The unexpectedly benign consequences of having delayed the conflict in Iraq

If George Bush's plans for the Middle East work, he will go down as one of the greatest Presidents, and as a benefactor of all mankind

Great events confound the minds of men. Eighteen months ago, who would have thought that George Bush would turn into a liberal imperialist, while Tony Blair became a Eurosceptic? This is, of course, a description which the PM would repudiate with incredulity, as would the Foreign Office, still in denial about the significance of recent events, which have destroyed the Government's euro-diplomacy. But Mr Blair is a Eurosceptic, objectively. His Old Labour opponents can tell him what "objectively" means.

One wonders, indeed, whether the Prime Minister now regrets the efforts he made to postpone the Iraq conflict and to give diplomacy the time to work. It has not worked. So the strains associated with war have grown in intensity; Mr Blair's euro ambitions are an early victim.

That is no loss, but here are better reasons for believing that the Americans ought to have launched their military campaign at this time last year. In March 2002, there would have been no trouble with the Turks or the Germans. Confronted by the rapid and irresistible momentum of American will, even Jacques Chirac might have been deterred from deploying his malice, while – much more important – life would have been easier for our allies in the Middle East. From the outset, at least in private, all the friendly regimes except Saudi Arabia were saying that, if the Americans were going to war, they ought to get on with it. For friendly Arabs, a year of delay has meant a year of rising tension.

It has also led to a further year of misery for the Iraqi people. In view of Mr Blair's courage in standing by America and the cause of right, it might seem mean- spirited to cavil. But the cost of a year's futile diplomatic procrastination can be quantified in dead Iraqi children.

Yet there are two consolations. In Washington, the year has not been wasted. The longer the Americans took to prepare for war, the grander their ambitions became for the post-war settlement. As a result, the US is about to embark on the most daring experiment in imperial idealism in the whole of human history. The Bush administration is planning nothing less than a moral reconstruction of the Middle East.

Here again, events will impose themselves on men. Whatever the Israelis think, the logic of his own position will force President Bush to advance the cause of a Palestinian state. Over the next few years the greatest obstacle to achieving that state will not be Ariel Sharon. It will be the pathetically inadequate quality of Palestinian leadership.

Only a hyper-power could undertake such a Middle Eastern enterprise, and even under such direction, it involves awesome risks. George Bush might describe himself as a conservative, but he is embarking upon a profoundly un-conservative course of action. Indeed, nothing more starkly illustrates the divergence between American and European conservatism. On this side of the Atlantic, modern conservatism is founded on a hostility to Enlightenment political projects, which commence in grandiose plans to reconstruct human nature and end up with the scaffold and the Gulag. But America itself is an Enlightenment political project, which succeeded because the abstract ideas of intellectuals from failing European states were mediated through the political instincts of Virginian squires and New England puritans.

European conservatism is cautious, sceptical and pessimistic. American conservatives, like most other decent Americans, take as their motto the unwritten first article of their Bill of Rights: "That this year shall be better than last year, and next year shall be better than this year." To a European conservative, much of human history involves finding palliatives for insoluble problems. To American conservatives, an insoluble problem is merely a moral weakling's excuse for his cowardice (Margaret Thatcher was an American conservative, not a European one).

Confronted by the boldness of the United States' plans for the Middle East, a wise European conservative might well rush to the nearest bomb shelter. We are dealing with traditional societies which more or less work on their own terms while providing us with oil. Yet the US proposes to disrupt them with demands for democracy and human rights which have no roots in their culture. At best, that will not make it any cheaper to run a motor car. At worst, if the Wahabis and the theocrats take over, we could pay a heavy economic price.

President Bush has set in motion a chain of events whose consequences will not be fully revealed until decades after he has left the White House. Yet it is a grandiose goal, fully worthy of America's economic and military might; worthy also of the generous impulses which Americans at their finest always feel towards the wretched of the earth. If it all works, George Bush will go down in history as one of the greatest Presidents, and as a benefactor of all mankind. Let us hope that it does work.

A second, lesser, consolation is a more realistic appraisal of Britain's relations with the EU. Tony Blair, our most Europhile Prime Minister since Ted Heath, has a massive majority and a crushed opposition. Yet even he has been unable to abolish the pound or to move the UK in the direction of federalism. There is a simple explanation: these are impossible goals for Britain.

They are also unworthy ones, especially when Europe is confronted by a moral challenge, and on the verge of a moral implosion. The challenge is the great task of stabilising democracy, the rule of law and the free market in eastern and central Europe: in the countries which we had to leave behind at Yalta. The moral implosion would occur if the French blocked the enlargement of the EU to include those applicant countries.

The Germans sincerely believe in a federal Europe as a means of escaping from the nightmare of German nationalism and finding psychological comfort in a democratic alliance with other European countries to create a supra-national Europe. The French pretended to believe in a federal Europe, so as to create a vehicle for the expression of French nationalism. They have only once felt psychological comfort in an alliance, and that was not a democratic one. It was during the days of Vichy.

So there are two competing models of Europe: the French one, and the alternative. The alternative involves enlargement and co-operation with America. The French one involves a narrow little Europe, based on subservience to Paris. Tony Blair may still be trying desperately to invent a third way for Europe, but even the finest circus master in British political history cannot go on riding two strong horses which are determined to gallop in opposite directions. He will be forced to choose, and he will be obliged to choose against France.

Yet if he had not dissuaded the Americans from going to war a year ago, he might not have been forced into a conflict with Jacques Chirac that has had the salutary effect of splitting Europe. From the narrow point of view of British self-interest, that almost justifies the delay.