Can we salvage our relationship with Europe once the shooting stops?

Britain may have to show that Iraq is not a precedent for slavishly following George Bush into his every military adventure

In the dark shadow of a war that is finally beginning, the latest spat between Britain and France seems almost indecently irrelevant. But in the cushioned world of high diplomacy, yesterday's De Villepin/Straw exchange, and the deliberate publicising of it by the Quai d'Orsay, was unusual in its sharpness. Especially on the eve of a European Union summit today at which Tony Blair and President Chirac will hardly be able to avoid each other. The "shocked and saddened" French Foreign Minister had called his British counterpart to tell him that, while France "can well understand" the "internal pressures" on the British Government, it feels the British presentation of events "is inconsistent with the facts and will mislead no one".

Two points emerge from this icy little incident: one is the relative loneliness, in respect of Britain's two biggest European allies, of the path it has embarked on; the second is that it isn't to deny the obstacles that the French threw up in the last, abortive negotiations on a second United Nations resolution to acknowledge that M. de Villepin had a point. For while the frustration of the Government, from Tony Blair down, with the French stance could not be more genuine, the hyperbolic terms in which it has been expressed during the past few days owe a great deal to those "internal pressures".

Because Mr Blair has decisively secured his parliamentary mandate after a speech that offered the most substantive and coherent justification of war he, or probably anyone else, has yet made, it's worth for a moment recalling how things seemed in Downing Street a fortnight ago. It was then that it began to look as if the second UN resolution, which Mr Blair had several times predicted, might not come to pass. Then came Clare Short's extraordinary threat – now humiliatingly unfulfilled. He was already well aware that Robin Cook might go. He could no longer be 100 per cent sure how the parliamentary vote – which, to his lasting credit, he already boldly intended should take place before war began – would go.

By the time Mr Blair made it clear on Tuesday that he would resign rather than implement a parliamentary decision against war, he must have known he would not have to carry it out. But back then you couldn't be 100 per cent sure that there wouldn't be a Commons defeat for the Prime Minister, or at least one at the hands of his own party, at the remotest edge of possibility though such a prospect was. Though not remote enough, apparently, to stop Sir Andrew Turnbull, the Cabinet Secretary, dusting off the Prime Ministerial resignation precedents. Just in case.

The point of what already seems like distant history is that in such circumstances, so far from being an indulgence, pinning the blame on the French became a political necessity. And President Chirac's empty posturing – empty in that if anything it hastened war – obligingly helped him to do just that. The immediate impact of the last two weeks' rhetoric may wear off sooner than it looks. But that won't of itself bridge the real divide that has opened up in Europe over Iraq. Perhaps the biggest EU question after the war will be how to put Europe back together again. And the biggest British foreign policy question will be how Mr Blair gets back to the central position in Europe he wants.

Isolation from the two other big European powers was one of the central problems identified by Robin Cook in his crystalline resignation speech on Monday night. But not just, it turns out, by Mr Cook. What was most interesting about a Financial Times article yesterday by Peter Mandelson, the Blairite loyalist par excellence, was its implicit acknowledgement of the force of Mr Cook's point. Indeed, if anything Mr Mandelson went further than Mr Cook in pointing out that many on the Continent see the UK as having made a decisive shift towards the US, "jilting Britain's 'destiny' in Europe". If this impression is not corrected, Mr Mandelson argued, it will set like concrete.

This goes to the heart of a post-Iraq future. You don't have to suspend justified criticism of Germany and France to see that Britain will have its work cut out to put itself back where Mr Blair always wanted it. Britain will have to make strenuous efforts to build on the progress it made with the French at Le Touquet last month towards an EU defence policy that does not leave the US as the only interventionist power. And that means Europe taking real foreign-policy decisions rather than merely passing resolutions. And that in turn may mean being less neurotic than it has been so far about such a policy not overlapping with a creaking Nato structure.

More even than that, Britain may well have to show that Iraq is not a precedent for slavishly following a Bush administration into whatever military adventures it decides upon next. Let's suppose –and hope – that the North Korean problem can be settled by negotiation rather than the unleashing of a nuclear war. What are the primary global security concerns after that, to European eyes?

A just settlement in Israel-Palestine; true stability and reconstruction in Afghanistan; and the prevention of nuclear war between India and Pakistan. All are more pressing than the use of military force for regime change in – say – Syria or Iran, as advocated by some of the Washington hawks. That is largely a British as well as a European perspective. And to be true to it, Britain may have to learn to consult its European allies to try to find a common response to US requests. And if necessary to say no to Washington.

As it happens, Mr Blair is capable of doing just that. One of the most striking passages in his Commons speech was his assertion of the global rewards that might have been available to Europe if it had backed the US over Iraq. But the unspoken converse is that Britain may on future occasions have to join its European allies in refusing US demands without those bankable rewards. Whether Britain can end its relative loneliness without joining the euro seems unlikely. Conventional wisdom has it that that a referendum would be much more difficult because of the split in Europe over Iraq. Maybe. But the signs are that the British public, sceptical about American foreign policy, might see benefits in Britain helping to shape a stronger Europe of nation states.

Which brings us to the final point. A measure of future independence from the Bush foreign policy where we disagree with it is not anti-Americanism. Quite the contrary. It's following the US right or wrong that risks the growth of anti-Americanism. And nothing would do more to increase the risk of a widening gulf between the US and its European allies than that.

d.macintyre@independent.co.uk