The Crisis In The West

Where Europe is concerned, the next U.S. president will have one immense advantage: not being George W. Bush. But that's about the only advantage he or she will enjoy, for the new administration will take office facing one of the biggest gulfs in transatlantic relations since 1945. Never in recent history—not during the massive row over deploying U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe in the 1980s, nor even during the worst days of the Vietnam War—has U.S. leadership been so little respected and trusted there.

Even in the most traditionally pro-American countries, surveys show a precipitous decline in U.S. standing. In Britain, according to a Pew poll, favorable opinion of the United States dropped from 83 percent in 2000 to 56 percent last year, and in Germany, the figure slid from 78 to just 37. Trust in Washington has also hit a record low. According to a survey for the German Marshall Fund, only 36 percent of Europeans now see U.S. leadership as desirable at all. In 2002, that figure was still 64 percent. Asked to name the main reasons for the decline, 34 percent said President Bush himself and 38 percent blamed the war in Iraq.

Bush and Iraq: if only it were that simple. But there's even more alarming news. Only 35 percent of those surveyed thought transatlantic relations would improve after next year's U.S. elections, while 46 percent guessed they would stay the same. As this suggests, the reasons for the crisis of the West go deeper than just one unpopular president and his war.

Throughout the cold war, the United States and Western Europe were held together by a common enemy: the Soviet Union. But there's no longer any such single defining threat. Instead, the allies face many, often diffuse, dangers, such as climate change, poverty, demographic shifts, international terrorism and nuclear proliferation. And whereas the specter of the Red Army's squatting in the heart of Europe tended to pull them together, Europeans and Americans often react differently to these more recent threats. At the same time, the re-emergence of an aggressive Russia and the rise of China and India have made the world more complex and multipolar. The United States is no longer the undisputed leader of the West. Europe itself has formed an unprecedented Union that includes nearly 500 million people and boasts a combined gross domestic product equal to the United States'. This new-style non-imperial empire is seeking a new identity.

For many Europeans, defining that identity is simple: to be European, for them, is to be not American. This attitude is popular—but it's also stupid and wrong. There is no clear divide between European and American values. On many issues, "Blue State" Americans are closer to most Europeans than they are to their "Red State" compatriots. And Europe will achieve little or nothing in the world if it tries to act against the American hyperpower.

What can Washington do about all this? First, the next administration must recognize the scale of the problem it faces. This will be a big job—not just because of the depth of the current alienation, but also because of the transformed historical context. The transatlantic alliance that has existed for most of our lifetimes came into being in the 1940s, conceived in the flames of the second world war and the cold war. There is nothing inevitable about its continuation today. Without major surgery, it may not survive into the 2020s.