Europe rethinks its relationship with Washington

European leaders, increasingly irritated by the Bush Administration, feel they are coming to a moment of truth about themselves and their relationship with Washington.

United States contempt for a weak Europe is producing pressure for more unity, more outspoken independence and a clearer understanding that Europe must spend more money on its military forces if Washington is going to take it seriously.

Real interests are diverging, and years of talk about tensions and resentments have crystallised into a perception that the relationship itself has changed.

On fundamental issues like the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto environmental treaty and the crisis in the Middle East, even strongly pro-American leaders like the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, and the German Foreign Minister, Joschka Fischer, are openly differing with Washington with a public bluntness that would have been unthinkable five years ago - or in the weeks after September11.

There is shock over the way the US handled the court issue at the United Nations, puzzlement at the concentration on Iraq as the Israeli-Palestinian relationship deteriorates, and confusion over how to move forward in the Middle East with Yasser Arafat ruled out but no mechanism to establish another Palestinian leadership.


And there is dismay that the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, a European favourite, is losing key battles to the conservatives who seem to have won President George Bush's ear and who regard European criticism as the whining of weaklings.

The moral leadership that Mr Bush was granted and exercised after September11 has been "frittered away," a European official said. Renewed US unilateralism is giving weight to the old French idea of the European Union as a counterbalance to Washington.

Even more striking, some Europeans are talking about stepping up military spending, understanding that Washington will take them seriously only when they can project hard power to back up their foreign policies.

A more competitive relationship with Washington, some argue, would be healthier, because it would be more realistic, and it would also help respond to increasingly anti-US views among their publics.