Some paragraphs worth noting:
"Proponents of the old transatlantic alliance shrug and say things will improve. Some allege that George Bush's cowboyism is to blame for the current rift. With a bit more astute diplomacy and softer voices — or someone like a French-speaking John Kerry as President — we could get along as well as in the past.
Really? Euro-U.S. relations may have returned to civility and even shared commitment after the recent attacks in London, but our real closeness is probably over. NATO is comatose — a Potemkin alliance without a mission. It has devolved into Americans trying to shame affluent Europeans into buying a few more planes to add to their dreadfully feeble fighting forces — which lack any reflection of the vast wealth and population of Europe."
...
"Careful reading of American history does not suggest a natural U.S. partnership with Europe. Rather, our past shows frequent antipathy, punctuated several times by violent hostilities: most recently in 1898, 1914, and 1941. Apart from the special British-American companionship, solidarity between the U.S. and continental Europe was more likely a Cold War exception, not the rule. For 50 years the United States stayed engaged with Europe specifically to ensure that intercontinental squabbles would never again devour American blood. The Soviet Union served as a sort of ancient Persia — an enemy colossus that kept feuding Greek city-states friendly for a while, until the common threat faded and their innate suspicion returned."
...
"The United States is rapidly becoming a universal nation. Continuing immigration, our democratic society, our ethnic and racial assimilation, our common popular culture, our meritocracy, and shared material dreams have created equal and unified Americans out of nearly all the tribes and races of the globe. Europe, for all its socialist pretenses, is a much more stratified and narrow society, plagued with unassimilated minorities. It is hard to imagine a Colin Powell, Alberto Gonzales, or Condoleezza Rice running the key ministries of France, Italy, or Belgium.
For four out of ten Americans today, their physical and spiritual origins have nothing to do with Europe — they are offspring of Asia, Latin America, or Africa.
Demographic and immigration realities mean that our ostensible blood link with Europe will continue to thin. Like it or not, more Americans are coming to know and care less about Europe — and more about China, Korea, Mexico, India, and the Philippines. The teaching of French, German, and Italian is sliding, while Spanish and Chinese rise.
Red-state/Blue-state tension in America reflects a similar divergence between America and Europe. As the United States becomes more conservative, it increasingly sees Europe as a fringe San Francisco or Massachusetts, not a mainstream Grand Rapids or Ohio. Europe's rhetorical intrusions into our recent Presidential election confirmed that Europeans more often embrace agendas that bother Americans — pacifism, radical secularism, utopian environmentalism, blind support for the U.N., socialized health care, government steering of the economy, redefinition of marriage, strident abortion rights, and open euthanasia."
"Proponents of the old transatlantic alliance shrug and say things will improve. Some allege that George Bush's cowboyism is to blame for the current rift. With a bit more astute diplomacy and softer voices
The problem is NOT "George Bush's cowboyism or the lack of "astute diplomacy and softer voices". It's that Europe and America took two differtnt lessoans from WWI & WWII. The lesson we took was, in order to have peace you must prepare for war, Europe took the lesson that war is bad and we must do everything to avoid it. Weather Europe will continus this wat for the long term remains to be seen. Ralph Peters wrote an interesting article on this (and other subjects) in a piece titled "Hidden Unities" . It can be found in
Beyond Baghdad
Postmodern War and Peace
By Ralph Peters
(from Townhall)
"Peters divides Beyond Baghdad into two parts: "Our Future" and "Our Wars". "Hidden Unities", the last essay in Part I, is the longest and deepest discussion of the "strategic environment" of the future. It is in this essay that Peters is at his most creative. His defining of "zones" and "states" is completely original, but also maddening. It is a unique and informed worldview with a dark underbelly. Aspects of Peters' religious, philosophical and historical perspectives can, and should be, challenged."