8. When the snarling's over

The post-cold-war solitary American superpower, say many Europeans, has to be held in check, lest it create an unacceptably Americanised world. The mighty dollar needs to be balanced by the gallant young euro. The spread of American popular culture must be slowed, even if it is popular outside America too.

What many of these Europeans do not realise is that their grumblings are drowned by the growlings of frustrated Americans.

The arthritic economy of continental Europe, say angry Americans, leaves it to them to bear most of the burden of helping recession-hit Asia and Latin America, by buying more imports from these regions and thereby making their own trade deficit even worse. The European Union, though richer than the United States, provides a tiny and diminishing pro portion of the high-tech military equipment that NATO depends on if it is to be able to fight wars without an intolerable number of casualties. Now that Europe no longer has to worry about Hitler's Germany or a communist Russia, conclude these exasperated Americans, Europe can be left to its own devices. “Deep structural forces”, says Stephen Walt in the current issue of the National Interest, are “beginning to pull Europe and America apart.”

In fact, the sky is not quite that black. The expansion of NATO goes ahead.

Nevertheless, the gloomsters could yet prove right. The Atlantic alliance may indeed collapse, unless both Europeans and Americans look forward rather than backward: unless they base their plans not on memories of the past 50 years but on a reasonable calculation of what the next 50 years will bring.

If the United States were indeed going to remain the world's only great power as far ahead as the eye can see, people believe in the danger of monopoly and the need for competition would draw the necessary conclusion: Europe should provide a counterbalance to this overwhelming American power. But that is not in fact what the future really holds. If the European part of NATO raises its eyes beyond its own borders, and sees what will probably happen out there in the next generation or so, it will understand why it still needs America and – even more important – why America increasingly needs Europe.

The one-superpower world will not last. Within the next couple of decades a China with up to 1 14 billion people, a strongly growing economy and probably a still authoritarian government will almost certainly be trying to push its interests eastward into the Pacific and westward into Central Asia, whose oil and gas this energy-poor China will badly need. Sooner or later some strong and honest man will pull post-Yeltsin Russia together, and another contender for global influence will have reappeared on the scene (unless fear of China sends a horrified Russia running into NATO's arms). The Islamist superpower that nervous people predicted a few years ago will probably never come into being, but the Muslim world will certainly continue to produce localised explosions of ideological wrath and geopolitical envy.

This is why the alliance of the democracies needs not only new members but also a new purpose. The alliance can no longer be just a protective American arm around Europe's shoulder; it also has to be a way for Europe and America to work together in other parts of the world. And those who hope to construct a politically united Europe should recognise that this must be done – if it can be done at all – in partnership with America, not to separate Europe from America.