ABSTRACT
AMERICANS MAY BE FROM MARS, and Europeans from Venus; thetrouble is that both sides must live on planet Earth and, somehow, learn to manage their common affairs.
The recent series of transatlantic rows over the U.S.- and U.K.-led war in Iraq, climaxing in perhaps the bitterest interalliance squabble since the Suez crisis of 1956, exposed the degree to which Europeans and Americans have lost what was once a common view of how the transatlantic partnership should work. Indeed, it is not too much to say that currently the United States and Europe (or at least the FrancoGerman partnership at the core of “Old Europe”) have radically different visions of what the relationship should look like-and that neither side has a vision that could realistically serve as the basis for a partnership of equals.
