungrateful wimps, whose anti-American bombast is a merely a cover for their complicity with evil regimes.

It may be true. But as a European myself - I'm from Britain - it doesn't feel true. And I wonder if our cultural disconnect comes from two very different experiences of war.

Let's be clear: Europeans don't run away from war. Even the most fleeting look at our history will tell you that we love war, we want war, we will find almost any excuse for a war. In 1914 young men from all across Europe jauntily marched off to start yet another one, with flags waving and patriotic songs playing. Young men from my country marched in the knowledge that they represented the greatest nation on Earth, an economic powerhouse, a country blessed by God. Any of this sounding familiar?

Barely one of those men could have clearly explained what the war was about, it was enough that they were fighting for freedom, and against oppression.

Fast forward five years. 1919. A whole generation of young men - over 8.5 million - wiped out in the most disgusting war the world had ever seen. Economies collapsed, vast regions were blighted. No longer was anyone playing patriotic songs. Now poets like Wilfred Owen were bitterly decrying "the old lie" that it is an honorable thing to die for your country. Who was the enemy, anyway? Was it those pathetic, blood-stained bodies strewn across the opposing trenches, or the fat, cigar-smoking politicians that ordered us into this nightmare?

This feeling has never been totally expunged from the European psyche. However clear-cut the rationale sounds at the start of a war, the reality always results in atrocities, injustices and moral ambiguity. Within a few short years we were forced into a World War II, and this time there was none of the flag-waving; instead there was a stunned gasp of: "Are we really going through all this again?"

And this time it was worse. Our cities were flattened, a genocide was committed, a whole civilization was brought to its knees.

But World War II was mercifully different for America. Despite its debilitating losses - and its astonishing selflessness in prioritizing the European theater ahead of its own mission in the Pacific - America emerged from the devastation in a pre-eminent position, its infrastructure intact. Culturally, politically and economically, America stood like a gleaming Colossus above an impoverished world. If America had believed that by use of force, Good could prevail over Evil, then it had been proved right. War had saved Freedom and defeated Tyranny.

And this is now burned into the American psyche in much the same way that cynicism is for the European. America is the brave young soldier, with shining eyes and a firm jaw, marching towards a battle that will make the world a better place. Europe is the bitter old veteran sitting on the sidewalk, his medals collecting dust somewhere, shaking his head knowingly as the young soldier marches by.

Both views are valid and both are forged in the furnace of experience. America has the power and inclination to promote justice in the world, and Richard Perle may indeed be right: Perhaps Europeans don't have the most courageous of instincts. Not anymore. They still live in the shadow of two unthinkable wars, and have learnt that patriotism and courageous instincts have too often resulted in corruption, destruction and death.

When the Austrian-born actor won the governorship of California, some politicians and commentators said that his victory reflected a dangerous American populism.

But many French shared the enthusiasm of Nicolas Sarkozy, France's law-and-order interior minister.

Sarkozy is said to harbor presidential ambitions, but the fact that he is the offspring of Hungarian immigrants and never went to an elite school puts him at a distinct disadvantage.

In a remarkably confessional interview with RTL radio, Sarkozy said of Schwarzenegger: "That someone who is a foreigner in his country, who has an unpronounceable name," can become the governor of the biggest state in the United States, "is not nothing!"

The current French-American rift, born of differences over Iraq but rooted in deeper post-cold-war friction, is more complex than it may appear. Bitter feelings remain strong on both sides of the Atlantic, and there is a sense that something fundamental in the relationship has failed. In many areas, anti-Americanism - of the kind President George W. Bush will encounter in a visit to Britain next week - is at a high pitch.

But a close look at French attitudes toward America suggests that repulsion and disenchantment are at least equaled by attraction, curiosity and outright envy.

Huge swaths of the relationship - in the realms of business, intelligence and even military affairs - still work. Criticism of the Bush administration, given full voice in the media, is offset by a French business ethic that often lauds the United States, and by a strong feeling, particularly among the young, that America remains a land of opportunity.

"When someone says, 'I'm going to work for a big corporation in New York for two years,' well, we all want to live that life," said Martin Coriat, 24, a student at a business school.

It is true that in strategic terms, the countries often seem to have parted ways.

France's unease with the extent of American power has been bubbling since the end of the cold war dissolved the glue of trans-Atlantic relations: a shared threat assessment of Soviet power. No such common threat assessment has existed since then.

Indeed, if Sept. 11, 2001, is now the date of reference for America's security outlook, France and all of Europe tend to look more to 1989 and the end of the cold war. Even as America feels more threatened, Europe and France feel less so. With Iraq, these differences exploded.

"The Americans used the equation 'Iraq equals terrorism' to create a sort of debt of loyalty," argues Stanley Hoffmann, the Harvard historian, in his new book, published in France last month, titled "America, Truly Imperial?" But, he adds, the French government failed to "appreciate how much the context was new."

What also is new is that France, like much of Europe, has relinquished some sovereignty, embracing multinational institutions like the European Union and the World Court.

As a result, France seeks to maximizes its influence by becoming part of a bigger whole. By contrast, the Bush administration prefers to make decisions unilaterally, working with others only when necessary, as with the invasion of Iraq. Tensions inevitably grow.

They are accentuated by the fact that France still believes, like America, that is it has a global mission to spread democracy and liberty. But French "republicanism" requires adherence to the notion of the ideal citizen and does not celebrate diversity or ambition. That, says Michele Lamont of Harvard University, "limits possibilities."

The lure of America The view of America as a land of possibility is strong at L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales in Jouy-en-Josas, a leafy town 25 kilometers, or 15 miles, from Paris. At this school of business and commerce, the goal is to teach students how to compete in a globalized world where American business models set the standard. Gone is France's historic unease about discussing money.

"Profit is the driver," said Bernard Ramanantsoa, the school's dean and a professor of strategy and business policy. "Money is the key."

Here, the dream among many French students is not to put down roots at home but to sail away - to America, a mythical place, perhaps, but one of boundless energy and possibility.

For Florian Bressand, 23, America offers "the right to fail that does not exist in France."

The exodus of young French to Silicon Valley is so dramatic that it has led to the creation of organizations like Interfrench, a nonprofit group of 5,000 French-speaking members who share business intelligence and even advice about French restaurants.

The departures reflect a measure of self-doubt. A slim volume titled "La France qui tombe," or "France in Free Fall," is on the best-seller list; France's troubled economy has sparked a fierce debate on the wisdom of a law limiting workers to a 35-hour week and whether the French work hard enough. A recent poll found that 63 percent of the French believe their country is in decline.

Yet such doubts coexist with a French sense of cultural superiority to America that often seems overwhelming. Only 24 percent of the French are inspired by the American economic system, 13 percent by American culture, 10 percent by lifestyle and 8 percent by American foreign policy, a poll by the BVA group last found in February.

The disdain for things American is expressed in a variety of ways. Mayor Bertrand Delanoë of Paris, for example, protested the death penalty in the United States by bestowing honorary citizenship on Mumia Abu Jamal, a former Black Panther sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of a white Philadelphia policeman.

The Americanization of France

Dreams of America do not exist in the worker bars just outside a Michelin tire plant in Clermont-Ferrand.

Here, the smell of cigarette smoke masks that of rubber and glue in the medieval-turned-industrial city in the heart of France. The conversations about America among assembly line workers just off the night shift tend to focus on the dangers of a world driven by the American quest for profit.

"The United States, many people say it's so good. But the bottom line, the only thing that counts, is money," said Jose Fernandes, 45, a 26-year veteran at Michelin. "Retired people are forced to go back to work. The lowest workers don't get paid vacations. If your boss doesn't like you, you're fired."

Fernandes added that Michelin management "would copy the United States if it could. But it can't. Here, we have laws." He was referring to French regulations that often make firing an employee impossible, guarantee six-week vacations and provide comprehensive pensions and health care.

The scene is rather different inside Michelin's corporate headquarters. Here, managers use American team-building models and are driven by a fierce competitiveness that has put Michelin ( barely) in the position of No. 1 global tire manufacturer.

Michelin may be one of the most secretive companies in France, but it is also one of the most global, with operations in 18 countries. Only about 30,000 of 130,000 employees worldwide work in France.

"The culture of Michelin is not to be too French," said Jean Laporte, director of Michelin's internal communications. That means talking about profit all the time, he said, adding, "Maybe it's a little bit of an exaggeration to say that the French never talk about money."

Last spring, in the face of an American campaign to boycott all things French, Michelin itself went to war. It answered every letter, e-mail message and phone call, informing its potential enemies that Michelin is as American as it is French, that it employs more than 20,000 Americans in 17 American factories and produces tires for U.S. Army armored personnel carriers.

The public relations offensive worked; the boycott - at Michelin, at least - failed.

What works, what doesn't

Just as Michelin has gone on selling tires in America, swaths of the France-American relationship have continued to run smoothly. When the French police in June arrested Christian Ganczarski, a German Al Qaeda sympathizer with links to the bombing of a Tunisian synagogue in April 2002 and the Sept. 11 attacks, it was the result of an American-inspired sting operation with Saudi and French cooperation.

"The cooperation with the CIA and FBI has become even stronger since September 11 when the United States understood - as we did long before - the war against radical Islam," said Pierre de Bousquet, the head of France's counterintelligence service. "Nothing has changed because of Iraq." But more than six months after Bush declared the war against Iraq over, the extreme friction with France is not. On several issues - from the environment to the death penalty - France and America do not share the same values.

The Bush administration remains in an unforgiving mood, French diplomats say. White House officials remind their French counterparts that the relationship is seriously damaged, and that they are sorely disappointed that France is refusing to contribute to Iraq's reconstruction.

Cognizant of the damage, President Jacques Chirac has stopped using the expression "multipolar world," which had enraged Bush administration officials because it seemed to envision a power to oppose rather than support America.

But privately, many of Chirac's advisers have concluded that they will have to wait for a new American administration before the rift can be repaired.

By both American and French accounts, when Bush and Chirac met in New York in September, they had a remarkably cordial chat - until conversation turned to Iraq.

Chirac said that he knew from "bitter experience" not to underestimate the power of Arab nationalism, and that a swift transfer of sovereignty to the Iraqi people was crucial, said two senior officials familiar with the conversation.

"Jacques, I have listened carefully and I strongly disagree," Bush was paraphrased as responding.

It was as if the Europeans were seriously considering the creation of a European army that could challenge the United States, rather than another bureaucracy that might be simply redundant militarily and irritating politically. A separate headquarters is not a good idea, and the French and Germans should be regularly cautioned against letting defiance of the United States, or of NATO, go too far. There is ample provision in procedures agreed between NATO and the EU to cope with the sorts of limited operations France and Germany cite. But Washington's overreaction only feeds the spreading fear that the United States seeks to maintain total control over Europe, a fear that could create just the sort of danger that Burns warns against.

The survey of 8,000 Americans and Europeans, conducted by the German Marshall Fund, found citizens on both sides of the Atlantic raising similar concerns about global security, but expressing increasingly divergent views on how to respond.

"It is clear that the trans-Atlantic rift has deepened over the last year," said William Drozdiak, executive director of the Brussels- based Transatlantic Center of the fund. "Europeans are increasingly dismayed by U.S. leadership and the use of U.S. force."

It is described as incorrigibly and dangerously anti-Semitic. The French, like the Germans (the Daniel Goldhagen argument), are described as instinctively anti-Semitic and culturally disposed to totalitarianism.

France even is "not a Western country anymore" since in "many" cities "no teenage girl can go out in the evening, at least without a full burqa." (These quotes are from the neo-con Web site www.FrontPageMagazine.com, whose contributors include quite well-known figures, including some from the political right in France itself).

This kind of nonsense sets the tone. Few Americans acknowledge any intellectual or moral weight or merit on the "old" European side, and certainly not on that of France.

Only one person in the Bush administration has acknowledged a European intellectual challenge, and she is National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. Speaking in London last week , she made a reasoned condemnation of an international system of multipolarity, and implicitly of the "efficacious multilateralism" (the EU's term) that Europe defends.

She said multipolarity is outmoded, in the past "a necessary evil that sustained the absence of war but did not promote the triumph of peace." Something different, under American leadership, must take its place.