The US-Europe divide is wide and getting wider

Europe, Tony Blair keeps telling us, must have a proper discussion about its relationship with the United States. Which must come as a surprise to most of Europe, who thought that was exactly what we had been having during the months of argument that preceded the Iraq invasion.

What else was everyone talking about when they swapped insults over whether the US was an imperialist bent on Middle East domination or a benign force bent only on forcing change for the democratic good? What thoughts or theories were left unexamined in the welter of books, articles and programmes on the cultural, political and personality factors that divided America and Europe, or parts thereof.

No, it's not discussion Tony Blair seeks, but a re-evaluation by France, Germany and the anti-war states of their diplomatic break with Washington. The war is over and Europe must come back into the transatlantic fold with due recognition of US power.

Which is fine, laudable even. If you take international affairs as essentially an issue of diplomatic relations, then the bad temper, harsh words and the threats of revenge that have marked, and still mar, the transatlantic dialogue are not doing any good for anyone. Europe cannot live without the United States. Doesn't want to, in fact. So the sooner relations are patched up the better.

Only this isn't a family spat in which the children can apologise to Daddy Bush and Mother Blair can step in to make sure that they're not punished too harshly and everyone can sit happily round the dining table again. The Iraq invasion has opened up a huge chasm which simply can't be bridged by emollient gestures.

On the one side there is a Europe whose people have overwhelmingly opposed the war and a leadership, in France at least, which has clearly set itself up in direct competition with the US. On the other side you have a superpower which since 11 September has seen (understandably) the outside world almost exclusively in terms of a threat to its national security, and is ready to redefine its relationships with other countries in terms of whether they help or hinder its course.

To Washington, France, Germany and those countries that opposed the war have been obstacles to US interests and must be treated as such. To France and many in Europe, America is now an obstacle to the emergence of Europe as a power in its own right and must be confronted as such. Each side is more than half convinced of the basic ill-intention of the other.

Now you can argue, as Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair do, that this is not a divide between Europe and America so much as a conflict with certain elements of Europe. But this is to misunderstand the situation profoundly, as Washington's allies over the invasion are now finding out. Instead of the triumph that they might have expected after the rapid victory in Iraq, Jose Maria Aznar, Silvio Berlusconi and even Tony Blair have returned to an electorate largely unmoved by their triumph. Even the Poles and other East Europeans are shying away from the involvement in the post-war military rule of Iraq that Washington has offered as a reward for their loyalty.

And the reason is simple. The huge majority of people in Europe, east as much as west, opposed the war not because they didn't believe regime change was a good thing in Iraq, not even because they refused to believe that the majority of Iraqis wanted rid of Saddam Hussein. They opposed it because unilateral action by the world's hyperpower on pre-emptive grounds was the very opposite of the world they looked forward to after the fall of the wall.

Multilateralism, alleviating the root causes of poverty and instability in the world, and the development of supranational institutions, was the road they saw themselves treading. The arguments over power relationships between Europe and America were incidental. What the public of Europe – and elsewhere – really quickened to was not the addresses of Chirac in Versailles but the words of Dominique Villepin at the United Nations.

At this stage it is only possible to see the divide widening. The main dynamic clearly comes from America, and there is no sign that the US administration has any desire to return to multilateralism, in the United Nations, in Nato or with Europe. Far from it. Beneath all the niceties, Rumsfeld's declaration before its invasion that America didn't even need Britain, it could do it alone, holds true today and for the future. Washington seeks not partnerships but allies, when and if it needs them. If anything, the war has accelerated the swing in White House thinking from desiring a united Europe with a single voice to promoting the divisions within it.

In the short term, that can only exacerbate the differences within Europe. The European community was in a mess before the war and is in a greater mess after it – over growth, over enlargement, over the presidency of Italy, over the euro, over Nato and over Giscard d'Estaing's proposals for constitutional change. But on the war and its meaning, ironically, Europe remains surprisingly united, at least where it matters – among the public. There is a difference in vision of the future across the Atlantic and nothing that Tony Blair can say or do will disguise it.

a.hamilton@independent.co.uk