Future relations between Europe and the United States are on the agenda this weekend at several important meetings after the war in Iraq. Today President George Bush delivers a keynote speech in Warsaw about transatlantic relations, before travelling on to St Petersburg, where he will join many European leaders in celebrating that city's 300th anniversary.
From there he goes to the Group of 8 summit at Evian in eastern France, where all eyes will be on his relationship with President Chirac. Cutting short his stay there to go to a Middle East summit has proved a deft way to register continuing disapproval of France's non-cooperation over US policy on Iraq with a mutually acknowledged need to get the Israeli-Palestinian peace process activated once again.
Mr Bush will encounter both goodwill and concern from his European hosts and partners during the next few days. A widespread willingness to let events move on, after the war in Iraq divided opinion so sharply, is evident, not only between political leaders, but among the populations they represent. The British prime minister, Mr Blair, insisted in his Warsaw speech yesterday that Europeans face a fateful choice between renewing the transatlantic partnership or seeing it drift apart. But others believe both sides of these arguments about Iraq and the emerging world order must give ground.
The European interest is not best served by perpetuating a dependent relationship with the United States in security, political or economic terms. This would contradict the growing equality between them and concede too much ground to the growing unilateralism so characteristic of Mr Bush's administration. A renewed transatlantic partnership is desirable but may not, realistically, be possible. There are several major grounds of contention. Russia, France and Germany, which criticised the Iraq war, have proved willing to reach a compromise over the terms of a United Nations resolution on how to restore authority there. But they, along with many others, are concerned by the latest admission from the US Secretary of Defence that the weapons of mass destruction the US insisted Iraq possessed may have been destroyed before the war. Why then fight it? Likewise, growing US military warnings against Iran raise the danger that another war is being planned. The new US activism on the Israeli-Palestinian front is reassuring, but will it be sustained?
Arguments about how best to revive the world economy, prevent deadlock in trade negotiations and enable the developing world to share such benefits will be equally prominent at the G8 summit in Evian. President Chirac has made a welcome commitment to have a dialogue with the critics of globalisation assembled this weekend in surrounding towns and cities. These discussions are being held at a time when the world economy is in great uncertainty. There is a definite limit on what can be accomplished at such summit meetings, but this summit will mark a watershed in international affairs.