World view: One of the main priorities for Ireland's six-month presidency of the European Union from January next will be to improve relations between Europe and the United States, writes Paul Gillespie
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, stressed this objective during his visit this week to Austria and Slovenia in preparation for the presidency. There has already been high level contact between the Government and the Bush administration to discuss how it might best be done.
US officials acknowledge that transatlantic relations have gone through a rough time during the Iraq crisis, both at elite level and in terms of public opinion. They too are keen to see fences mended in the coming months and are satisfied a good start was made at a "very successful" EU-US summit last month in Washington and at meetings of NATO foreign and defence ministers.
The EU-US summits are taking on more political substance, reflecting these tensions and the need to find more effective institutional means of dealing with them. This gives them a higher profile on economic issues, security and defence affairs and issues of justice and home affairs. The degree to which the EU has competence in these areas determines the importance of the agenda.
Economic issues such as the WTO trade round, genetically modified organisms, co-ordination of economic policy, security ones such as Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Israel-Palestine, the EU's Galileo satellite navigation project, terrorism and weapons of mass destruction all figured in the Washington talks. Since there have been sharp transatlantic differences on many of them, the satisfaction of both sides with the outcome does seem to reflect a better atmosphere and the Bush administration's greater willingness to listen.
British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair emphasised these points in his address to Congress last week, which became overshadowed by the Kelly affair. He has repeatedly argued that while the US must redirect itself to multilateral action rather than unilateral command, the French case for a multipolar world in which Europe is a counter-weight to the US, not a partner with it, is dangerous and destabilising. Similar points were made by the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Silvio Berlusconi, when he visited President Bush at his Texas ranch last weekend.
Insofar as the French case is put that strongly, it was disavowed by the German Foreign Minister Mr Joschka Fischer, when he visited Washington recently. Germany does not want to see a competitive Europe emerging pitched against the US, he said - a significant remark from the man expected to become the EU's new foreign minister if the forthcoming inter-governmental conference accepts the draft constitution prepared by the Convention on the Future of Europe.
US officials argue against a counter-weight Europe in a multipolar world. They agree that the US must learn to recognise and respect European differences on Kyoto, Iraq and the International Criminal Court. But they emphasise there is a very different perception of threats involved. A European diplomat in Washington put it well when he said that whereas the Americans feel as if they are at war after the September 11th, 2001 attacks, Europeans do not.
There is a similar difference among the transatlantic governing elites about multilateral institutions and especially the United Nations. The US needs allies and partners and can't rule the world on its own, US officials agree; but they do not accept this is a world of rules laid down by the UN or international law. The existing and foreseeable reality of world politics is more messy than that. It is a very imperfect system, involving different understandings of threats and judgments, including on the use of force pre-emptively or reactively.
There are echoes here of Robert Kagan's well-known thesis that the American are from Mars, the Europeans from Venus, of US Hobbesianism and European Kantianism. But missing from his account, and from that of the neo-conservative theorists who have influenced the Bush administration, is a realistic appraisal of the changing power relations between the US and the EU.
Power is not only hard and military, it is also soft and civilian. In the latter case it is increasingly equal between the US and the EU. This can be seen in the launch of the euro, EU enlargement, the growing streamlining of EU decision-making and political structures, the strengthening security and defence policy and the growing emphasis on multilateralism in its external policies - mirroring this essential characteristic of its internal affairs.
In total this gives the EU much greater power in a more interdependent world. It cannot match US military power and does not aspire to do so. The convention's draft constitutional treaty, if it is accepted, does not transform the EU into a superstate capable of taking on the US on its own terms. As John Bruton told the Oireachtas Joint Committee in European Affairs this week, "the EU is not a superstate. It is not within sight of becoming a superstate". It does not have the financial or political capacity to become one.
If a joint approach towards Iraq is to be adopted, in which European states would participate more fully in its reconstruction, the Bush administration will have to change its attitude towards the UN role there and accept a new resolution. Otherwise the occupation is likely to attract continued resistance, despite the killing of Saddam Hussein's sons this week.That will be the political price to be paid for overcoming the contradiction between the huge military capacity of the US and its ill-preparedness for reconstruction and development.
This particular issue may have been resolved by the time Ireland takes over the EU presidency; but the wider issue of how to manage a more equal transatlantic relationship in which interests and values increasingly diverge will be with us for a long time to come.