Timothy Garton Ash: Why this war in Afghanistan will redraw the map of Europe

'The Islamic world is Europe's "near abroad". We must address the discontents on which terrorism feeds'

War changes everything. The war against terrorism, now a hot war in Afghanistan, has this in common with the Cold War: that it touches every part of the world, and reshapes their politics. How will it reshape Europe?

I have been in eight European countries over the last three weeks, trying to answer that question through conversations with political leaders, intellectuals, guerrilla chiefs in the mountains of Macedonia, and ordinary people in the streets of Madrid, Paris, Warsaw and other capitals. Here are a few things it may change.

The position of Britain: Tony Blair plays Churchill to Bush's Roosevelt. The war again confirms the very special relationship that the British have to the English-speaking peoples "across the pond", as we revealingly say, reducing the Atlantic Ocean to something narrower than the English Channel. What's more, the feeling is currently reciprocated by many Americans, which was by no means always the case. (The former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt once quipped that the special relationship was so special that only one side knew it existed.)

Will this put more distance between Britain and continental Europe, confirming all the old Gaullist suspicions about the British always putting America before Europe? I think not. I encountered remarkably few such suspicions, even in Paris. On the contrary, it will probably increase the British Prime Minister's diplomatic weight in Europe, and his ability to act as a "bridge" between Europe and the United States. Moreover, he himself clearly intends to follow the left hook with a right. After fully engaging with the United States in this war, he hopes to use his enhanced prestige to lead Britain more fully into Europe, and especially into the European monetary union.

The position of Russia: Vladimir Putin is the other European politician who has seized the coat-tails of history. Many expected him to demand Western approval for Russia's "anti-terrorist" war in Chechnya, and a slowdown on Nato enlargement to include the Baltic states, as the price for his support for the war against Osama bin Laden and his kind. Instead, he has used that support as a launch-pad for a strategic campaign to have Russia accepted as a full member of the West, and of Europe.

The Nato Secretary-General, Lord Robertson, confirms that at his recent meeting with Mr Putin, the Russian president made it plain that, while he still did not like the idea of the Baltic states joining Nato, he was certainly not going to attempt to stop it. President Putin seems almost to be rhetorically exaggerating the threat of terrorism as a new common enemy, in order to place Russia more firmly in the West. There are many thorny questions for the West along this path – above all, how far should we compromise our own standards in order to encourage Russia to proceed in the right direction? – but the right direction it surely is.

The eastward enlargement of Nato: At a meeting of the heads of state of all the Nato applicant countries in Sofia last Friday, Lord Robertson emphatically assured them that the current crisis would not slow this down. So did a message from President Bush. This seems to me credible. This war has shown what Nato is, and what it is not. On the one hand, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty has been invoked for the first time. The attack on one member state is formally considered as an attack on all. On the other hand, we see that Article 5 does not mean all member states throwing closely co-ordinated military forces into the front line; it simply means member states doing what they are ready and able to do, if and when the directly affected country asks them. If international terrorism is the big new threat, a broader but slightly looser transatlantic alliance makes even more sense than it did before.

The enlargement of the European Union: Alas, this may well be slowed down. The 11 September attacks have caused the topic of internal security, including Europe-wide policing, border controls, arrangements for extradition between member countries and so forth, to shoot up the European agenda, propelled especially by countries like Spain, which faces its own terrorist threat in the Basque ETA movement.

As the French foreign minister, Hubert Vedrine, pointed out to me, this may in effect add yet another set of requirements to the already daunting list of things central and east European countries have to do before they can join the European Union. And this will be a very difficult set of requirements for countries with weak and often corrupt police forces, judiciaries and customs services to fulfil. One glimpses the depressing prospect of the second eastward Nato enlargement coming before even the first eastward enlargement of the EU.

The Balkans: I cannot count the number of times that people have said to me in the Balkans, "the international community... I mean, the United States". But now the United States has other priorities. Moreover, the task in a country such as Macedonia is a complex one, which does not fit easily under the rubric of "war against terrorism". For it involves brokering and sustaining a peace settlement with Albanian guerrilla forces who in other contexts might be described as terrorists. And, indeed, are so described by ethnic Macedonians.

Explaining the arrangements made for amnesty for the Albanian guerrilla leaders, the Macedonian president, Boris Trajkovski, told me: "I signed an agreement with the Secretary-General [of Nato] and the Secretary-General's representative signed an agreement with the terrorists." So will Europe now take up the burden of this complex, messy and morally ambiguous task? Currently, a small contingent of German troops is supporting EU monitors, and the EU's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is there almost every week. I still doubt if the EU is ready and able to look after its own backyard. One thing, however, is clear: the US is unlikely to keep pulling Europe's irons out of the fire, as it did for most of the 20th century.

A European foreign policy? One can argue this both ways. On the one hand, the Islamic and Arab worlds are Europe's "near abroad", and we have perhaps 20 million Muslims in Europe. So there is a vital European interest in addressing the underlying causes of the discontents on which terrorism feeds, whether among Palestinians, Kurds or Algerians. This crisis should therefore catalyse co-ordinated action in the Middle East and North Africa. On the other hand, the left-Gaullist idea that Europe should have an approach very different from that of the US, and perhaps even see itself as a rival superpower, must seem less plausible and palatable at a time when the West as a whole is under attack. If the outcome were to be a more active European foreign policy, but one that complements rather than contradicts American approaches – as Blair's diplomacy in the present crisis has done – that would be a good result of a bad business.

These are just a few of the patterns in the European kaleidoscope that the war against terrorism has changed, and may change still more. Asked for his view of Africa, Bismarck famously observed: "Here lies Russia and here lies France, and we are in the middle. That is my map of Africa." The world has changed since Bismarck's time, and Europe is no longer at the centre of it. Today, the map of Europe is being redrawn in Afghanistan.

The writer is Director of the European Studies Centre at St Antony's College, Oxford, and author of 'History of The Present'