Pax Americana

Tony Blair has played a blinder on Iraq, standing for the Iraqi people, with the United States, and up to the French and Germans. He has quite rightly said that after the war is over, ‘there is going to have to be a discussion; indeed, a reckoning about the relations between Europe and America.’ It will not be easy. There is cold fury in America about the perfidious manner in which the axis of France and Germany behaved in recent months, siding in effect with Saddam Hussein. The House of Representatives has just approved an amendment to a £51 billion Bill for financing the war and the start of reconstruction to make sure that no French, German, Russian or Syrian companies profit from it. Although the White House lobbied against it, the Bill was passed by 414-12. That gives you a sense of the anger. These wounds will take a long time to heal. But Iraq is only part of the crisis between Europe and America. As Robert Kagan and others have pointed out, ‘Europe’s’ problem with America is to do with power. The United States has power and is, not surprisingly, inclined to use it. European states now have very little power. Their inability to act seems to have led many of them to an abhorrence of action. During the Cold War, America and Europe had a common project – the containment of the USSR. It was a long and exhausting war, but it succeeded and the Soviet Union collapsed. Then the United States instantly emerged as infinitely the strongest power in the world, no longer constrained by the USSR, and benefiting from huge technological advances. European countries have spent the past two decades deliberately shedding sovereignty. This is an idea that is completely alien to America, particularly since 9/11.