Bridging The Gap

Forty-four years ago, a few months before his assassination, John F. Kennedy traveled to then divided Berlin and gave a round of historic speeches. "Ich bin ein Berliner" is the line everyone remembers, the crowd's roar soaring in approval of the young president whose country would one day liberate the people on the other side of the wall. But there was another line, his last public utterance in Berlin. It came during a speech at Congress Hall, a gift from America to the people of Berlin. "Americans may be far away," he said, "but … this is where we want to be today. When I leave tonight, I leave—and the United States stays."

It didn't turn out that way. Over the decades, America floated in and out of Europe's graces. Probably Washington's darkest hour in Europe since Vietnam was the 2003 invasion of Iraq and its grim aftermath.

Iraq split the continent in two—into "old" and "new" Europe, in former U.S. Defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld's memorable formulation. Millions of protesters filled Europe's boulevards. In Britain, Spain, Italy and elsewhere, governments fell or were wounded by their association with George W. Bush. At Congress Hall in Berlin, on the eve of "shock and awe" over Baghdad, Middle Eastern artists mounted an antiwar exhibit dubbed "DisORIENTation."

Now the tables have turned again. From Iberia to the Russian border, European governments are rebuilding transatlantic bridges. Remarkably, the continent's political elites are embracing pro-Americanism at a time when people on the street are as anti-American as they've been since Coalition forces rolled across Iraq. By going against the public grain at obvious political risk, Europe's leaders are demonstrating just how determined they are to bury anti-Americanism. Thus an iconic moment last week: ensconced in the onetime capital of un-America, speaking in effect for a new generation of European leaders, French President Nicolas Sarkozy told a meeting of his ambassadors in Paris, "I am among those who believe that the friendship between the United States and France is as important today as it has been over the course of the past two centuries."

Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel are on the leading edge of the New Atlanticism. The two of them behave as if Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and President Jacques Chirac belonged to another era, with Sarkozy attempting to revive an alliance that dates back to the American War of Independence and Merkel, as the leader of the world's largest exporter, championing what her officials call "a larger common market" with the United States.

Similarly, the countries of Central and Eastern Europe are exhibiting such rampant pro-Americanism that Moscow, their old master, is growing restive. Even Spain under Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, whose first big foreign-policy initiative was to pull his country's troops out of Iraq, is warming to Washington—cooperating, for example, on counterterrorism matters.