So when the president travels to Europe this week to meet Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Gerhard Schröder and Vladimir Putin it will be evidence that transatlantic relations are on the mend? Sadly, not so. Although there may be a veneer of cordiality in dealings with the “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” of Paris, fundamental issues divide the United States and continental Europe, and there is little indication that a few days of glad handing will iron them out.
At the heart of this rift is the role that both continents see for each other in the early part of the 21st century. America has become the proponent of encouraging — even imposing — democracy on tyrannical regimes. This is in the firm belief that democracies do not make war on each other and that their governments are bound by the electoral system to do the best for their own people in order to remain in power. America sees the spreading of democracy as a guarantor of the West ’s security from Islamic terrorism or rogue states such as North Korea. In the process it expects support from its allies within Nato, something that was strikingly absent during the invasion of Iraq. It rightly sees its policy vindicated by the elections in both Afghanistan and Iraq, which took place in the face of a terrorist onslaught. The bien pensants of Europe remain unconvinced, however, and fearful of America’s next move.
This has caused understandable pique in Washington, which believes that Europe relied for decades on the United States taxpayer to protect it from the Soviet threat. The American elites talk of Europe having devised two of the most abhorrent political systems in history — communism and fascism, from which America bailed them out — and is now sitting on its hands when confronted by the threat of Islamo-fascism. They are well aware of French ambitions for a “multipolar world ”, which Washington regards as a barely disguised attempt to limit US power while enhancing that of France. Sclerotic Germany is increasingly looking eastwards to Russia, supplier of much of its energy resources, while Russia itself seems to be moving away from enlightened democracy at a helter-skelter pace.
Into these fundamental rifts are thrown the issues of the moment: the arms embargo on China; divisions over how to deal with Iran’s nuclear ambitions; Syria’s sponsorship of terrorism; the future role of Nato and the United Nations; global warming and the Kyoto agreement, to name just a few. And underlying them is European intellectual and cultural snobbery directed at American attitudes towards evangelical Christianity, abortion, the death penalty and guns. In all, it is a cocktail of misunderstanding and irritation that bodes ill for the transatlantic relationship.
The one exception remains Mr Blair, who has resolutely pursued British interests by staying close to Washington. He is aware that a unilateralist United States abandoned by all its allies would create a more insecure world. He may acknowledge in private that his influence on Mr Bush is limited, but it is much greater than that of Mr Chirac and Mr Schröder. This at least helps to prevent the United States from becoming isolationist, a development that would be a much greater threat to European security than Islamic terrorism. There is thus some cause for optimism. Both continents are champions of democracy and there is always hope that France and Germany may adopt a more supportive role of a resurgent United States. The alternative is a rift that is in the interests of neither Europeans nor Americans, and one that could have a profound impact on our lives.